NOTES IN THE NEWS

...Emphasis added...

...Its programs not only received an overwhelmingly favorable written response, but its sales soared, so much so that its 1960 financial report was the best in its history...

...Recently, a renewed effort has been launched to scuttle the test-ban talks in Geneva and force President John F. Kennedy into commitments which would seriously endanger prospects for a permanent ban on nuclear testing—a prerequisite of any hope for universal disarmament...

...Kennedy's knowledge...

...Dewey W. Grantham, Jr., Vander-bilt University...

...Nevil Shute graphically prophesied this growing fear in a passage in his blood-chilling tale of nuclear destruction, On the Beach: "The trouble is, the damn things got too cheap...

...Robert H. Fer-rell, Indiana University...

...Several aspects of this incident are gravely disturbing...

...House leadership proposed to achieve significant reform of the Rules Committee, which up to now had permitted half a dozen Representatives to crush the will of the majority of the House, Senate, and the rest of the country...

...Their vibrant idealism inspired countless students to become socially conscious leaders of the communities to which they returned after graduation...

...This, Bell & Howell rightly feels, validates its thesis that "the folklore of advertising has greatly overstated the negative aspects and risks of controversy and understated its positive aspects...

...They were forever signing petitions, forming protest committees, and haranguing legislative bodies in their everlasting pursuit of reform...

...So did eighteen right-wing Republicans...

...Arthur A. Ekirch, American University...

...Two—Diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China as a step in the quest for a peaceful solution to the smouldering relationship between the governments of Formosa and China...

...He was a kind and gentle man...

...Horace S. Merrill, University of Maryland...

...We hope Humphrey is right...

...We keep seeing those missiles irreversibly approaching, 250 miles closer each minute...

...Representative of the collusive practices of the companies convicted were the bids provided TV A for lightning arresters in February, 1959...

...The Pentagon reported that Kuter himself had detected the error "in less than sixty seconds," without saying how...

...The Canadians credit the incredulity of their Air Marshal Roy Slemon, deputy commander of the warning operation, who was in command at the time in the absence of the commander, U.S...

...Isidor 1. Rabi, Nobel prize physicist, quickly exposed the scare stories as an attempt to throw a stumbling block into the test-ban talks...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, and, note this, The Wall Street Journal, were silent...

...Recognition is also essential for an effective program to check the further spread of nuclear weapons...

...We shall miss Sol Levitas...

...In contending successfully for his proposal to have the reform amendments sent to the Senate Rules Committee for further study, Mansfield promised that the Committee would send at least one of two liberalizing amendments back to the Senate for action later in the session...

...Harold M. Hyman, University of California at Los Angeles...

...Clark happens to have a clear claim to seniority, over Dodd...

...Roosevelt Changes Tactics Representative James Roosevelt, the California Democrat who distinguished himself last spring in an eloquent, full-scale attack on the House Un-American Activities Committee, has resumed his struggle to rid the country of this inquisition of dubious constitutional authority...

...Had Majority Leader Mansfield produced his own and one other vote, or, while we are at it, if President—then President-elect—Kennedy had picked up the telephone and made two calls, the long and bitter struggle against the filibuster could have been won...

...Thomas C. Cochran, University of Pennsylvania...

...Other Senators, mostly Northern liberals, are convinced that each two-year session marks the beginning of a new Senate which can adopt its own rules at the outset by majority vote...

...It seems that our early warning radar stations at Thule, Greenland, had picked up, in Michael Frayn's words, "not a squadron of rockets, but a large earth-satellite, of whose existence Intelligence had apparently failed to inform them, called the moon...

...Kudos for Bell & Howell Advertisers, especially television sponsors, are a notoriously timid breed...

...Henry B. Hill, University of Wisconsin...

...Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of slander . . . Pretending to fear government, they have asked government to outlaw private protest . . . They glorify 'togetherness' when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others .. . Yet there are jew among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution...

...Three—Diplomatic recognition of the Democratic Republic of Germany [East Germany] as a step in the quest for a peaceful solution to the precarious status of Berlin...

...We of The Progressive want to add our congratulations...

...Kenneth O. Walker, Goucher College...

...William B. Bristol, Union College...

...We have often disagreed with Sol Levitas and The New Leader, but we have always admired the competence and courage of the man and his magazine...

...They repeatedly stressed a willingness to go all the way on inspection if the United States would go all the way on disarmament...

...William L. Neumann, Goucher College...

