Panorama

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Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume XVIII (Issue No. 2) February 1966
Year: 1966
Language: English
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extracted text: Veil your friends about the Panorama, the Philippines* most versatile, most significant magazine today. (jive them a year’s subscription — NOW! they will appreciate it. Subscription Form ................ 1 year for P8.50 ................ 2 years for P16.00 ................Foreign subscription: one year $6.00 U.S. Name ....................................................................................................... Street ....................................................................................................... City or Town................................... Province ................................... Enclosed is o check/money order for the amount specified above. Please address all checks or money orders in favor of: COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Invernes St., Sta. Ana, Manila, Philippines vm pniuppini mmahni or «mb uamms Vol. XVIII MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 2 OF STUDIES Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judg ment and disposition of business. For expert men can exe cute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are per fected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contra dict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in part; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and atten tion. xxx Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he con fer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. — Francis Bacon. ■ Our privileged citizens — the Senators and repre sentatives. CONGRESS: AN ANALYSIS The sad story of the na tion’s political, and conse quently social and economic evolution is laid bare in un expurgated form in the legis lature. After all, here in deed are the representa tives of the people. If the public has become the vic tim of oppressive legislation it is because the citizenry has not cast a discerning eye on the legislature. By this we mean an intelligent scru tiny of the Upper and Lower House, the temperament and character of the two bodies, the quality and motivation of legislation, and the shape and moral integrity of this branch of government. For one thing it is apparent that in the Senate a large num ber are multi-millionaires; no crime in itself we hasten to add, but this is indicative of the relation between wealth and office. For an other it becomes quite ob vious that while legislation has been presumably for the whole nation without discri mination, there has been ex tensive and clear discrimina tory shadings in. the amend ments and final shape of bills passed. Moreover, the legislators have generally fallen into a privileged class, usually exempted from the effects of the law in ques tion, as in the casecfor exam ple of persons who run for public office having to give up the current post, which does not apply to congress men and senators. « • • The more one *looks into various problems of the na tion, the more one finds himself looking at the legis lature. Here, much more than the executive and the judiciary, pulses the root cause of much of our na tional problems; Legislators are the first not to respect the law so that they either exempt themselves, ignore the law, or amend and cir cumvent it. The bureau cracy in the government is overloaded and inefficient 2 Panorama largely because of the legis lators. Senators are not above fighting with cabinet men over filling up a posi tion for janitor. Legislators have been involved in much of the graft and corruption, from reparations to smug gling. • * • This is not a brief against Congressmen and Senators We wish to point out the need for an academic, nonpunitive, objective analysis of the legislature, with a view towards assessing the present situation and possi ble directions. To our mind, it is the legislature that is bringing about the rise of a two class society, with the politicians as a ruling class. The quality of legislation is in dire need of study too, because not only are bills be ing smuggled and towns cut up and created, not only are franchises, land, and conces sions treated like spoils to be apportioned, but the char acter and spirit of legislation all betray a "citizens be dam ned" attitude. Thus we citi zens have to fill-up census forms which can be used to harass us, all in the name of catching tax evaders, when we all know who the biggest evaders are. Thus also, we have to buy an extra stamp during anti-TB months while the legislators enjoy a frank ing privilege. Our democra cy is being reshaped in the legislature. Since national political leadership, (including the president) emerges, from the legislature, we should stop, look, and think about the shape and character of the legislature. — By Alfredo R. Roces in Manila Times. February 1966 3 ■ The question o£ prejudice against colored people. THE RACE QUESTIONS There is literally a multi tude of myths and dogmas which purport to explain ra cial differences. They range from biblical explanations to zoological classifications. As one explanation loses its novelty or its power to con vince, another emerges. The persistence of race theorists is astonishing. Why do they go to such lengths to find proof for what they obvious ly take for granted? The concept of race resists pre cise definition. All the same, the layman knows perfectly well that there are certain major human groups that differ noticeably from each other — even though there are also noticeable differences between members of any one of these groups. Racism begins with the at tempt to attach values to real or imaginary differences, and the attempt plumbs the depth of absurdity when it produces statements like these: ‘Races which are hairy are inferior to and less human than those which are free from body hair; thick lips are more human than thin lips because apes have thin lips; straight, lank, or wavy hair is more simian than woolly hair’. Where does this kind of analysis take us — if it can be ho nour with the name? Exact ly nowhere. Simian features appear to have been distri buted among the races with a fine impartiality. What race theorists fail to establish on the basis of mea surable physical differences, they try to explain in terms of inherent psychological dif ferences. But this is tricky ground too, for people’s re actions to psychological tests are very much affected by s o c i o-economic conditions, and by acquired habits and skills which are hard to as sociate from innate ability. For instance, it has been es tablished that there are no completely culture-free or language-free psychological tests. 4 Panorama In everyday terms we speak of people as being of ‘Eng lish blood', ‘German blood’, ‘Negro blood’. We speak of one as ‘pure-blooded’, of an other we say that he is ‘half breed’ or ‘half-caste’, or oneeighth this or one-sixteenth that. It sounds very precise to say that if one of the six teen direct ancestors of a per son — that is, a great-great grandparent — belongs to a particular race, then he is one-sixteenth a member of that race. In Brazil there are special names for different racial mixtures — whiteAfrican mixture is a ‘mulato’; an Indian-Portuguesse mix ture is a ‘caboclo’; an IndianAfrican mixture is a ‘cafuso’. But genetically a man cannot be described as if he were a cocktail or an omelette I Anyway, if these ‘recipes’ haVe any value as descrip tions of people’s physical types they are useless in cases where members of the same family — brothers and sisters, even — have totally different complexions and physical characteristics, to the point where some are regarded and treated as Negros and others pass for whites. Race relations are rooted in accumulated experiences and memories of the past, in frustrations and grievances of the present; these are the things which determine the mood in which peoples meet, that give birth to preconcep tions and attitudes which get in the way of mutual under standing. Dr. Albert Schweit zer surprised us when he said: ‘My general rule is never to trust a black’. A Gold Coast statesman, Nana Sir Ofori Atta, said in the Legislative Council in 1939: ‘Whiteman is a whiteman, he will not leave his brother whiteman and support you. Do you think the Government will support you, black man?’ A former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia is report ed to have said: ‘Africans, until they are very much ad vanced, are all liars'. And then there are the dogmas. A Governor of Mis sissippi is reported to have said: ‘The Negro is singu larly tractable and amenable to control by his well-recog nized superior. For this rea son the Egyptian, the Roman, and the Turk paid higher prices for them than for other slaves’. Needless to say, this seemingly scholarly February 1966 5 pronouncement has no basis in fact. But the Governor is not alone in his illusion. The late F i e 1 d-Marshal Smuts, addressing an au dience in New York, once remarked: ‘Apart from the donkey, the Negro is the most patient of God’s crea tures’. Questioned about this, the Field-Marshal answered that he was praising the vir tues of Negros, and that his remark had not been intend ed to be an insultl It is not generally realized that Negro resistance to slave ry never ceased. Indepen dent and purposeful slaves on American plantations were usually ‘sold down the river’, as the expression was, to harsher and more ruthless masters. Captured runaway slaves and insurrectionists were quartered or broken on the wheel. Haiti became in dependent as a result of a rebellion of its slaves. Fu gitives from slavery formed independent settlements in Guiana, where they became the ‘Bush Negroes’, and in Jamaica, where they were named the 'Ma r o o n s’. Among the early settlers in Freetown, Sierra Leone, were rebellious Negroes who had been specially selected for re patriation. There is no short age of evidence to show that the Negro worked relentless ly to emancipate himself and to regain his status as a man. Apart from resisting slave ry, Negroes developed a group consciousness which provided a basis for a kind of black nationalism. The white man’s religion and ci vilization — everything white — was regarded as part of an arrangement to enslave and humiliate the black man. There have been two trends in black nationalism, repre sented by two anti-slavery agitators, Delany and Frede rick Douglass. Douglass’s school of thought sought to secure the rights of the Negro in a multi-racial so ciety, and it is carried on in the policy of the present-day Civil Rights movement. Delany’s attitude finds expres sion in the Black Zionist movement of the ’twenties, which was led by Marcus Garvey, and in the Black Muslim movement of Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, whose aim is to build a Negro society in isolation. In his study of the race question, An American Di 6 Panorama lemma, the Swedish econo mist Gunnar Myrdal estab, lished what he termed a 'rank order of discrimina tion'. This is a set of topics about which upholders and victims of racial discrimina tion feel most strongly. Myr dal lists them from the point of view of white Americans in descending order of inten sity. Marriage and sexual relations rank the highest, followed by conventions in tended to deny social equal ity; then there is segregation in the use of public facilities; next comes political disen franchisement; then comes discrimination in law courts and by law-enforcement of ficers; and at the bottom of the list are restrictions on the ability to purchase land, secure credit, and obtain em ployment. Myrdal notes that ‘the Negro’s rank order is just about parallel, but inverse, to that of the white man’. In other words, the com plaints which were at the bottom of the white man’s list — jobs, education, hous ing, political rights and just treatment by the courts and law-enforcing authorities — are at the top of the Negro’s list. The same pattern ap peared in what were called 'the African Claims’ which were adopted in 1945 by the National Congress of South Africa, some of whose activi ties I have mentioned. In short, the most pressing dis abilities are economic. Po verty, social debasement, and lack of political influence ex pose the deprived sections of a community to abuse, ex ploitation, and injustice. An improvement in economic status could lead to fuller public acceptance and to equality before law; but the lack of these social rights makes economic improve ment impossible. To return to my categories of fear: the intensity of feel ing about inter-marriage, which came first on the white man’s list, is closely linked with the fear of miscegena tion. It is an aspect of most caste and class systems. The rule has been for the male members of the dominant races to take women of the subject or conquered peoples, and where there has been ethnic domination most per sons of mixed ancestry have for their fathers or grandfa thers members not of the sub Fkbruary 1966 7 ject group but of the ruling group. The contemporary male member of what used to be the ruling races has in herited a sense of guilt which grossly exaggerates his fear of the reverse process — of the formerly subordinate group becoming sexually do minant. And unscrupulous politicians and racial psycho paths exploit this fear. Richard Wright once made the defenders of ‘racial pu rity’ an offer: he suggested that an inter-racial covenant should be signed which would guarantee that: ‘The white man’s eyes shall re main forever blue, his skin forever white, and his hair forever blond, provided that he does not continue to pre sume that the natural re sources of the world belong to him and that all other peoples are means placed at his disposal merely because his eyes are blue’. The peoples of the world are trapped in a vicious cir cle composed of notions of superiority and inferiority, of suspicion, misconceptions, preconceptions, frustrations, and insecurity. Above all there is fear. It is fear that sets the racial moods, and if we are to break the vicious circle we must concentrate our assault upon these racial fears in all their forms. Hat red and intolerance are not innate in peoples; they are the children of fear, as fear is the child of ignorance. Ultimately, what racial minorities seek is not any body’s to give. The domi nant races will not be any poorer by recognizing the rights that are now denied to much of the world. When this fact is appreciated in all its significance, our moods will change. And change they must, because the solu tion to our problem is to be found in a society of free men. There is all the dif ference in the world between 'free’ and ‘freed’ men. No body is being required to free anybody. A world of peoples will consist of societies in which men are free. No one can give equality; all that can be shared is res pect. — Robert Gardiner, Home Service of the BBC. 8 Panorama ■ A famous historian points out an analogy or si milarity between the Vietnam and the Filipino revolution on the subject of criticism and dissent. THE PROBLEM OF DISSENT In 1899 we fought a war that has interesting parallels with that which we are fighting today — war which we now have almost wholly forgotten, perhaps for rea sons that psychologists can understand better than poli ticians. That was the war to put down the Filipino “in surrection.” For the Filipi nos — like the Cubans — thought that they were to be liberated, but Admiral De wey cabled that the Filipino Republic represented only a fraction of the Filipyio peo ple and that independence was not to be thought of and the United States threw her' military might into the task of defeating what they called an insurrection. < Soon the presses were filled with stories of concentration camps and tortures; soon American soldiers were singing. Damn, damn, damn, the Filipinos Slant-eye’d Kakiak Ladrones And beneath the starry flag Civilize them with a Krag And return us to our own beloved Homes! The Filipino war excited a wave of outrage and protest among intellectuals, refor mers, and idealists as voci ferous as that which we now witness. Mark Twain ad dressed a powerful letter, “To a Person Sitting in Darkness,” which asserted that the Stars and Stripes should have the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by skull and crossbones. The philosopher Wil liam James charged that “we are now engaged in crushing out the sacredest thing in this great human world. . . . Why do we go on? First, the war fever, and then the pride which always refuses to back down when under fire.” And from the poet William Vaughn Moody came a me morable “Ode in Time of Hesitation”: Alas, what sounds are these that come Sullenly over the Pacific seas, . . . February 1966 9 Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb The season’s half awakened ecstacies. . . . Was it for this our fathers kept the law? Are we the eagle nation Milton saw Mewing its mighty youth, Soon to possess the moun tain winds of truth And be a swift familiar of the sun. . . . 