...We hope readers of The Progressive who live in those states will make generous use of the facilities of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, Western Union, and the United States mails to pay their respects to these Senators...

...The crucial votes were cast by six Western Democrats who lined up with the Dixie-dominated coalition...

...The Professors Ride Again Once upon a time, professors were embattled crusaders, riding off to combat evil wherever it existed...

...They are part of a statement he gave the ACLU only last October...

...Slemon refused to be panicked," in the Canadian version, ". . . [he] reasoned that the information . . . must have been false...

...But, unlike Nixon, the ubiquitous Lyndon Johnson, who will be presiding over the Senate, seems wedded to the notion that the Senate is a continuing body and that a two-thirds vote would be required to change the rules even in the opening days of the new session...

...It took an uncommon kind of courage for Bell & Howell to present these studies in the face of warnings and threats of reprisals, particularly in the South...

...But a proposal to change the rules then will permit filibustering debate unless ended by an im-possible-to-attain two-thirds vote...

...G.E., Westinghouse, and Ohio Brass bid on the job...

...In more recent years, however, the voice of crusading idealism has been stilled on most of our campuses...

...All this is but prologue to an exciting bit of news that reached our desk the other day: the professors, or some of them, are riding againl Thirty-one of them, all historians representing twenty-three major colleges and universities across the country, have signed a petition calling on President Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk not to allow the dead hand of the past to determine the foreign policy of the new Administration...

...Is this because the Pentagon did not know what had happened, or was there an attempt to cover up, or deceive...

...Bell & Howell has sponsored several distinguished documentaries on television, including "Who Speaks for the South?," an hour-long objective study of anti-Negro prejudice and discrimination and the problems they pose to the Southern city of Atlanta...

...Samuel P. Hays, University of Pittsburgh...

...E. James Ferguson, University of Maryland...

...Their joint address is the Senate Office Building in Washington...

...Jackson T. Main, San Jose State College...

...But Mansfield, an unusually able and decent Senator on his own, although given to bouts of moral paralysis while under Johnson's spell, tore up this platform pledge and surrendered to the South even before the battle began...

...The aftermath of war is doubtless responsible in part...

...There is such a short time—fifteen to thirty minutes—to check the accuracy of a missile warning that the fate of the world may lie in the snap judgment of one man...

...Robert Forster, University of Nebraska...

...Our Own Worst Enemy The Progressive has frequently exposed the deceit practiced by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Pentagon in their stubborn drive to resume test explosions of deadly nuclear weapons...

...Our story has a happy ending...

...His eyes sometimes seemed remarkably sad, as when the treasury was barer than usual or the world crisis greater than ever...

...This means that the liberals' next hope shifts to the Eighty-eighth Congress which convenes in January, 1963...

...Paul A. Varg, Michigan State University...

...A report brought back from the Pugwash disarmament conference in Moscow by Professor Walt R. Rostow, adviser to President Kennedy, emphasized that the conference team of top Russian scientists and military leaders expressed official Soviet concern over further delays in establishing a world-wide system of nuclear control...

...Edward M. Burns, Rutgers University...

...In a letter addressed to his colleagues in the House, Roosevelt explained his switch in tactics by pointing out that "it is still politically dangerous for many members of Congress to express by means of a direct vote their innermost feelings about the Committee...

...What if Air Marshal Slemon had "reasoned" that the Thule report was correct...

...All of which leaves us where we started so many years ago...

...William A. Williams, University of Wisconsin...

...Since the three-way talks began, a new nuclear power, France, has emerged, but is not involved in the discussions...

...Every little . . . country could have a stockpile of them, and every little country . . . thought that it could defeat the major countries in a surprise attack...

...The first result was disaster for the progressive cause...

...How often do these false alarms occur...

...It is our conviction that a new course in world affairs must confront these realities...

...Their fear of losing a single sale leads most of them to shun the sponsorship of controversial themes...

...Vernon Carstensen, University of Wisconsin...

...They shall refuse your products and services wherever and whenever possible...

...John A. Monroe, University of Delaware...

...What then...

...An Associated Press dispatch, commenting on a report that there were two such incidents, quoted SAC as saying "the only recent incident was October 5." (Our emphasis...

...Somehow we found cold comfort in SAC's rather vague assurances that, even if the alert had been genuine, there were several optional plans that might have been followed, any one short of war...

...It seems almost inconceivable that we, who have said what we have about Nixon, have come to this on this issue: we would feel more comfortable and hopeful if Nixon, rather than Johnson, were presiding over the Senate when and if the long delayed showdown comes...