'Or have we but the talons and the maw? And "To a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines” he wrote just such an ode as might be written for a soldier fallen in Vietnam: A flag for the soldier’s bier Who dies that his land may live; O banners, banners, here That Jie doubt not, nor misgive. . . . Let him never dream that his bullet’s scream’ Went wide of its island mark Home to the heart of his darling land Where she stumbled and sinned in the dark. Nor were these men of let ters alone in their passionate outery against what they thought an unjust war. They had the support of a bril liant galaxy of public leaders: Carl Schurz and Samuel Gompers, El L. Godkin of the Nation and Felix Adler of the Ethical Culture So ciety, Jane Addams of Hull House and President Jordan of Standford University, and Andrew Carnegie and scores of others. And when the defenders of the war raised the cry “Don’t haul down the flag,” it was no other than William Jennings Bryan, ti tular head of the Democra tic party, who asked, "Who will haul down the Pres ident?” We need not decide now whether those who protested this war* were right or wrong. It is sufficient to remember that we honor Mark Twain and William James, regard Jane Addams as one of the greatest of American women, and still read Godkin, and that Bryan is- somewhat bet ter remembered than Wil liam McKinley. Those in fatuates patriots who now assert that it is somehow trea sonable to criticize any poli cy that involves Americans in fighting overseas would do well to ponder the lessons of the Philippine War. 10 Panorama But, it will be said, as it is always said, this war is dif ferent. Whether history will judge this war to be different or not, we cannot say. But this we can say with certain ty: a government and a so ciety that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way. This we can say: that what is essential in a free society is that there should be an atmosphere where those who wish to dis sent and even to demonstrate can do so without fear of re crimination or vilification. What is the alternative? What is implicit in the de mand, now, that agitation be silenced, that demonstra tors be punished? What is implicit in the insistence that we “pull up by the roots and rend to pieces” the protests from students — it is Senator Stennis we are quoting here. What is implicit in the charge that those who de monstrate against the war are somehow guilty of treason? It is, of course, this: that once our government has embarked upon a policy there is to be no more criti cism, protest, or dissent. All must close . ranks and unite behind the government. Now we have had a good deal of experience, first and last, with this view of the duty of the citizen to his government and it behooves us to recall that experience before we go too far astray. We ourselves had expe rience with this philosophy in the ante-bellium South. The dominant forces of Southern life were, by the 1840s, con vinced that slavery was a positive good, a blessing alike for slaves and for mas ters; they were just as sure of the righteousness of the “peculiar institution” as is Senator Dodd of the right eousness of the war in Viet nam. And they adopted a policy that is many Senators now want to impose upon us: that of silencing criti cism and intimidating critics. Teachers who attacked slave ry were deprived of their posts — just what Mr. Nixon now advises as the sovereign cure for what ails our uni versities! Editors who rais ed their voices in criticism of slavery lost their papers. Clergymen who did not realized that slavery was en joined by the Bible were forced out of their pulpits. Books that criticized slavery February 1966 11 were burned. In the end the dominant forces of the South got their way: critics were silenced. The South closed its ranks against critics, and closed its mind; it closed, too, every avenue of solution to the slavery problem ex cept that of violence. Nazi Germany provides us with an even more sobering spectacle. There, too, under Hitler, opposition to govern ment was equated with trea son. Those who dared ques tion the inferiority of Jews, or the justice of the conquest of inferior people like the Poles, were effectually si lenced, by exile or by the gas chamber. With criticism and dissent eliminated, Hit ler and his followers were able to lead their nation, and the .world, down the path to destruction. There is, alas, a tragic example of this attitude to ward criticism before our eyes, and in a people who inherit, if they do not che rish, our traditions of law and liberty. Like the slaveocracy of the Old South, the dominant leaders of South Africa today are convinced that whites are superior to Negroes, and that Negroes must not be allowed to en joy the freedoms available to whites. To maintain this policy and to silence criti cism — criticism coming from the academic community and from the press — they have dis pensed with the traditions of due process and of fair trial, violated academic freedom, and are in process of destroy ing centuries of constitu tional guarantees. And with criticism silenced, they are able to delude themselves that what they do is just and right. Now, it would be absurd and iniquitous to equate our current policies toward Viet nam with the defence of slavery, or with Nazi or Afri kaner policies. But the point is not whether these policies have anything in common. The point is that when a nation silences criticism and dissent, it deprives itself of the power to correct its er rors. The process of silen cing need not be as savage as in Nazi Germany or in South Africa today; it is enough that an atmosphere be created where men pre fer silence to protest. As has been observed of book-burn ing, it is not necessary to 12 Panorama burn books, it is not enough to discourage men from writ ing them. It cannot be too often re peated that the justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discover ing truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them. — By Henry Steele Comma ger, ex tracted in part from SR. RESEARCH AND PLAGIARISM Nicholas Murray Butler and Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia University were having a con versation, and Prof. Matthews was giving his ideas as to plagiarism, from an article of his own on that subject. "In the case of the first man to use an anecdote," he said, there is originality; in the case of the second there is plagiarism; with the third, it is lack of ori ginality; and with the fourth it is drawing from a common 6tock." "Yes,” broke in President Butler, "and in the case of the fifth, it is research." February 1966 13 ■ The qualifications and ability of a competent dic tionary writer. NOAH WEBSTER, SCHOOLMASTER TO AMERICA Harry Warfel's biography of Noah Webster, the great American lexicographer and journalist, is a well-balanced and important contribution to America’s cultural and educational history. Noah Webster (1758-1848) was the son of a Connecticut farmer who mortgaged his farm to send Noah to Yale. After graduation he taught school, studied law and was admitted to the bar. In 178385 he published a Gramma tical Institute of the English Language in three parts — a spelling book, a grammar, and a reader. This was the first American work of its kind, and it soon found a place in the schools of the United States. While Webs ter worked on his dictionary, the famous spelling book was the principal source of income for his family. Be fore 1861 the sale of the spelling book had reached more than a million copies a year. The American Dictionary, which came out in 1828, over a quarter of a century after it was first announced, con tained 12,000 words and from 80,000 to 40,000 definitions that had not appeared in any previous dictionary. Harry Warfel writes the following in his biography of Webster: On his seventieth birthday, October 16, 1828, Noah Webster lifted his eyes from the last proof sheet of the scholarly Introduction to his Dictionary. Slowly he wiped the ink from the quill, laid it down, and methodically capped the inkwell. His moist eyes blinked. He turn ed to his wife and colleague, caught her hands. Together they knelt by the desk and prayed tremblingly in giving thanks to God for His pro vidence in sustaining them through their long labor. Since June 4, 1800, when the project was first publicly an nounced, Webster had dan14 Panorama died his book on his knee to the tune of a public lullaby of jeers, insults, and misre presentation. Every oppro brious epithet in the voca bularies of calumny and abuse had been showered upon him. Undeterred by it, he had completed singlehanded America’s first mo numental work of scholar ship. An American Diction ary of the English Language was immediately acclaimed, in England and Germany as well as in America, the best work of its kind ever pre pared. Today, Webster and dic tionary are synonymous terms in our language. No tribute can surpass this one. Yet, curiously enough, al though the name Webster is on the tip of every person’s tongue who wants to consult that indispensable reference book, the dictionary, few can give the lexicographer’s first name. When asked the ques tion, the average informed person looks blank a mo ment, then hesitantly ven tures ‘Daniel I guess.’ Thus Noah Webster, who eminent ly deserves a niche in the Hall of Fame, not only is not memorialized in that pan theon, but has suffered an even worse fate: his name has coalesced with that of the famous orator and state man who was not even his kinsman. Like Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose dictionary lost ground as Webster’s gained, Noah Webster was more than a ‘harmless drudge,’ a writer of definitions. Before announ cing his dictionary at the age of forty-two, Noah Webster had become the pivotal figure in American education and literature. As the author of a series of pri mary school textbooks and as the expounder of a nation alistic theory of education, he had become the young nation’s first schoolmaster. As an itinerant propagandist for a Constitution, he had done more than any other single individual to prepare a climate of opinion in which a Constitutional Con vention could be successful. As a clear-visioned economist, a humanitarian, a magazine and newspaper editor, a his torical scholar, and a mo ralist, he ceaselessly drove his pen in furthering the best interests of his country. Although he completed the February 1966 15 Dictionary in 1828, he never surrendered work until death called him in his eighty fifth year, May 28, 1843. Something of the manysided intellectual quality of Benjamin Franklin reappear ed in Webster. Both pos sessed astonishing versatility and delved into every area of knowledge, leaving marks of influence in almost every field of activity developed in their times. It was fitting that Franklin, in his old age, befriended the young school master and tutored him in simplified spelling. But Webster, unlike Franklin, did not permanently slough off the iron mantle of New England Calvinism. And Webster never sought or ob tained high political posi tion. Essentially a scholar and1 publicist, Webster wield ed his pen as a weapon in the perennial warfare against social injustice, scientific error, mental torpor, and na tional instability. Early in life he called himself The Prompter, the man who sits behind the scenes to correct errors or assist the memory. Webster became our great est schoolmaster. He passed successively from the desk of a Connecticut log school house to the lecture platform, to the editorial chair, and finally, to the home library table as the arbiter of every English-speaking reader’s and writer’s diction. His school books were carried from the hills of New England across the Alleghenies; his were among the first books printed in every new settlement. Across the prairies and over the Rocky Mountains his carefully marshaled columns of words marched like 'war riors against the ignorance that tended to disrupt the primitive society of thinly spread and localized culture of America. Dialect varia tion disappeared from our writing and spelling, and to his blue-backed Speller, of which nearly one hundred million copies were sold be fore it went out of general use, America owes its remark able uniformity of language. No^other book, the Bible ex cepted, has strained so many heads, or done so much good. It taught millions to read, and not one to sin. And today the monolithic ‘Web ster’ on every schoolteacher’s desk, on the reference tables 16 Panorama of libraries, at the elbow of the justice, and on the study table of the scholar, bears silent testimony to Noah Webster’s enduring labors and superb genius. Patient, indefatigable la borer for American cultural advancement that Webster was, he yet never won the warm personal sympathy of his countrymen. A pugna ciousness in propagating his own strongly phrased ideas, a gesture many people consid e r e d egotistic, rendered Webster socially unattractive. His tall, spare, Yankee form stiffened under opposition. His massive head grew rigid ly upright in an inflexible ambition to do good. The mountainous forehead, crowned with a forest of au tumn-tinted hair, sloped to beetling crags of eyebrows. Deep set, as in a cave, small gray eyes flashed lightning warnings of intense mental operations. A massive square jaw and a jutting nose per suaded opponents that here was one endowed by nature to hold his own against any and all opposition. The nar row, thin line of lips held taut a tongue ever ready to castigate error. 'If my name is a terror to evildoers,’ Webster once wrote, ‘men tion it.’ In this respect, too, Webster was the typical schoolmaster, the man who is more concerned to have lessons well learned than to secure the adulation of shirk ing, fawning ignorance. — By Harry R. Warfel. NOT SIN BUT ERROR A young girl came to the late Father Healey of Dublin and confessed that she feared she had incur red the sin of vanity. "What makes you think that?” asked her father confessor. “Because every morning when I look into the mirror I think how beautiful I am.” "Never fear, my girl,” was the reassuring reply. "That isn’t a sin, it’s only a mistake.” February 1966 17 ■ Heretici ii tip ufipl name given tn non-conformisti. SCREWBALLS AND FIREBRANDS Barrows Dunham was head of the Philosophy Depart ment at Temple University, Pennsylvania, when the Com mittee on Un-American Acti vities haled him before it for questioning. "When I fell silent before these gentle men,” Mr. Dunham tells us, ”my employers dismissed me, alleging ‘intellectual arro gance’ on my part.” To fall silent in court Be fore one’s accusers may be> judicious, but is it sensible, 12 years later, to remain si lent before one’s readers? Prof. Dunham doesn’t say what crime the Committee accused him of: we suppose it was membership of the Communist party. He doesn't tell us whether he was guilty of the crime: we suppose he was. But it would be nice to know, because where a reader’s sympathies are concerned there is a great difference between a man who is an underdog and. a man who is just lying doggo. Impressed by his persecu tion, Prof. Dunham with drew into reflecting upon similar occurrences in history. The Heretics is the fruits of his brooding. It is a fairly long, interesting and infor mative examination of select ed heretics from Socrates to Marx, with close looks at the forms their “intellectual ar rogance" took and the char acters of their accusers. As is inevitable with such records, one is left with the impression that history’s end less repeating of its own in justices is about the most mournful and tedious ele ment in the whole story of mankind. But this impres sion is strengthened rather too much by the fact that Prof. Dunham is a strongly opinionated radical, to whom all persecutions look suspi ciously alike. Such an atti tude does not allow either history or human nature a sporting chance to express its diversity. Heresy, however, as we can nearly all agree, is usually 18 Panorama what Prof. Dunham says it is — the screwball’s refusal to play ball with the team. The fact that the former (at least v in the more famous cases) is often acknowledged later to be the hero of the game should not blind us to the fact that he has not had hemlock poured down him in the first place just because all heretics are good and all authorities are bad. To grasp the real drama of heresy and get a clear idea of why heretics are burnt with such monotonous regu larity one must at least make an effort to see that some thing beside the heretic is at stake. Pharisees, elders of the people, Calvinists, inquisitors and police-chiefs all believe that a few personal bonfires are' preferable to a general conflagration. Religions whose whole foundations rest upon unquestioning faith in revealed truth believe inevi tably that the stake is the best place for those who want to open their religion to dispute. If Marxism was the science that Prof. Dun ham believes it to be, and not just another ideology, its leaders would long since have made a policy of cosseting the best brains instead of blowing them out. What Prof. Dunham has no difficulty in showing is the heretic’s repeated advan tage over the organisation man in the matter of intel ligence and good sense. He also touches on, but does not stress broadly enough, how much extra pugnacity, wit and nous the heretic develops as a result of being badger ed by hostile mossbacks. Socrates’ defence before his accusers is such a model in this respect that his capi tal punishment for it comes as no surprise, while Vol taire’s "English Letters” are still living evidence of the folly of releasing such a tar tar from the Bastille and allowing him to visit a free country: "Go into the London Stock Exchange, a place respectable than many courts. There you see re presentatives of all nations, gathered on behalf of use fulness to mankind. There the Jew, the Mohamme dan, the Christian deal with one another as if they belong to the same reli February 1966 19 gion, and call a man in fidel only when he is bankrupt.” That was written in the good old days, of course, be fore the heretical Marx spoilt the fun by insisting that busi nessmen did just as much evil as clergymen. But one doesn’t blush to read it, as one does whenever one reads the words of an organisation-man strug gling, as always, to deny to others the privileges he enjoys himself: “In every constituent body throughout the em pire the working class will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an irresis tible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignor ance: and is it possible to doubt what the result must be?” This is Macaulay, begging the House of Commons not to grant the Chartist petition for universal suffrage and a secret ballot. But it might well have been spoken only yesterday, in Rhodesia. He retics are often wrong, but they are usually original. But the spokesman for or ganisations are in a much worse fix, because the horse they elect to flog is usually dead and the cause for which they would die has usually gone bad. Prof. Dunham records all this in a low, rather sorrow ful tone. That is not a style that readily does justice to the numerous springy, lively heretics who sizzle through his pages. Wilful, headstrong and as much of a nuisance to the sleeping as bread crumbs in a bed, their legacy is more of high spirits than of invalid port. — By Nigel Dennis in The Listener. 20 Panorama, ■ This is an intelligent explanation of the nature and effect of a philosophy of life which appeals to highly educated men. HUMANISM IN WORLD AFFAIRS Lord Francis Williams, a Humanist, answers questions from Kenneth Harris May I begin by asking you what humanism means to you? I suppose humanism means to me personally a philoso phy of life, a philosophy which rejects or finds no need for any supernatural expla nation of the universe, but which has as its basis what 1 perhaps could best describe as a sort of limited certainty, the belief that over the ages we have developed a know ledge that gives us a certain amount of certainty about a certain number of things. This certainty, while provid ing a guide for present ac tion, may be altered by a new knowledge, therefore the essential thing is to be open-minded, not to believe in a system of absolutes, of blacks and whites, in which one has a closed mind. Does this philosophy of yours have the same inspira tional effect on your life as, for instance, the Christian philosophy does — or should — have on the Christian? I am never quite clear what, in this sense, is meant by inspiration. Perhaps I am not a very inspirational char acter, in that I get my sense of inspiration, my sense of uplift, which is what I sup pose you mean, from great poetry, from art, from the movement of nature, from a beautiful scene, and so on, and also from my sense, of the infinite variety and won der of ordinary human be ings. I do not need anything more than that. How did you become a hu manist? I suppose I might be des cribed as one of those odd creatures, a second-generation humanist, in the sense that although I come from a fa mily of a rather strong puri tanical chapel background, both my father and my mo ther had broken away from it. The family had been February 1966 21 Shropshire farmers for 500 years or so. My parents had broken away from it, perhaps because it was too rigid and puritanical a doctrine for either of them — for they were both, I think, generousminded people — to accept. Therefore I had — except when my grandfather was around — no particular com pulsions of religion in my youth, and I did not suffer, as many people have suffer ed, any great sort of trauma tic experience in trying to break away from a doctrine which had been put before me as the absolute necessity of life. Do you think that huma nism ever can be the thing in international affairs, in ternational relations, that Christianity, for instance, has been and is today? I would say that it is in a sense the inevitable and na tural approach in interna tional affairs. Christianity has a substantial force, but one has to realize that Chris tianity is only one among many great religions in the world, and in terms of the clashes of great power blocs, only one among many mytho logies. It seems to me that one of the significant facts in the world today — many people find it surprising — is the Immense passionate desire on the part of peoples of all nations to believe themselves to be democratic. They do not always act, in our view, democratically, but there is no new country that comes into existence, even if it immediately puts its oppo sition into prison, which does not declare that it is doing so in the name of democracy, in pursuit of the democratic ideal. Humanism can help here because it is essentially a democratic concept, be cause it believes, as democra cy believes, in a continuing dialogue, in an open-minded examination of each new is sue as it comes along, to try to determine what is best and most practical in the circumstances of the time as a guide to a common meet ing-ground, without the ine vitable restrictions of a rigid doctrine, religious or politi cal. Can humanism ever be the basis of understanding be tween two peoples that Chris tianity could be and has been? 22 PANORAMA Christianity has beeil the basis of a great deal of mis understanding between peo ples as well, hasn’t it? I mean, let us not get all con fused by the myth that Chris tianity throughout its history has been a great common binding force in the world. There has been nothing so severe as the great religious wars and conflicts. I would say humanism can be that link between peoples, simply because What the humanist in fact is saying is: ‘We must work in the belief that, so far as we can see^ Man is the chief agent, and the highest expression so far of the evo lutionary principle. In so far as he has a dedication it is to help forward that force of evolution. He can only do so by being constantly ready to, explore new ideas, to look at new political or economic principles as they come up, not as challenges to a prepared, established position which he holds, but as possibly a new system, a new idea, a new conception which is worth examination, some of which may be no good, parts of which may be capable of being absorbed into other systems, so that yOu have this constantly mov ing, fluid aproath’. One of the things that struck me about humanism, as a result of these inquiries I have been making is that to be a humanist, a man has to be a pretty mature per sonality and also a man edu cated — even if self-educated — considerably above the ave rage. Doesn’t this make it difficult for humanism to be come acceptable to, for ins tance, primitive people? I do not know that I would accept your premise. To be a theologian, to be a philo sopher of any kind in the higher ranges of that philo sophy, one has to be a fairly sophisticated and educated person. But I would have thought that humanism, for example, was very close to the approach of the ordinary English person with his con cept of tolerance, of looking at the other chap’s point of view, and so on. When you get to very primitive com munities, either Christianity or humanism has a problem in breaking away from con crete, conceptions of physical gods, of physical totems and so on, which have come to be important; but I would February 1966 23 not have thought that the break from that kind of pri mitive conception to human ism was more difficult than the break to Christianity — in fact in many ways I would have thought it less difficult. I wonder too, whether hu manism can be effective in international affairs in the way that Christianity certain ly has been, and sometimes is today — Christianity's ef fect on the slave trade, for instance? Is humanism suf ficiently specific to apply to international problems? I would think so; and when you say ‘Christianity’s effect on the slave trade’, this was only true of a particular group of Christians. What I think appals one, as one goes back historically, is the way in which people who were in many ways very genuine (Christians were able to accept either the slave trade or the idea that child ren of seven or eight should work in the mines, and the fact that this did not conflict with their idea of Christian ity. They were strong church-goers, strong Chris tians, but they had persuad ed themselves that they were of a different race, or a dif ferent group of people. I think the humanist could never do that, because the humanist sees the whole hu man race as one, at various stages of evolutionary dev elopment, and his concern is to help on that evolutionary development by exploring with an open mind every possible means of so doing. A couple of weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury made a statement about the use of force in Southern Rho desia. As far as he was con cerned, he said, he was mak ing a statement of Christian principles. Could a leading humanist say anything about some international problem in the same way as the Arch bishop did? Yes; I do not think he would say that he was mak ing a statement of humanist principles; I think he would say that he was niaking a statement of what seemed to him to be intelligent and human principles. He would not try to claim the authority of a great organized body behind him — and indeed the Archbishop got into a deal of trouble by doing just that. It has struck me very much recently on various occasions 24 Panorama when I have been marching in the same lobby with the Archbishop of Canterbury — on various issues like the Bill to end hanging, and so on — the virulence with which he has been attacked by other Christians for be having as they thought in an un-Christianlike way. Turning now to general international affairs, take the permanent East-West con flict, for instance. What can the humanists contribute to that? I believe to the humanist the East-West conflict repre sents movements by human groups to find solutions of human problems: solutions which at the moment differ, but each of which may con tain something from which the other could borrow, and from which one can learn — unless one gets oneself into the sort of position that that great Secretary of State in America, Mr. Dulles, once got himself into: the belief that there is an absolute black and an absolute white in international affairs. One’s attitude must be that each approach to a solution of political affairs is worth examining, and perhaps worth borrowing from. You have lived a very busy life; you have been engaged in a great many causes; you have worked for social re form. But now you are mov