...The temptation to become impatient over the interminable nuclear test-ban discussions at Geneva is understandably great, but when the alternative to talking is to cock the global nuclear trigger, there is no limit to the patience we must command...

...He seemed to think that it was far more important to clear the decks for social and economic legislation, which the House Rules Committee might scuttle, unless reformed, than it was to give the Senate the right to majority rule on civil rights progress, which he thought he might achieve through vigorous executive action rather than legislative enactment...

...He did it, he said, in the interest of "party unity"—as though party unity were somehow more sacred than the party's promise to the people...

...E. David Cronon, University of Nebraska...

...The Lower House The Senate's traditional insistence on conducting itself as a gentlemen's club, where protocol is more important than principle, did not, happily, interfere with the conduct of the more plebian House of Representatives, whose members must make a public accounting of their stewardship every two instead of every six years...

...In one of its more recent forays into deception, the AEC made headlines by suggesting that the Soviet Union was cheating on the test moratorium...

...China is expected to join the world's nuclear powers soon...

...By a vote of fifty to forty-six, the Senate decided against acting on proposals to modify the power of the Southern bloc to filibuster legislation to death...

...The full text of Sir Charles' remarks appears on Page 24 of this issue...

...The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been marshaling growing support for abolition of the HUAC, recently noted that it was encouraged in its efforts by the words of an American of considerable stature who said: ". . . legislative investigation . . . has too frequently been used by the nation and the states as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons...

...Perhaps this is another example of the leaders being the laggards...

...Richard Drinnon, University of California...

...Israel insists the reactor is for peaceful purposes only, but the secrecy surrounding its construction has raised some somber questions...

...and "Cast the First Stone," a searching investigation of religious and racial prejudice and discrimination in Chicago and other Northern cities...

...Footnote to the Above From the New York Post "Amid the filibuster disaster, Mansfield committed a peculiarly discreditable and vengeful act that dishonors the new Administration...

...Some Senators, mostly the Southerners, insist that the Senate goes on session after session as a continuing body...

...But that dubious advantage seems to be invoked exclusively in behalf of Southern Democrats...

...The leader of the forces to scuttle immediate action was Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, majority spokesman in the Senate who, as Johnson's protege, allows his predecessor to call the tune...

...We believe that the United States can no longer postpone active consideration of the following issues: "One—A program for a nuclear test ban and comprehensive arms control which recognizes the necessity of accepting considerable risks in order to avoid the far greater risks of continuing the arms race...

...Each bid exactly the same as the others down to the last penny—$7,495.38...

...General Lawrence Kuter...

...During the first two weeks of the newly convened Senate, former Vice President Richard M. Nixon was still its presiding officer...

...But Roosevelt has changed his tactics...

...Richard Lowitt, Connecticut College...

...Eugene Board-man, University of Wisconsin...

...Perhaps we make too much of it, but we are smitten with the hope that this petition represents a harbinger of the restoration, with the coming of the new Administration, of free-wheeling inquiry and militant crusading on the campus and in the country...

...It would be impossible to overemphasize the crucial importance of an early settlement of the nuclear test agreement...

...These corporations are, of course, heavy advertisers...

...In a clear reprisal for Senator Joseph Clark's distinguished leadership of the anti-filibuster fight, Mansfield denied Clark, Pennsylvania Democrat, the seat to which he was obviously entitled on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...

...Business boomed for Bell & Howell...

...And in this connection, President Kennedy went firmly on record last June in favor of bringing Communist China into the nuclear test ban negotiations, a major—and hopeful—shift in United States policy, if the President follows through...

...Somehow, we can't help wondering if opposition to the Committee is as dangerous as Congressmen fear...

...This professors' petition represents such a hopeful and historic break with the deadening conformity of the recent past that we are moved to provide the space for the complete honor roll of those who signed it: Reginald F. Arragon, Reed College...

...The answer is to be found in the clashing concepts over whether the Senate is or is not a "continuing body...

...The country owes them a great vote of thanks for breaking up the multi-billion dollar conspiracy and bringing the guilty giants to justice...

...Israel has taken a giant stride in the same direction by completing—with the help of France—a reactor with sufficient capacity to produce nuclear weapons...

...Southern Democrats predictably stood solidly against reform when the showdown came...

...f The war-scare raised such concern in Britain that it became the subject of formal questioning in Parliament, but received "brush-off" treatment in the United States press and among government officials...