ing towards the period in life when you have to sit down and take things rather more easily. Do you think that humanism as a faith will be as attractive to you in your old age as it was when you were a busy man? Do you think you might perhaps long for the consolation of a religion like Christianity, for instance? I do not think so. In a way this problem — if it is a problem — came to me about three years ago, when I had a coronary and was laid on my back, and it seem ed to me to be quite possi ble that this might be the end. I found no sense at all of anxiety about the end, but a great deal of interest in considering what would be happening to mankind when I Was gone from it. — From The Listener, Dec. 2, 1965. February 1966 25 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS1 1 Orrin E. Dunlap, Marconi: The Man and His Wireless, by permission of The Macmillan Company, publishers, New York, 1937, p. 87-90, 93-99, 100-101. Guglielmo Marconi (18741937), inventor, electrical en gineer, and winner of the Nobel prize for physics, was the first to perfect the de vices used in space telegra phy. To his genius is due the great scientific triumph of wireless telegraphy. Orrin Dunlap states that he gives us the exciting story of how the first wireless sig nal was flashed across the Atlantic sky, because "it is not only unforgettable, but one of the great climaxes in the history of wireless, and in Marconi’s life." From his book comes the following story aboiit Marconi’s inven tion. Marconi at the dawn of a new century caught the vi sion of a dream. He saw men sitting on the edge of the North American conti nent listening to what a lam bent spark was sputtering across 2,000 miles of broad, curving ocean. New Year’s Day, 1900, ushered in an electrical age of speed and scientific won ders — a Century of Progress. The question in 1900 was, how can 20 kilowatts spread out to every point of the com pass provide sufficient ener gy to traverse 2,000 miles in one direction? Would Am erica and England be brought in touch with each other without the aid of the sub merged cable costing from $4,500,000 to $9,000,000 or up to $2,500 a mile? Marconi thought so, and was working feverishly to ward that conclusion. The cable secluded in the bed of the sea could carry dots and dashes, but the idea that thoughts might pass through the ocean air in less than a second was something to balk human credulity. 26 Panorama How less tedious, less ex pensive it would be to utilize a free right-of-way in the heavens instead of laying a cable in Neptune’s dreary sanctum? The idea had pos sibilities calling for a mira cle man. The skeptics, of course, were countless. It was true, this man Marconi had convinced the doubting world that wirelesss lifted messages for short distances, but the Atlantic — well, it was much wider than the English Channel. It was not so difficult to comprehend, in view of Mar coni’s achievements, that a boat 250 miles off the Eng lish coast picked up a wire less signal from the shore. But that must have been a freak of nature aided by ex traordinary atmospheric con ditions. So argued the diehards. It was eight times that distance from England to America! Marconi, a conservative scientist, knew the Atlantic project was fraught with daring — a little too much for the public mind to grasp. He realized the significance of premature announcements. Wireless across the sea meant the very shrinkage of the earth. It meant new and revolutionary communication between every nation on the face of the globe. Wisdom called for secrecy. If the dream turned out to be a bubble it would be a matter of disappointment . only to the dreamer. If successful it would be a signal of progress for mankind. So he would work quietly, unassumingly, with plans unpublicized. He was looked upon as a modern wizard whose human traits outwardly failed to be tray any eccentricities of genius. Londoners who saw him in Piccadilly or Pall Mall observed a rather sad,. keen-eyed, thin-lipped young man with unlimited capacity for work and a firm faith in his own ability. His brown hair was neatly trim med and carefully brushed; sometimes he shaved twice a day. His attire, if anything, was a little too neat for a scientist. He was fond of a fur coat and was not above afternoon tea. One who passed him in the street would class him with the average club or city man, fond of the good things in life, yet his manner and step revealed he was by no means February 1966 27 an idler. He looked like a man faithful to friendship but the type who would give it rarely. Divested of the fur coat he looked frail. His movements were slow and direct, yet there was an odd air of diffi dence very apparent when he was in the company of stran gers. This shyness was em phasized if wireless telegra phy was the topic. He ap peared much younger than his twenty-six years, and more than one great scientist eyed him incredulously when see ing him for the first time. Superficially, Marconi had little to distinguish him from the average man, but closer acquaintance invariably im pressed one with his tremen dous energy. The doctrine of strenuous life never had a more faithful follower. He labored Under high pressure and expected his subordi nates to feel the same intense enthusiasm that gripped him during experimental periods. He worked by night and day when a problem presented itself. Such was the calibre of the man intent upon transatlan tic wireless; the man who was preparing for what he termed, “the big thing” — wireless between the Old and New Worlds. Marconi, accompanied by Major Flood Page, managing director of the Marconi Wireless Company, and R. N. Vyvyan, engineer, in July 1900, went to the barren southwest tip of England and selected Poldhu, near Mul lion in Cornwall, as the site for a pioneer transmitter, 100 times more powerful than any station ever built. Cons truction began in October. There history would be etched electrically on the blue canopy of the globe. Professor James Ambrose Fle ming of University College, London, appointed, Scientific Adviser of the Marconi Wire less Company in 1899, was entrusted to design the ins tallation. He was a specialist in high tension alternating currents. Mr. Vyvyan was selected to supervise cons truction. Newspapers printed meagre reports that an Ita lian inventor hoped to link two far-distant points with out the aid of visible wires. The word "visible” appear ing in the accounts of 189699 indicated the incredulity of the general public. The 28 Panorama Gay Nineties were conserva tive in regard to electrical miracles;. people shook their heads in doubt and wonder ment .... A queer-looking structure, never before seen on the English landscape or any where else for that matter, was attracting attention on the forbidding rocks that jut out into the Atlantic at Poldhu. It was Marconi’s latest idea of what an aerial system should comprise. There was to be a ring of twenty wooden masts, each about 200 feet high, arranged in a semicircle 200 feet in diameter, cover ing about an acre. It was designed as the “frame” of a conical aerial consisting of 400 wires. By the end of August, 1901, the t masts were nearly com pleted, bbt a cyclone swept the English coast on Septem ber 17; the big masts blew down like so many tooth picks after it had taken ele ven months to erect them. Disappointment swept through the Marconi ranks. The engineers said it meant postponement of three montns or more to remove the wreckage and build anew. The “sister” towers on Cape Cod suffered a similar disaster a few weeks later. Marconi was too anxious, too unconquerable a soul to permit fallen masts to get the best of him. He decided it might be possible to utilize a simpler aerial. So two poles, instead of twenty, each 150 feet high, were erected. A triangular stay was stretch ed between the masts and from it were suspended fiftyfive copper wires. They were about a yard apart at the top and conveyed at the bottom, forming a fan-shaped aerial. Everything was ready for a preliminary test. The fiery spark crashed across the gap electrifying the makeshift web of wire and the bleak November air. A wirelesss outpost at Crookhaven, Ireland, 225 miles away, heard the signals with such intensity that the engineers felt certain the power was sufficient to drive a message across the Atlantic — ten times as far as Poldhii to Crookhaven! Marconi was sure it would. He decided to conduct the first test in Newfoundland — the nearest point in America to the Old World. Bound on a historic jour February 1966 29 ney, he sailed on November 26 from Liverpool on the liner Sardinian, accompanied by two assistants, G. S. Kemp2 and P. W. Paget. 2 Mr. Kemp was one of Mar coni's most valued electricians and his diary of wireless was a great asset to Marconi when in court fighting patent litigation and infringements. They had odd baggage for three men. Small captive bal loons and a number of large kites were in the luggage. They knew the inclement weather in Canada at this season of the year and the shortness of the time at their disposal made impossible to erect high masts to hold aloft antenna wires. But the kites and balloons might do the trick, thereby saving time and expense and possibly make history. Undramatically, in fact, unnoticed, the trio <rf pio neers landed at St. John^s on Friday, December 6, ahd-the following day, before begin ning operations visited the Governor, Sir Cavendish Boyle, Premier Sir Robert Bond, and other members of the Ministry, who promised heartiest cooperation. They cheerfully placed the re sources of every department of the government at Mar coni’s disposal to facilitate his work. "After taking a look at various sites,” said Marconi, “which might prove suitable, I considered the best one was on Signal . Hill, a lofty eminence overlooking the port and forming a natural bulwark which protects it from the fury of the Atlan tic winds. On top of this hill is a small plateau some two acres in area, which seemed very suitable for manipula tion of the balloons and kites. On a crag on this plateau rose the new Cabot Memorial Tower, erected in commemo ration of the famous Italian explorer John Cabot, and de signed as a signal station. Close to it there was the old military barracks, then used as a hospital. It was in the forum of this building that we set up the apparatus and made preparations for the great experiment. “On Monday, December 9, we began work. On Tuesday we flew a kite with 600 feet of aerial as a preliminary test, and on Wednesday we inflated one of the balloons, which made its first ascent during the morning. It was 30 Panorama about fourteen feet in dia meter and contained about 1,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas, quite sufficient to hold up the aerial, which consist ed of wire weighing about ten pounds. After a short while, however, the blustery wind ripped the balloon away from the wire. The balloon sailed out over the sea. We concluded, perhaps the kites would be better, and on Thursday morning, in spite of a gusty gale we ma naged to fly a kite up 400 feet. “The critical moment had come, for which the way had been prepared by six years of hard and unremitting work, despite the usual criti cism directed at anything new. I was about to test the truth of my belief. “In vie,w of the importance of all that was at stake, I had decided not to trust entire ly to the usual arrangement of having the coherer signals record automatically on a pa per tape through a relay and Morse instrument, but to use instead a telephone connect ed to a self-restoring coherer. The human ear bearing much more sensitive than the re corder it would be more like ly to hear the signal. “Before leaving England I had given detailed instruc tions for transmission of a certain signal, the Morse tele graphic ‘S’ — three dots — at a fixed time each day be ginning as soon as word was received that everything at St. John’s was in readiness. If the invention could receive on the kitewire in Newfound land some of the the electric waves produced, I knew the solution of the problem of transoceanic wireless tele graphy was at hand. “I cabled Poldhu to begin sending at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, English time, con tinuing until 6 o’clock; that is from 11:30 to 2:30 o’clock in St. John’s.’’ As the hands of the clock moved toward noon on Thursday (December 12, 1901), Marconi sat waiting with the telephone receiver held to his ear. It was an intense hour of expectation. Arranged on the table were the delicate instruments ready for a decisive test. There was no calibrated dial tuner to facilitate adjusting the circuit to a specific wave length. In fact, the wave of Poldhu was not measured. February 1966 31 There was no device to mea sure it. Professor Fleming thought there should be some method of measuring wave length but he had yet to in vent his cymometer or waver meter. The length of Poldhu’s wave was a guess. There was nothing precise or scientific about tuning. But based on the fact that the aerial was 200 feet high and that it was linked with a series coil or "jigger,” Professor Fleming estimated the wave length was not less than about 8,000 feet or 960 meters. Marconi had to hunt for the wave. A wire ran out through the window of Cabot Tower, thence to a pole and upward to the kite which could be seen swaying overhead. It was : a raw day. A cold sea thundered at the base of the 300-feet cliff. Oceanward through the mist rose dim ly the rude outlines of Cape Spear, the easternmost point of the North American con tinent. Beyond rolled the unbro ken ocean, nearly 2,000 miles to the coast of the British Isles; wireless might leap that in one ninety-third of a se cond! Across the harbor the city of St. John’s lay on the hillside. No one had taken enough interest in the experiment to go up through the snow to Signal Hill. Even the ubiquitous reporter was absent. In Cabot Tower, the vete ran signalman stood in the lookout’s nest scanning the horizon for ships, little dreaming that mysterious waves might be coming out of the sky from England. Wireless was ready for the crucial test. Its destiny was at stake. So was Marconi’s. Everything that could be done had been done. The receiv ing outfit was as sensitive as Marconi could make it; he had faith that these instru ments would pick up the faintest trace of a signal. Marconi listened and lis tened. Not a sound was heard for half an hour. He inspected the instruments. They looked perfect. Had something gone wrong at Poldhu? Had some myste rious force led the signals astray? Was the curvature of the globe a barrier? All these things flashed through his mind, coupled with the 32 Panorama fact that it was almost fan* tastic to believe an unseen wave of intelligence could cross through the ocean air and strike such a slender tar get as a copper wire. It seemed incredible. It would be so easy for the message to travel off in some unde sired direction. Marconi knew, however, if the signal went east, north or south it would also go west and to that wire antenna dangling from the kite. Without warning there was a sharp click in the ear phones. What caused it? Was some stray static play ing a prank? Indeed not! Marconi had at last found the right tuning adjustment to put him in touch with Poldhu! “Suddenly, at about 12:30 o’clock, unmistakably three scant little clicks sounded several times in my ear as I listened intently,” said Mar coni, in recounting the day. “But I would not be satis fied without corroboration. “ ‘Can you hear anything, Kemp?’ I said, handing the receiver to him. “Kemp heard the same thing I did, and right in my anticipation,” recalled Mar coni. "Electric waves which were being sent out from Poldhu had traversed the Atlantic serenely ignoring the curvature of the earth, which so many doubters con sidered would be a fatal obs tacle. I knew then that the day on which I should be able to send full messages without wires or cables across the Atlantic was not very far away. Distance had been overcome, and further dev elopment of the sending and receiving instruments was all that was required.” Wireless had flashed across the Atlantic’s sky like “some meteor that the sun exhales.” Again and again Marconi and Kemp listened to be sure there was no mistake. Padget was called in. He listened but heard nothing; he was slightly deaf. What Marconi and Kemp heard must have been Poldhu. There was no other wireless station in the world to send that pre arranged signal. And a mar vel was that it was noon time; it would have been so much easier to perform the feat at night when darkness aids the flight of long-wave wireless. Marconi was not aware of that. February 1966 33 It was mid-afternoon. The kite gyrated wildly in the gale that swept in from the sea. The antenna failed to maintain the maximum alti tude and the fluctuating height naturally influenced reception. The wind tugged and tugged at the kite, final ly at 2:20 o'clock the anten na was lifted within range of the repetitious dots. And that gave further verification. At dusk the inventor and his companions went down the hill toward the city spark ling with lights. He made no statement to the press. In fact, he felt rather depress ed because he had not inter cepted a continuous stream of signals. Possibly the stress of the preceding days had something to do with his dishearted feeling. It is said that a secret is no longer a secret if more than one person holds it, but that night three men kept a secret from the world. And what they harbored was front-page news — news that would find a place in history books. They went to sleep dream ing of what they had heard and in hope that a new day would put the stamp of suc cess on their work by further verification. It almost seem ed too true for them to be lieve their own ears. They would listen again for the three elusive dots. They were up on the hill early the next morning, an xious to lend an ear to space at noon, for that was the ap pointed time for Poldhu to broadcast. The signals came on sche dule but were not quite as distinct as the day before. The changing weather on a 2,000 mile front could make a radical difference in be havior of the waves. There was no doubt, however, that wireless had spanned the At lantic. Nevertheless, the mo dest inventor hesitated to make his achievement public, lest it seem too extraordinary for belief. Finally, after withholding the news for two days, cer tainly evidence of his conversatism and self-restraint, Mar coni issued a statement to the press, and that Sabbath morning the world knew but doubted. . The scientific world was mindful that Marconi had never released a statement in public until absolutely 34 Panorama certain of the facts. He ne ver had to withdraw a notice as to his progress. As soon as the significance of the event was realized star re porters and spedal magazine writers rushed northward from New York to get the story from the lips of the in ventor. He told them it cost $200,000 to get the three dots across the Atlantic I To Marconi there was nothing problematical about the fu ture; he had spanned the At lantic. He had upset the calculation of mathemati cians. — By Orrin E. Dunlap. SELF ANARCHY Harold Laski has this story to tell: I discussed recently with a Hindu I knew — a man of great cul ture — the question of Indian Independence. “If England were to withdraw from India,” I said, “wouldn’t the country relapse into a state of anarchy — much like what it was in the 18th Century when Clive and Hastings laid the foundations of the Bri tish Raj?” My friend assented sadly, “Yes, I suppose you are right.” “And that would be followed by a tyranny, or several tyrannies, would it not?” “Yes, probably.” “And then the pendulum would swing back to anarchy again?” “Yes,” he said, "yes, I am afraid it would!" Then, after a long pause, he added, "but it will be our tyranny and our anarchy!” February 1966 35 ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK Preparations for the estab lishment of an Asian Dev elopment Bank are approach ing their final stage. The Charter of the $1,000m. Bank has been examined, dis cussed, and revised, para graph by paragraph, by se nior government officials from 31 Asian and non-Asian countries. Manila is chosen for its principal office. Operations of the Bank are expected to begin about the middle of 1966. Main functions are-. To promote investment in the region of. public and private capital for develop ment purposes; To utilize the resources at its disposal for financing dev elopment of the developing member countries in the re gion, giving priority to those regional, sub-regional, as well as national projects and pro grammes which will contri bute most effectively to the harmonious economic growth of the region as a whole, and having special regard to the needs of the smaller or lessdeveloped member countries in the region; To meet requests from member countries in the re gion for assistance in the co ordination of their develop ment policies and plans with a view to achieving better utilization of their resources; To provide technical assis tance for the preparation, financing, and execution of development projects and programmes, including the formulation of specific pro ject proposals. Initial capital is $l,000m. Asian member countries will subscribe 60 per cent.; the other 40 per cent, is expected to come from non-Asian developed countries. Lack of investment capital has hampered economic dev elopment. It is one of the main reasons why the gap between the poor and rich countries has widened rather than narrowed. The A.D.B. is yet another attempt to solve the problem. 36 Panorama AN AMERICAN ZEN BUDDHIST “The unearthly silence of the monastery’s tremendous pine and cedar trees took hold of me,” says the thin, gray-haired monk, explaining one reason he returned to Japan to live Zen. The monk is Philip Kapleau, a balding ex-business man of 53, who probably knows more about the actual practice of Zen Buddhism than any other living west erner. Twelve years ago, Kapleau, ridden with ulcers and allergies and haunted by dark and uncertain fears, gave up his New York busi ness, his apartment, his art collection and his automo bile and came here to enter a Zen monastery. Today Americans and Eu ropeans from all walks of life, including a few artists, psychiatrists and physicians, seek him out and consult with him on how to practice the Zen discipline. After years of rigorous training in two leading Zen monasteries as a lay monk, under three of Japan’s out standing Zen masters, Kapleau considers himself a much happier man because of the experience. Connecticut-born, Kapleau studied law and became a court reporter. He was chief reporter for the international military tribunal at Nuremburg at the end of world war II and also a staff-member at crime trials in Tokyo. While in Tokyo, he visited the 13th century Engakuji Zen monastery in nearby Ka makura, and it was there he experienced the unearthly silence of the pines. After returning to the U.S., Kapleau organized his own court reporting company and at the same time began his search for the meaning of Zen under the Japanese scho lar Daisetsu Suzuki at Co lumbia university in New York. But after two years of Su zuki’s lectures, Kapleau felt that Zen "philosophy” was not ridding him of frustra tion. He described it as "a nagging feeling of nothing ness.” February 1966 37 The clue that changed his life came from a Japanese acquaintance, a psychiatrist familiar with Zen, who told him: “Zen’s not a philosophy. It’s a healthy way to live. If you go to Japan to prac tice Buddhism and not just talk about it, your whole life will be transformed.” A few months later, Kap leau found himself crosslegged in a Zen monastery, tortured by pain in his legs and back from hours of “sit ting Zen.” Shivering in the December air of an open, un heated hall, he began won dering if he had made a mis take. But he stuck it out for three years as a lay monk, first at a well known monas tery perched among cedars, pin^s and bamboo overlook ing a valley near Tokyo, later at another monastery near the Japan sea. His day began at 4 a.m. with meditation for an hour and a half, then chanting of “sutras” for half an hour. There was a breakfast of rice and vegetables, manual la bor, and trudging through snow in straw sandals with fellow apprentice monks to beg for rice. But mostly he was “sitting, sitting” on a flat cushion on the straw-matted floor. In the heat of summer, Kapleau was there with the monks felling trees, planting rice, cultivating the monas tery gardens and working in the kitchen. He still suffer ed searing pain in his knees and back from the sitting. All through this discipline, he was hoping to achieve “Satori”, a state of “spiritual awakening” marked by great joy and inner peace which has been the aim of Zen monks for centuries. His stomach condition im proved and every one of his allergies disappeared. “The dark fears which formerly haunted me as well as my dreams and hopes, all these have withered away leaving me with a clearer sense of the real,” he wrote. But sa tori did not come. Kapleau moved on to Ka makura to become a disciple of one of Japan’s most high ly reputed Zen masters, Hakuun Yasutani. He began the study of . “koans” — baffling spiritual problems presented by the Zen master, or “roshi.” One 38 Panorama of the best known of these is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” But it wasn’t until five years later, in 1958, at one of his periodic meetings or “Zen interviews,” with Yasutani that Kapleau experienced satori. As Kapleau describes it, “every single thing disap peared in a dazzling stream of illumination, and I felt myself bathed in a delicious unspeakable delight. . This all sounds more than a little mysterious to one who hasn’t experienced it. But Kapleau has now writ ten a book — “The Three Pillars of Zen” — which he hopes will reveal Zen as “an eminently straightfo r w a r d and practical teaching.” It is, he says, a “unique sys tem of body-mind training whofee aim is spiritual en lightenment.” Despite his association with Suzuki, who has done much to popularize Zen through scores of publications and translations, Kapleau feels that the venerated scholar has misled many into be lieving that Zen is a philo sophy to be studied, rather than a living religion to be practised. In Kapleau’s opinion, one of the key aspects of Zen dis cipline which Suzuki and other commentators on Zen have almost neglected to mention is “Zazen,” an exer cise in concentration whereby the mind is both tranquilized and sharpened. One aspect of Zazen is the art of sitting in the difficult, cross-legged “lotus” position. On the lowest level, he be lieves that Zen discipline can overcome the tensions of mo dern life and help a man to think more clearly and live a healthier life. On the highest level, he believes that Zen can bring inner peace and moral certainty by teach ing "The unity of all exis tence.” Kapleau’s old m'aster, Ya sutani, who at 80 has more energy than most men half his age, has set out for the United States, where he has been invited by various groups to teach Zen “more or less permanently.” Kapleau believes that the “Zen fad” that has arisen in many parts of the United States has been “little more than a mind-tickling diver sion of high-brows and a plaything of beatniks.” February 1966 WHAT IS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO In a long professional life I have tackled the job of writing about a good many nations, cities, and institu tions, and I have always sought to ask a number of questions: What does this place look like? Where did it come from? What are its prevailing qualities and characteristics? Who runs it? Is the population satisfied? Where is it going? In this survey I will try to do the same thing for the University of Chicago. This is what I found, Quality at an academic institution cannot be built merely upon individual bril liance. First rate work and first rate people need sup port both broad and deep. At Chicago, the faculty is supported by a staff of 7,300 (including 1,200 part-time student workers). The main campus has changed little since I first saw it. It has, so to speak, been filled in, but the cen tral design, the basic struc ture and pattern as laid down by the first builders, remains intact. It is still a handsome ly self-contained community of lawns and quadrangles, the battlements of which are built of grey Indiana lime stone in the Gothic manner. The gargoyles, ivy, spires, apertures, red slate, scrolled designs, look mildly anachro nistic, but are pleasing. South Campus has archi tecture quite different from the main campus. The works of three major modern architects stand in order along a “cultural mile,” ar rayed like specimens to be savored at leisure by the architectural connoisseur. Looking at the University after many years’ absence, I wanted first of all to find out something about the rockbottom citizenry of this principality, the undergrar duties. Of course the Uni 40 Panorama versity of Chicago is, and al ways has been since its foun dation in 1891, primarily a graduate school. In fact stu dents working for advanced degrees and those in the gra duate professional schools outnumber undergraduates today by a ratio of two to one. The University acquires as undergraduates the scholas tic cream of the cream. It has appeal for all sorts of bright youngsters, and espe cially favors vigorous “achievers” with serious mo tives and imaginative, inde pendent turns of mind. Chi cago students come from farms and hamlets, from slums and suburbia. Al though they study in the lee of a great graduate school, the College students are not repelled ,by their more ma ture and more extensively educated colleagues — ins tead, they are attracted. Chi cago is not an obvious place for the average student, but gifted youngsters find it su premely challenging, and some others discover abilities they never knew they had . No quota system of any kind governs entrance to the University. No questions are asked on application forms about race or religion, and a photograph is optional. Tuition comes high — in the $l,700-range for three quar ters — and an additional $1,500, at a bare minimum, is necessary for living ex penses. About half the un dergraduate body has helped in the form of scholarships, and nearly two-thirds have part-time jobs of one sort or another. The average scholarship for an entering freshman in the Class of ’68 was $1,225, and the Univer sity is spending about $10 million this year on various forms of aid to College and graduate students. Of course University of Chicago- graduates were bright in my day too, but not as terrifyingly bright as today’s leaders seem to be. I spent one afternoon with four bright, knowledgeable undergraduates. One was a vice president of the Student Government; another was editor of the "Maroon” (the campus newspaper, circula tion 10,000). These young sters, one of whom was a blonde, pretty girl who seem ed to be appallingly young, but who was specializing in February 1966 41 Russian GivilizAtion and had already had her first exten sive trip in the Soviet Union, impressed and puzzled me. They were very guarded — perhaps shy. I asked them what they like most about the University. Well, it was one hell of £ good school. They did not feel at all that they, as undergraduates, were overshadowed by the prevailing emphasis on gra duate study. Quite the con trary — they were being am ply prepared for graduate work. Complaints? First, tui tion charges were too high. They wanted to get at the bottom of the accounting system used by the Univer sity and see why costs could not be reduced. Second, the general education courses were sometimes "badly” taught and did not reach fully enough into the present. They wanted more emphasis on the contemporary, parti cularly in history and the humanities. Third, the Uni versity was behind the times in its approach to the racial problem. Fourth, although they freely conceded that the University was thorougly liberal, youngsters could get into trouble by being overvociferous on civil tights, censorship, and so on. Fifth, intelligent youngish teachers might, my informants said, be in danger of being fired just before they got tenure if they did not "tonform.’’ I doubt that a professor ever has been fired at Chicago for "non-conformity” despite what students may say. In my interviews with them, facul ty members were generous in their praise for the free dom and independence they are granted by the adminis tration of the University. If there is a pressure on them, it probably is the social pres sure of the academic com munity to work hard, teach well and contribute in posi tive terms to mankind’s store house of usable knowledge. The next day I climbed the old iron stairway of Cobb Hall and sat in on a sopho more humanities course. No rostrum, no desks. Eleven young men, t,en young wo men sat informally with an instructor round a large oval table. Classes are commen dably small — averaging 18 — at Chicago. The class was reading Plato’s “Gorgias,” and instruction took the form of question, elucidation, and 42 Panorama discussion. The mood waft nicely — but not exaggerated ly — spirited. There are all manners of innovations at Chicago. Formal lectures usually do not take place more than once a week, and only original texts are used. At examinations the identity of the student is unknown to the examiner who goes over his papers. Advocates of general edu cation are listened to with respect. This, indeed, next to the quarter system (The school operates the year around and is divided into four quarters) which has been widely copied (and will surely be introduced in ma ny more universities), is one of Chicago's distinguishing marks in the undergraduate realm to day. The alert, bright-eyed early careerists receive ap excellent pre-professional education and often move rapidly toward their chosen goals. But the Uni versity makes it clear that it values the well-rounded per son, with a solid underpin ning of general knowledge, before specialization begins. What the University wants to stress is the “interrelation of disciplines,” and thus arose the now celebrated broad-beam courses which every student is obliged to take and which totally occu py two 6f his four years un less he can prove by “place ment tests” that he does not need them. The eight obligatory cour ses are: 1. Humanities (including philosophy, art and music.) 2. English composition 3. A foreign language (not compulsory if a student passes a satisfactory examina tion.) 4. Mathematics 5. History of Western Ci vilization 6. Biological Sciences 7. Physical Sciences 8. Social Sciences One should also mention that instruction in the fourth year may be tutorial, and that “specialization” does not mean vocational educa tion. Chicago is certainly not the place to go if one wants to study ice cream ma nufacture or hotel manage ment. About 230 members of the faculty specifically serve the undergraduate body but practically all professors, no matter how elevated, may teach in the College. Many, including the President of February 1966 43 the College, like to do so, because it gives them the chance to associate with fresh, youthful minds. The graduate divisions are the Humanities (roughly 5 6 5 students), Biological Sciences excluding medicine (260), Physical Sciences (505) and Social Sciences (1,150). Here are enticing realms of the recondite; courses exist from Balkan Linguistics to Neuropharmacology. Here too, in spite of close empha sis on the refinements of par ticularized scholarship, we find that some of the fron tiers between disciplines have already broken down — par ticularly in the sciences. The University encourages this. There are professors who scarcely know whether they belong to one department or another. Nobody knows these days where biology stops and physics starts. Here too, the relations of professor to student can at tain an exquisite level of in tellectual intimacy. The De partment of Music, one of the strongest on the campus and one of the most stimu lating in the country, has a staff of 15 to 50 music ma jors. Astronomy presently has ten teachers, including several men of formidable renown, for 15 graduate stu dents. Many universities today have a tendency to be choosy about students who apply for graduate work. Chicago takes a more liberal attitude and prides itself for its hos pitality to “risk” admissions; it will take a chance on a bright boy, no matter how spotty or unconventional his previous education has been. Some of these have paid off well. And, of course, under graduates progressed to earn a doctorate between 1936 and 1956 than in any other insti tution in the country. Needless to say, the graduate and professional schools spawn an enormous amount of talent. Chicago ranks as the nation’s largest per capi ta producer of college and university teachers elsewhere in the nation. It is an in cubator, a teacher of teachers. No fewer than 167 presidents of other American colleges or universities — one out of 10 — either are Chicago alumni, or have been facility mem bers — an almost unbeliev able statistic. 44 Panorama The Graduate School of Education, established in 1958, is the newest of Chi cago’s professional schools. But the University from the beginning has won renown for its research in education. Research is translated into direct service through a num ber of Centers in the educa tion school — the Reading Research Center, the Urban Child Center, and the Com parative Education Center which investigates the dif ferences in teaching and learning the world over. Since 1957 the University has been providing educa tional training and guidance in Pakistan, and for Pakis tanis on the Chicago campus. The Laboratory Schools, as the name implies, serve both as a demonstration cen ter for Effective teaching — from nursery school through 12 years of pre-college edu cation — and as a research tool for testing and validat ing educational theory. In cidentally, the average I.Q. of the 1,200 students in the Laboratory Schools is higher than 130 — not surprising, I suppose, since about half of them are children of Univer sity faculty members. What makes the Univer sity of Chicago great is nei ther endowment nor equip ment, but men — the faculty. Twenty-four Nobel Prize winners have been associated with the University in one way or another so far. Twen ty-eight members of the fa culty are members of the National Academy of Scien ces, 31 are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 17 are members of the American Philosophic Society, the old est learned society in! the country. Seventy per cent of the fa culty live close enough to the University to be able to walk to their classrooms, an im portant factor in maintain ing the community spirit, and their children by and large go to the same schools and play together. Nobody pulls rank; everybody from the President down is plain “Mr.," except Doctors of Medicine. To summarize, it is the far culty which gives the Uni versity much of its unique quality, its special temper, based on a devout belief in research for its own sake and relentlessly acutp* and inces February 1966 45 sant speculation and experi ments. The dominant prin ciple is solid scholarship, and it demands the best. Small principalities as well as large ones have their founding fa thers, their historical raison d'etre. The University of Chicago was founded in 1890 by the curious impingement of three forces — a Baptist organization (the American Baptist Education Society) which contributed the idea; John D. Rockefeller who contributed most of the mo ney; and the first President, William Rainey Harper, who contributed almost every thing else. It opened its doors on October 1, 1892 as a full-fledged university, not a college. This was some thing unusual at the time, when a university normally grew out of a previously existing college. The origi nal faculty of 103 included eight college presidents, whom Harper enticed from other institutions, as well as other eminent scholars. The student body numbered 594. Harper, assuming charge of the creation of a new Uni versity, was enthralled by its possibilities; after being as sured of getting a free hand, he issued an extraordinary manifesto of policy — a po licy so revolutionary that it provoked the amusement or scorn of almost all the ortho dox pedagogues of the time. Soon this remarkable inno vator and energizer evolved a novel idea which is still one of the most distinctive marks of the University — the four quarter system. He scrapped the old Septemberto-June schedule, and estab, lished in its place the first all-year-round university in the history of the world. The year was divided into four quarters which were made as nearly as possible identical in the work offered and the professors in atten dance; the University was to keep its doors open the whole year, in full blast all the time. By this scheme Uni versity education was made more flexible than it had ever been before. A student — even today — may come when his finances permit, leave again, come back, and graduate at any season when his work is complete; on the other hand, he may work all four quarters for three years without interruption and thus get out a year ahead of Panorama time. Another advantage is that a student at Chicago takes no more than three or four courses during each quarter, and the curriculum widened. Harper died, worn out, in 1906, aged 49. The Univer sity has never changed much from the pattern stamped/ on it by this extraordinary and indomitable man. In 1929 came Robert May nard Hutchins, aged 30, from Yale, where he had become the “boy wonder” Dean of the Law School at 28. The University will never forget Robert Hutchins, and discus sion of his regime still pro vokes lively controversy. Hutchins was a brilliantly inspired innovator, lucid, packed with principle, and possessed of enormous charm. Hutchins' central belief was. that “Every student should obtain a liberal edu cation before being permit ted to specialize.” At the same time he wanted to speed up education so that work in the professions could get under way more quickly. What he sought was “more educated A.B.’s and fewer uneducated Ph.D.’s.” He even looked forward, as somebody put it, to the time “when Ph.D.’s would really be Doctors of Philo sophy." What interested him was ideas, and he stood for culture and the human tra dition. The two men who have followed Hutchins as heads of state at Chicago came from quite different molds and have shown quite different styles. Lawrerice A. Kimpton, an energetic professor of philo sophy and a practical man as well who had become vice president of the University, took over when Hutchins re signed in 1951 and served as chief executive until 1960. George Beadle, who suc ceeded Kimpton in 1961 to become the seventh president of the Chicago principality, is a biologist, a specialist in genetics, which is a field that could well turn out to mean to this generation what ato mic physics meant to the last. Who does run the Univer sity of Chicago? From trustees, faculty, stu dents and outsiders, I got the same answer: “Under Beadle, Levi.” Edward Hirsch Levi, formerly Dean of the Law School is Provost February 1966 47 of the University and Bea dle’s right arm. The faculty has consider able autonomous power at Chicago, probably more than in any comparable American university. Beadle is facultyminded, and so - is Levi. Harper laid it down back in the 1890’s that educational jurisdiction is the exclusive domain of the faculty, and this tradition has been pretty well kept up to this day. The trustees do not super vise on the academic level. Money follows policy not the reverse. The faculty is un shakeable. Perhaps the single element that best characterizes the University is its incessant search for quality, which goes back all the way to Harper. It does not have to kowtow to any legislature or city council. It has unlimited reserves of energy and crea tive talent for dealing with the true business of a univer sity, the pursuit and commu nication of knowledge, and it has risen again to become newly typical of what a uni versity should be, an un frightened and pertinacious community of scholars. — John Gunther, condensed from Exchange, No. 36, 1965. THE WRONG MAN Pauline Bonaparte was in love with Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. She wrote him: “I love you always and most passionately. I love you forever, my beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love you, the most laved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else” Soon after she fell in love with Junot who be came a field marshal. 