...f What good is a warning system which is not trusted even by the men who operate it...

...Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, whom we respect greatly, seemed to be presenting this explanation in behalf of the Kennedy Administration when he told a New York City audience that it could look forward to strong, prompt executive action—as opposed to Congressional decision—aimed at new civil rights gains, especially in combating discrimination in employment, housing, and voting rights...

...No problem on the domestic front packs a greater need for urgent, militant action than this challenge in the field of civil rights...

...What restrained the free world," commented Frayn, "from launching its retaliation weapons during the next half-hour I do not know, unless it was those old-fashioned deterrents, incredulity and funk...

...J. Leonard Bates, University of Illinois...

...Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, who has shown every prospect of becoming the Joe McCarthy of the Democratic Party...

...S. M. Levitas The world of significant journalism lost one of its ablest and most dedicated editors when death recently claimed S. M. Levitas, sixty-seven, executive editor of The New Leader for thirty years...

...Here, we suspect from all we have heard, President Kennedy's role was decisive...

...It was only voicing a professional "suspicion...

...A switch of two Democratic votes would have reversed the outcome...

...Peace Through Patience The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the mounting threat of an accident that might trigger a holocaust may hasten the conclusion of a test-ban treaty...

...End of the World (Almost) The idea of a nuclear war launched by accident may have come frightfully near realization in an incident first revealed by Michael Frayn early in December in the Manchester Guardian, confirmed several days later— in a somewhat different version— by the Pentagon, and re-confirmed by Canadian officials in still another variation...

...There is considerable evidence that a great many Americans would respond affirmatively if their Congressmen would join Roosevelt in his courageous fight...

...John M. Caughey, University of California at Los Angeles...

...Frederic C. Lane, Johns Hopkins University...

...Why then such a fuss about acting immediately...

...Recently, the American Jewish Congress, Council of Greater Chicago, presented a citation for public service to Bell & Howell for its major contribution in the fight against bigotry...

...This whole frightening affair was treated, as I. F. Stone put it, "as if it concerned a minor piece of plumbing, though a slip-up of this kind might send most of humanity down the drain...

...Insistence upon priority for a near-perfect system of inspection and control only insures the continuation of the present impasse and permits unrestricted development and geographic spread of nuclear weapons...

...Kenneth M. Stampp, University of California...

...Only small children will believe this was done without Mr...

...Last year, Roosevelt's attack was frontal—an all-out attempt to abolish the Committee...

...Not content with his role of Vice President, or that of grand panjandrum of our space effort, or exalted czar of Federal contracts, the hungry Texan managed to get himself tapped as the "logical choice" to serve as presiding genius over Democratic strategy in the Senate...

...They were Senators Bartlett of Alaska, Bible of Nevada, Hickey and McGee of Wyoming, Long of Hawaii, and Mansfield of Montana...

...Responsible scientists like Dr...

...There were few to criticize the fraudulent practices of corporations which spend so much for public relations, and fewer still to praise the superb prosecution conducted by Robert A. Bicks, acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, and his assistants, Baddia J. Rashid and Charles L. Whittinghill...

...It urged that "action be taken at the beginning of the Eighty-seventh Congress to improve Congressional procedures so that majority rule prevails and decisions can be made after reasonable debate without being blocked by a minority of either house...

...Samuel M. Levitas— "Sol" as he was known to his countless friends—was The New Leader during its years of growth and growing influence...

...Ray A. Billington, Northwestern University...

...Great Britain, Russia, and the United States have reached agreement on seventeen articles of the treaty, surely a high-water mark in East-West diplomacy...

...The author of these words is John F. Kennedy...

...As a group, professors raise fewer eyebrows in the community and considerably less hell in the country...

...but sometimes they danced with joy, as when he had published an article that attracted national attention or had encountered some interlude of comedy in the human tragedy...

...f When the story finally came to light, there were at least three variations in important details...

...Our second impression was that this is not necessarily good for the country...

...The Democratic platform is quite clear...

...As historians," they wrote the President and his chief foreign policy adviser, "we have a commitment to realities...

...He was not above begging—for the publication he loved and the cause it served...

...Jerome B. Wiesner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President Kennedy's special adviser on science, and Dr...

...Adherence to this view means that any change in the rules at any time requires a two-thirds vote...

...It Has Come to This It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the Senate's action in voting against acting now on proposals to amend Rule XXII— which requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senators present to halt a filibuster...