48 Panorama ■ Today international law must be adjusted to con temporary interests and conditions to make it ac ceptable and useful. INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ACTION The problem of settling disputes is as old as man himself, and it is a matter in which the international lawyer has long had a keen interest. International law provides the rules which should govern any particu lar inter-state controversy, and international lawyers can try to provide the tech niques whereby these rules stand the best chance of be ing obeyed. The degree to which they will be successful in any given situation will depend partly upon whether they have established suitable machinery, and partly upon how. far {he rules laid down by international law appear to support or conflict with the vital interests of the coun tries involved. It is frequent ly said that, when the chips are down, governments do not obey international law. The answer to this is that as they do obey it when it sup ports their interests, the task of the contemporary lawyer must therefore be a continual search for common interests, and a continual willingness to erect legal principles upon those common interests. This in turn involves admitting that certain old, traditional rules may have served their usefulness and no longer re present the needs of the in ternational community. It should also be said that, unless their very existence is threatened, nations do often obey international law even when it runs against their short-term interests, be cause the sanction of reci procity is here effective. For example, when the spy in the suitcase, destined for Egypt, was discovered at Rome air port last November, the Italian police did not keep the Arab diplomats concern ed under arrest. No doubt it would have been to their advantage to retain them for prolonged questioning, but the law of diplomatic immu nity prevented it, and the Italian Government was wise enough to know that there February 1966 49 might come the time when it, too, would wish to rely on the rules of diplomatic immunity. The international commu nity is comprised of power ful, sovereign states, and I have said that I believe that international law, to be ef fective, must be based as far as possible upon common interests. For the newer na tions this presents an imme diate difficulty. Many of them feel that the present system of international law is purely European and Christian in origin, develop ed without their participa tion, and protecting the in terests only of the older, white states. There is, of course, something in this; modern international law is largely European in origin, and to some extent it reflects a distribution of power which no longer exists. On the other hand, legal historians can now show that in the seventeenth and early eight eenth centuries, even though not later, Europe — and espe cially England,, Holland, France, and Spain — treated the countries with which they traded in the East as equals, and that international cus toms about how countries in dispute dealt with each other owed at least something to this experience. Moreover the substance of international law does not have to be static. New legal arrangements may be made by treaties, and the new states are now in a position to ne gotiate these as equals; again, law is developed through time by the diplomatic prac tice of states, to which the Afro-Asian world will make a substantial contribution; and these countries are also represented on the Interna tional Law Commission, a body specifically set up by the U.N. General Assembly to promote the development of international law. So much for the rules themselves. But what about the techniques and methods of settling disputes? Some people want to draw a line here between ‘political’ and ‘legal’ disputes, but I do not think that this is possible. Virtually all disputes are both political and legal in nature, and in theory, at least, the International Court of Jus tice could be used to settle many of them. But the newer Afro-Asian nations have 50 Panorama shown a marked reluctance to adopt this procedure, for reasons completely apart from the delay that the legal process involves. The juris diction of the court is based upon consent, which may be given ad hoc in a specific case; or in advance in a par ticular treaty providing for reference to the Court if its terms become disputed; or by accepting the so-called ‘optional clause’. This clause — Article 36 of the Court’s statute — pro vides that states may declare that they recognize the juris diction of the Court, in re lation to any other state which also accepts the Court’s jurisdiction. All the Efta countries, all the Common Market countries, Scandina via, and the United States, have accepted the Court’s jurisdiction, with or without reservations. Yet in the Mid dle East only Israel — and, since Suez, the United Arab Republic — have accepted the Court’s jurisdiction. In non white Africa the list only ex tends to Liberia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Ghana, and Tunisia: a list which includes not one of the French-speaking African states. Of the Asian coun tries, only Cambodia, India, Japan, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Philippines agree to the Court’s jurisdiction. The reason is not hard to find: the newer nations fear that the Court might apply rules of law which do not fully take account of their aspirations. While by and large the rules of tradi tional international law — for example, airspace, diplomatic immunities, state sovereignty — are acceptable, there re mains a range of questions, including the regime of the territorial sea, the validity of treaty obligations formerly as sumed on their behalf by co lonial powers, and the na tionalization of property, upon which they are unwill ing to accept the traditional law. In this last, for exam ple, the old states point to the traditional rule of law by which a state expropriating the property of aliens is bound to pay compensation which is ‘adequate, prompt, and effective’; while some newly independent nations assert that they must have a truly independent economic policy, which would not in February 1966 51 their present poverty be pos sible if their freedom to na tionalize were fettered by these legal requirements^ On occasion one hears it said that the newer nations are not interested in going to the World Court, because the judges there will be bias ed against them. I do not believe the accusation is jus tified, and nor do I believe that the new nations really believe it. The fifteen judges on the Court are by no means limited to western Europe or white Commonwealth: at the present time the only ones who could be so classified are the judges from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Greece, France, and Italy. The other nine judges come from Pakistan, Senegal, Mexico, Peru, Japan, the United Arab Republic, Russia, Poland, and China. All the evidence, it seems to me, goes towards the be lief that the reluctance of the newer nations to use the Court to settle disputes has nothing to do with impar tiality of the judges, but ra ther reflects a fear that the rules the Court would apply are not in their interests. The only long-term solution lies in the new nations and older nations collaborating in developing the law and making it as fair as possible to all parties, using the means I suggested before — treaty making, diplomatic practice, and the International Law Commission. The important point is this: the non-aligned nations have no doctrinal objection to recourse to the judicial process as a means of settling disputes. Indeed, in a limited number of cases they have done so — Came roon recently brought a case against the United Kingdom concerning the conduct of the plebiscite in the former Northern Cameroons; and at this moment Ethiopia and Liberia are engaged in liti gation against South Africa over South-West Africa. Even more important, the nonaligned nations have no ob jection in principle to thirdparty settlements of dis putes whether that third party be an international court, or an arbitrator, or a mediator, or a United Na tions fact-finding mission. It is here that we notice a great contrast with the po sition of the communist na tions. The dislike of the So 52 Panorama viet Union for the Internar tional Court of Justice and for all third-party settlement is rooted in dogma and in ideology, and runs very deep indeed. How this has come about is a complex question, and one worth looking at more closely. According to Leninist theory, the world is now in a transitional period, during which revolution will trans form capitalism into commu nism. During this period in ternational law is acceptable —but only in so far as it is not ‘reactionary’, and will not impede progress towards the classless society. Unhap pily, it hardly needs adding that what is or is not ‘reac tionary’ international law is a matter solely for determi nation by the Marxists them selves. In addition to this selective attitude towards international law, the communists have been urging recognition of what they term ‘legal princi ples of peaceful coexistence'. The principles of coexistence, we are told are, to use their phrase, ‘qualitatively higher’ than the existing rules of in ternational law. These prin ciples, promoted actively by the communists since they received approval in Moscow in 1956, have a curious ori gin. They are based on the five principles of Panch Shila, originally set out in a treaty between India and China in 1954, and later co pied in treaties throughout the Far East. They make interesting reading: the first principle is ‘mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty’; the second is ‘mutual non-aggression’; the third, ‘mutual non-inter ference in internal affairs’; and the fourth, ‘equality and mutual benefits’. None of these is new or revolutionary — indeed, all are to be found in the United Nations Char ter. All that is new about them is that they are being promoted as something spe cial, something not thought of before. The fifth principle of peaceful coexistence is something of a surprise, how ever, because it is ‘peaceful coexistence’. Thus ‘peaceful coexistence’ is both a princi ple and the concept embra cing all the principles. Added to these five princi ples are some others which have emerged in detailed dis cussions held at the United February 1966 53 Nations. They include gen eral and complete disarma ment (a noble aspiration, but hardly a rule of international law), and significantly, the duty of states to settle dis putes by direct negotiation. Principles of peaceful co existence What are these ‘principles of peaceful coexistence’ all about, and why are they be ing promoted? The nuclear stalemate, the fears caused by the prospect of an enlarged nuclear club, the efforts of both East and West to woo the non-aligned nations, and above all the growing pre eminence of China in Asia, provide cogent reasons for urging ‘peaceful coexistence’. If world events dictate this coexistence, then one might as well try to extract the most favourable conditions possible. The Russians have thus included the old United Nations Charter rules of non aggression, sovereign equality, and non-interference in the list of ‘new principles of co existence’, in the hope of re writing them and interpret ing them in such a way as to advance their interests. The U.N. discussions on these topics have made it clear, for example, that, in the Russian view, ‘non-inter vention’ need not necessarily exclude support for so-called ‘wars of national liberation’. Some principles — such as general and complete disar mament — have been thrown in for political effect; while others, such as the duty to negotiate bilaterally, go to the whole heart of the legal techniques for settling dis putes. The U.N. Charter provides a variety of methods for settling disputes: mediation, or conciliation, or the use of good offices, or arbitration; and of course resort to the International Court. The Russians are making it clear that they reject all of these methods, and that a ‘higher rule of law’, which they must obey — namely, the princi ples of peaceful coexistence — requires that they only en gage in direct negotiation. Third-party settlement is out. Communist opposition There has long been com munist opposition to using the International Court of Justice: no communist na tion has ever appeared in li tigation before the Court, even though both a Russian 54 Panorama and Polish judge of great distinction sit upon the bench. The Soviet Union and her allies have felt out numbered in the interna tional community, and consi der that their interests may be protected by not subject ing themselves to majority decision. For them, law should be made by treaties resulting from bilateral ne gotiation, and not from the decisions of judges. Equally unacceptable are the at tempts of majority of nations at the United Nations to impose their views, and it is this which lies behind the Russian opposition to U.N. fWces as a means of settling disputes. The U.N. force in Gaza — UNEF — is regarded as undesirable because it was set up by the Assembly, where thp majority vote ob tains. The U.N. force in the Congo, although set up by the Security Council with the approval of Russia, was paid for through assessments made by majority vote in the As sembly. Russia has refused to regard herself as bound to contribute. The indication now is that the Russian view is harden ing on all forms of thirdparty, impartial settlement of disputes. Independent me diators or arbitrators are un acceptable because, as Mr. Khrushchev put it, 'while there may be neutral nations there are no neutral men’. This discouraging attitude has now been extended fur ther by communist opposi tion to suggestions that the United Nations should set up a fact-finding body to in vestigate particular disputes. Russia has indicated that fact-finding by the U.N. is almost as bad as third-party settlement of a quarrel. What does all this mean in practical terms? It does not necessarily mean that Russia is against disputes being resolved: in Kashmir, for example, she voted with the United States and Britain in calling for a cease-fire to be supervised by the United Nations. But where her own interests are directly involv ed — and Berlin and Viet nam come immediately to mind — there is every indica tion that she will agree only to direct negotiation. Fur thermore, even on Kashmir she has recently shown her self reluctant to give the February 1966 55 Secretary General any real authority. All of this, it must be admitted, makes it look as though the role of interna tional law in settling EastWest disputes will be small. I am more optimistic that international law can play a useful part in settling quar rels that involve the develop ing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. With a little give and take on both sides, progress is possible. The recent decision by the United Kingdom Govern ment to accept the jurisdic tion of the European Court is most welcome; though America’s acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Interna tional Court is subject to conditions which make it al most meaningless. — Rosalyn Higgins in The Listener, Dec. 1965. QUICK THINKING When Paderewski was visiting Boston some years ago he was approached by a bootblack who called, “Shine?” The great pianist looked down at the youth whose face was streaked with grime and said, “No, my lad, but if you will wash your face I will give you a quarter.” "All right 1” exclaimed the boy looking sharply at him. He ran to a nearby fountain where he made his ablutions. When he returned, Paderewski held out the quarter. The boy took it and then returned it grave ly, saying, "Here, Mister, you take it yourself and get your hair cut.” 56 Panorama ■ Man’s power to control nature is ever growing and to the advantage of mankind. BIOLOGY AND OUR FUTURE WORLD The balance of nature is a very elaborate and very delicate system of checks and counterchecks. It is con tinually being altered as cli mates change and new or ganisms evolve. But in the past the alterations have been slow, whereas with the arri val of man their speed has been multiplied many fold. Agriculture is the chief of man’s efforts at the biologi cal remodeling of nature. If we reflect that agriculture is less than a paltry 10,000 years old out of 300,000,000 years that green plants have been on earth, we begin to grasp something of the revo lution brought by this bio logical discovery. But agriculture is, if you like, unnatural; it concen trates innumerable indivi duals as a single species — and always of course, a par ticularly nutritious one — in to serried ranks, while na ture’s method is to divide up the space among nume rous competing or comple mentary kinds. Thus it cons titutes not merely an oppor tunity but a veritable invi tation to vegetable-feeding animals, of which the most difficult to control are the small, insinuating, and rapid ly multiplying insects. And the better and more intensive the agriculture, the more ob vious the invitation. Mile upon square mile of tender, well-weeded wheat or tea or cotton offers the optimum possibilities for the rapid multiplication of any species of insect which can take ad vantage of man’s good nature toward his kind. Finally, man’s insatiable desire for rapid and easy transit has capped the trou ble. By accident or inten tion, animals and plant spe cies find their way along the trade routes to new countries. They are in a new environ ment, and in such circums tances the majority fail to gain a foothold at all; but a few find in the new cir cumstances a release instead February 1966 57 of a hindrance, and multiply beyond measure. Then it is up to the bio logist to see what he can do. Sometimes, by studying the pest in its original home, he can discover what are the species that normally act as checks on its overmultipli cation. Thus in Fiji, when the valuable coconut indus try was threatened by a lit tle moth — very beautiful, with violet wings — those grubs devoured the leaves of the palm trees, biologists searched the remote corners of the Pacific for a parasitic fly. This fly quickly reduced the menace to the status of a minor nuisance. And in Australia, when prickly pear — first introduced into the country as pot cacti for lone ly settlers’ wives — increased so prodigiously that it was covering the land with impe netrable scrub at the rate of an acre a minute, biologists sent out a mixed team to fight it: a caterpillar to tun nel through the "leaves,” a plant bug and a cochineal insect to suck its juices, and a mite to scarify its surface. There were the Four Anthropods of the prickly pear’s Apocalypse; and the thickets are melting away under the combined attack. One could multiply ins tances. How the sugar cane of Hawaii was saved from its weevil destroyers; how an attack is being launched upon the mealy-bugs that are such a pest to Kenya cof fee by massed battalions of lady-birds. To cope with all the demands for anti-pest organisms a veritable indus try has sprung up. The difficulties of such work are far more severe when the pest is an oldestablished inhabitant of the country. Problems of this type are set for us by mala ria, spread by indigenous mosquitoes; human sleeping sickness and nagana disease of cattle, transmitted by tse tse-flies; plague, dependent for its spread upon the ubi quitous rat. In some parts of Africa the issue is whether man or the fly shall domi nate the country. Here the remedy seems to be to alter the whole environment. Most tsetse-flies live in bush country. They cannot exist either in quite open country or in cultivated land or in dense woodland or forest. So that wholesale clearing 58 Panorama or afforestation may get rid of them. That pests of this nature can cease to be serious is shown by the history of ma laria and of plague. In va rious parts of Europe and America, these diseases, once serious, have wholly or vir tually died out. And this has happened through a change in human environment and human habits. Take plague. Modern man builds better houses, clears away more gar bage, segregates cases of in fectious diseases, is less tole rant of dirt and parasites and, in fine, lives in such a way that his life is not in such close contact with that of rats. The .result has been that rats have fewer chances of transmitting plague to man, and that the disease, if once transmitted, has less chance of spreading. With regard to malaria, agricultu ral drainage, cleanliness, and better general resistance have in many cases done as much or more than deliberate anti mosquito campaigns. There is still another an gle from which we can attack our problems. For instance, instead of trying to attack a pest by means of introducing enemies, or altering the en vironment, we can often de liberately breed stocks which shall be resistant to the at tacks of the pest. Thus we can now produce relatively rust-proof wheat; and the Dutch have given us specta cular examples of what can be accomplished by crossing a high-yielding but diseasesusceptible sugar cane with a related wild species which is disease-resistant and, in spite of the fact that the wild parent contains no trace of sugar, extracting from the cross after a few generations a disease-resistant plant with an exceptionally high yield of sugar. Thus science offers the prospect of the most radical transformation of our envi ronment. Cows or sheep, rubber-plants or beets repre sent from one aspect just so many living machines, de signed to transform raw ma terial into finished products available for man’s use. And their machinery can be im proved. Modern wheats yield several times as much per acre as unimproved va rieties. Modern cows grow about twice as fast as the catFebruary 1966 59 de kept by semi-savage tribes, and when they are grown produce two or three times as much milk in a year. This has thrown a new strain on the pastures; for if the cow eventually draws its nourish ment out of the soil, and if the animal machine for uti lizing grass is improved, the plant machine which is res ponsible for the first stage of the process, of working up raw materials out of earth and air, must be improved correspondingly. According ly research is trying to manu facture new breeds of grass which shall be as much more efficient than ordinary grass as a modern dairy beast is than the aboriginal cow. These few examples must suffice to show the kind of control which man is just realizing he could exert over his environment. But they are enough to give us a new picture — the picture of a world controlled by man. It will never be fully control led, but the future control of man will enormously exceed his present powers. The world will be parceled out into what is needed for crops, what for forests, what for gardens and parks and games, what for the preservation of wild nature; what grows on any part of the land's sur face will grow there because of the conscious decision of man; and many kinds of ani mals and plants will owe not merely the fact that they are allowed to grow and exist, but their characteristics and their very nature, to human control. — Condensed from Harper's Magazine, (1932) by Julian Huxley, British biologist. 60 Panorama ■ Confesor*s patriotism was of the kind which de fied the nation’s enemy fearlessly and openly. THE HEROIC RECORD OF TOMAS CONFESOR The days when the Japanese soldiers’ dragnet was closing in on Governor Tomas Confesor and he was about to be captured alive, his separation from his wife and the capture by the enemy forces of his niece, were the darkest in his life. He was like Jesus Christ agonizing in the Garden of Geth semane. The enemy did not only put a price on his head, but when he defied Dr. Fermin Caram, oc cupation governor of Iloilo, by writing that he would not surrender to the enemy as long as he could stand on his feet, the enemy swore to get him “dead or alive.” Fortunato Padilla, Iloilo provincial board mem ber whom former President Macapagal had ap pointed as judge of the court of first instance of Leyte del Sur, said that one who did not draw spiritual sustenance as Confesor did would have succumbed easily to the enemy. Padilla should know. He was with Confesor all the time in the mountain hideout of the civil resistance govern ment of Free Panay and Romblon. According to Padilla, Confesor was still too weak after having recovered from a severe illness when the Japanese, under Captain Watanabe, known in Panay as “Patyando” or murderer for having plunged the island into a bloodbath in which more than 10,000 civilians, mostly old men, women and helpless children were killed, stepped up the li quidation campaign beginning July of 1943. February 1966 61 Padilla said that he was with Confesor in bar rio Igtuble, Tubungan, Iloilo, when the Japanese, in a four-pronged attack, penetrated their mountain hideout. Confesor had retreated and moved his hideout to the barrio from Bucari in Leon, Iloilo, since the Japanese had succeeded in piercing the Bucari hideout. After ten days, the Japanese suc ceeded in closing in on the five evacuation huts used by Confesor in Igtuble, and the Japanese, mistaking Lt. Blanco, a signal officer of the 63rd battalion, for Confesor, took him alive to the low lands. Blanco looked like Confesor, and this mis take enabled Confesor to escape. Upon reaching the lowland and realizing their mistake, the Japanese tortured Blanco to death. Confesor, taking another path from that of his wife and Padilla, succeeded in reaching barrio San tiago in Pandan, Antique, by criss-crossing deep ravines and stiff cliffs. Confesor sustained him self during this time by eating com. Mrs. Con fesor accompanied by Padilla and Vicente Elefan, reached barrio Lag-it in Valderrama, Antique, while Confesor’s niece, Teresa, daughter of former Rep. Patricio V. Confessor and now wife of Cabatuan Mayor Francisco Tobias, was captured by the Japanese along with Leticia Lorin, Mansueta Patrimonio and one Juanita. The Japanese took the women prisoners to San Jose, Antique. Teresa was sick of pneumonia at the time of her capture. It was not until December of 1943 that Confesor was united with his wife in Bato Puti, Ma-asin, Iloilo. Here, Confesor learned for the first time of the fate that had befallen his niece. But Con fesor and his wife were to be separated again when the Japanese raided the civil resistance gov ernment printing press under Provincial Treasurer Panorama Juan Grino in barrio Quipot, Janiuay, Iloilo, in the vicinity of Bato Puti.. Writing about this chapter of his life in “Via Crusis,” Confesor said that while he was not afraid to die, he was tormented by the fact that his niece, Teresa, got captured by the Japanese and he did not know what her fate was. Confesor said that this dispersion of members of his family and of those whom he loved, was more than he could bear. In another letter smuggled by submarine to President Osmena in Washington D.C., after the death of President Quezon, Confesor said he was in the fight to the bitter end because he believed that the United States was fighting for the righteous cause of democracy and that for him to give him self up to the enemy for a life of ease and com fort, was to betray the Filipino people. Confesor told President Osmena that the Ja panese almost got him alive and that he had been sick all the time. But Confesor said that he wanted President Osmena to return to the Philip pines and the Commonwealth government with Osmena. Confesor said: “Long before the war broke out, I have searched my conscience for the purpose of discovering where my duty lies should this country become involved in the maelstrom of this colossal world chaos. The quest was soon eftded and ever since the storm broke loose with all its fury upon us, the way has all been clear as crystal to me. It lies on the rough and rugged road of the Calvary of resistance but it is the way of honor and victory.” — By Loreto Angayen, Manila Bulletin. February 1966 63 STEVENSON'S IDEAS My friends, more important than winning the election is governing the nation. That is the test of a political party — the acid, final test. When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights' are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of his tory haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension and materialism at home, and ruth less, inscrutable and hostile power abroad. The ordeal of the 20th century — the bloodiest, most turbulent era of the Christian age — is far from over. Sacrifice, patience, understanding and impla cable purpose may be our lot for years to come. Let’s face it. Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decision. — Adlai Stevenson, part of his Acceptance Speech in 1952. It has become clear that what happens in research laboratories and in the minds of men can multiply the potentialities of physical factors. Hours worked, land utilized and capital employ ed are the elements which, by classical formulas, determine the growth of output. But both the qua lity and quantity of output have been progressive ly expanding far beyond what the mere physical combination of these factors would indicate. This we must attribute to intelligence, imagination, in ventions, entrepreneurship. Brains have become a real growth industry. The power of intelligence can manifest itself in every aspect of our lives and in every phase of the development process. We need a concept of so cial "capital” which goes beyond bricks and mortar and includes investment in education, training and the stock of useful knowledge. Before the U.N. 64 Panorama Attention! All organization heads and members! Help your club raise funds painlessly... Join the Panorama “Fund-Raising by Subscriptions” plan today! The Panorama Fund-Raising by Subscriptions plan will get you, your friends, and your relatives a year’s sub scription to Panorama. The Panorama is easy to sell. It practically sells itself, which means more money for your organization. The terms of the Panorama Fund-Raising by Sub scriptions plan are as follows: (1) Any accredited organization in the Philippines can take advantage of the Plan. (2) The organization will use its facilities to sell sub scriptions to Panorama. (3) For every subscription sold the organization will get Pl.00. The more subscriptions tAe organization sells, the more money it gets. Contents Of Studies ....................................................................................... Congress: An Analysis ............................................................ 2 The Race Questions ................................................................... 4 The Problem of Dissent ............................................................ 9 Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America ......................... 14 Screwballs and Firebrands ....................................................... 18 Humanism in Wlorld Affairs .................................................. 21 Marconi: The Man and His Wireless .............................. 26 Asian Development Bank ... ,.................................................. 36 An American Zen Buddhist.................................................... 37 What is the University of Chicago ..................................... 40 International Lav in Action .,.................................................. 49 Biology and Our Future World .............................. 57 The Heroic ^record of Tomas Confessor.............................. 6J