...Yet in the face of the dis-couragingly slow pace of progress, and the growing urgency to agree on a test-ban, there are reasons to look forward with fresh hope to the resumption of talks February 7, this time under a new Administration which has shown signs of willingness to explore new avenues to peace...

...New Fears, New Hopes It would seem that after more than two years of discussion in 273 sessions, the nuclear test-ban negotiations at Geneva might have brought us closer to an agreement than we appear to be...

...It is noteworthy that our free press buried the story of their conviction deep in the inside pages, giving it an almost invisible fraction of the space they devoted to the exposure of a few sordid labor bosses...

...He was prepared to rule, as he had made clear in an advisory opinion, that the Senate could change its rules at the opening of each session by majority vote...

...It is not obligatory, of course, to concur completely in all the sentiments expressed by the historians to acclaim the revival of the old spirit of protest and petition...

...We are not much given to commercials in The Progressive, but if we were in the market for photographic equipment, we would buy Bell & Howell products...

...There is much haggling over important details yet to come, but the disagreements on many of the basic principles of the treaty have been resolved...

...The Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan of Arkansas, for example, protested Bell &: Howell's sponsorship of "Cast the First Stone," and warned that "word is going out to all Klansmen throughout the land to mark you well...

...This year he is settling for the shorter-range objective of carefully scrutinizing the Committee's budget request with a view toward cutting it wherever feasible...

...But it turned out—not in the headlines, of course—that the AEC had no evidence to support its reckless charge...

...This means major readjustments and vigorous initiatives...

...McCarthyism, of course, with its savage assaults on all non-conformity, was decisive in banking the fires of dissent and reform...

...Alexander De-Conde, University of Michigan...

...Our Free Press The Federal government recently smashed the greatest criminal conspiracy in the seventy-year history of our anti-trust laws...

...The AEC-Pentagon lobby has also laid down a barrage of propaganda aimed at resuming testing, ostensibly to enable the United States to "catch up" with the Soviets in a race to perfect a neutron "death ray" bomb...

...Included among those who confessed their guilt to participating in the the seven billion dollar conspiracy to rig bids and fix prices were such blue-chip giants of American industry as General Electric, Westinghouse, and Allis-Chalmers...

...Mansfield, as we have reported above, has promised action later in the session...

...Until the time comes, said the California Congressman, when House members can speak out without risking political suicide, he would not "move formally again for the abolition of the Committee, lest the resulting vote mislead the public into thinking that this Committee really has the backing of this House...

...Speaker Sam Rayburn's reluctant solution—to load the House Rules Committee with enough new members to tip the balance against the Dixie-dominated majority of four Southern Democrats and two Northern Republicans—may not seem like the perfect answer, but if adopted, it might succeed in breaking down some of the barriers to liberal legislation...

...Richard L. Watson, Jr., Duke University...

...Editorial pages, with a few distinguished exceptions, like those of the St...

...Not so the Bell & Howell Company of Chicago, one of the country's leading manufacturers of photographic equipment, whose president, Charles H. Percy, served as chairman of the platform committee at the Republican National Convention...

...Mindful, perhaps, of the still lingering suspicion of egg-head idealism, the historians addressed themselves to the "realities" of the world crisis...

...West Germany is reputed to have developed a simple, far cheaper method of producing nuclear weapons that would put them within the practical reach of a score of nations...

...f It occurred on October 5, but was not reported in the American press until two months later, and then only after the Guardian had broken the story...

...No editor we know was more successful in wheedling articles out of well-known authors—for free—than the man who ran this deficit-ridden weekly for three decades...

...Emphasis added...

...The Soviets seemed especially concerned over the prospect that China would acquire nuclear arms...

...Many of them prefer to be regarded as tough-minded realists rather than reforming idealists, as though never the twain could meet...

...What is worse, the position has been given to Sen...

...Fearful that this was the dreaded missile attack, Thule flashed the warning of impending doom to Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha...

...Time, for example, gave sixty per cent more space to the report of the preliminary indictment of Jimmy Hoffa than it did in the same issue to the actual conviction of the huge corporations for engineering a fantastic plot to swindle American consumers and taxpayers out of billions of dollars...

...The test-ban treaty is far from signed, but significant progress has been achieved—in large measure through Ambassador James Wads-worth's persistent patience and efforts...

...Sir Charles P. Snow, the distinguished British author and scientist, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New York recently that a dozen nations would soon have nuclear bombs, and that within ten years it was a statistically predictable "certainty" that some of these weapons will have exploded, through "accident, or folly, or madness...