NOTES IN THE NEWS
notes in the news Cackle in the Senate Members of the United States Senate fancy themselves "the greatest deliberative body in the world," but there are moments when they behave like geese in a...
...James Reston, the usually soft-spoken chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, summarized the whole performance with chilling scorn: "The honorable gentlemen changed their minds, not because the facts changed, but because they wanted to be free to get rid of American agricultural surpluses, even to Communists and Marxists...
...The things it hates—Nehru, peace, smallpox—never get a fair shake...
...General Assembly resolutions condemning all nuclear testing, but he placed high-altitude tests in an especially "undesirable" category...
...The Times' news stories use the correct name...
...It rescinded the twenty-five per cent cut, but voted to limit aid to India next year to the amount allocated this year, which means a ten per cent reduction below the amount recommended by the Kennedy Administration...
...But Senator Norris Cotton, New Hampshire Republican, fell to brooding that even this did not go far enough...
...The phrase is only a little thing, but combined with the snarl its narcotic effect may be colossal...
...Symington and his boys were feeling a bit querulous with Nehru's India because of some of the policies it pursues and some of the people it elects to office, notably Krishna Menon...
...Subsequently, the Committee backed away from its original position and agreed to a compromise...
...Now he is emerging from the shadow of Hammarskjold, and as the light falls sharply on Thant himself, it becomes more apparent that he is a leader of considerable stature in his own right...
...His amendment would prohibit the use of any of the money authorized in the bill to aid any country "having a Communist form of government...
...It's a trick...
...Bahia de Cochinos" sounds as nice as "San Luis Obispo" and nicer than "Arkansas," but Pigs are dirty...
...I recall, for instance, an honest account, a couple of years ago, of the soft-coal miners' desperation...
...In the face of recent and current irresponsible attacks on the United Nations, U Thant has steadied a shaky helm and is steering the world organization with vision and fortitude...
...The things it loves—J...
...It consistently does one of the best jobs on race of any slick...
...Furthermore, said Thant, "It is common knowledge that space is no country's territory...
...But exactly why it is I'm not sure...
...In this respect Time is not much different from everything (and everybody) else...
...True, Time pretends—as what and who doesn't?—to be what it's not...
...everybody says so, and there is certainly a malignant influence somewhere around...
...As a fixture on the kleinbuergerliche coffee table, testifying to the busy intelligence of the subscriber, it has introduced an occasional serious subject into X-million American homes nude of anything heavier than the mortgage...
...high altitude tests as "a manifestation of a very dangerous psychosis"—a diplo-matic way of saying the United Stated is acting insanely...
...Change of Heart The Senate as a whole showed it could be sillier than its Foreign Relations Committee...
...It voted to permit the sale or grant of surplus American food to Communist countries, while maintaining the ban on all other forms of aid, although the amendment was so shot through with ambiquities that there was considerable doubt that the Senate had achieved even this limited purpose...
...The fear that such a catastrophic surprise attack will be repeated dominates the thinking in Washington...
...The patter proved monotonous...
...The Senate, unconcerned with or unmindful of the fact that it was playing squarely into the Kremlin's hands, proceeded to adopt the Proxmire-Lausche-Cotton amendment by a resounding vote of fifty-seven to twenty-four, thus turning its back on the Kennedy Administration's urgent warning that adoption might destroy its "freedom of maneuver against the Kremlin," cripple its chances of holding out a candle of hope to nations in the Communist camp, and increase the dependence of the satellites on Moscow...
...It isn't a news magazine any more than a newspaper is a news paper...
...Just a little trick, but the Devil never misses a trick, not even a little one...
...Next day, the Senate had a partial change of heart...
...Under what was carelessly called "the leadership" of Senator Stuart Symington, Missouri Democrat, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to slash the aid-to-india program by twenty-five per cent...
...Bahia de Cochinos," to designate the scene of last year's attempt to invade Cuba...
...We find fresh hope for the United Nations in the candor, the vigor, and the courage displayed by the emerging figure who, in a time of chaos, was chosen as its leader...
...Bay of Pigs is what Time wants its readers to "think" when they read about Castro's Cuba...
...the snarl remains...
...The first episode involved India...
...Time always uses Bay of Pigs...
...But his successor, Acting Secretary General U Thant, is proving himself to be no ordinary man...
...Edgar Hoover, H-bombs, the American Century—have first-class passage de luxe...
...He pointed out that the tests have been "objected to very vigorously by many eminent scientists all over the world . . . with no axe to grind...
...Thus, within forty-eight hours, 'the greatest deliberative body in the world' infuriated the Poles and the Yugoslavs by voting to cut all aid, and then, in effect, insulted them by offering to use them as a dumping ground for farm surpluses...
...It has the courage of its owner's convictions, and any resemblance of those convictions to any advertiser's, living or dead, is, if habitual, coincidental...
...The Times, mark you, not Time...
...He asked "the learned and distinguished Senator from Ohio" if the language of the prohibition might not be broadened further so that no country having a "Communist or Marxist form of government" would be eligible for aid...
...Thant castigated the U.S...
...He has shown that he is not afraid to tackle the giants who dominate the U.N...
...I recently came across the phrase Bay of Pigs in a New York Times editorial...
...Time cares not who makes the country's laws as long as it can make its phrases...
...But once in a while Time is surprisingly fair, and one supposes that one of the slaveys went berserk while Jove nodded in the front office, or that Jove's conscience suffered a sudden attack of Presbyterian atavism...
...When the foreign aid bill came to the Senate floor, Senator William Proxmire, Wisconsin Democrat, who is sometimes heroic and sometimes absurd in his chosen role as Senate maverick, was very much the latter that day when he introduced an amendment prohibiting all aid to Tito's Yugoslavia for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Before the Proxmire amendment could reach a vote, Senator Frank J. Lausche, Ohio Democrat, who is an old hand at tipping apple-carts, proposed a more comprehensive expression of true-blue Senate patriotism...
...All this was done—in the name of "fighting Communism"—in the oppressive atmosphere we described last month as "The Big Fear...
...Theophrastus Such...
...Its peculiar characteristic was, originally, its overwrought patter combined with the running snarl...
...Twice during the past month they cackled defiance of strategic provisions in the Kennedy Administration's foreign aid bill, and after doing irreparable damage to our stature among the peoples of India, Poland, and Yugoslavia, waddled back home—or at least part way...
...In the early days of his administration, Thant moved quietly and carefully while the uproar and dissension that surrounded his predecessor's sudden and tragic death gradually died away...
...Out of the Shadow The formidable shadow cast by the late Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, would eclipse any ordinary man selected to undertake his demanding role...
...In recent weeks, Thant has bluntly assailed the United States for its high-altitude nuclear tests, sharply chided critics of the "one nation— one vote" principle on which the United Nations is grounded, and revealed himself a keen philospher of history in asserting that the policies of both the United States and the Soviet Union are shaped by an "obsession with the past" rather than a realistic appraisal of the present...
...And it affects a restraint unknown to Life in regard to downright wicked front-cover quickies like the $1.79 fallout shelter in which the happy seventy-nine per cent would jive 'mid the rockets' red glare...
...How it talks about them is, of course, something else...
...She was rudely dragged into the center of the world stage, much against her will, by the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor...
...iron curtain," for instance...
...A Sense of History Thant's most penetrating observation, one that could well serve to guide us—and the Russians—toward a new and more rational course, is his view that the Soviet Union and the United States misunderstand the lessons of history...
...It was confected by Time and— here's the payoff—a hundred to one the New York Times editorial writer has no idea where he picked it up...
...It was in this form—statutory denial of assistance "to any country known to be dominated by Communism or Marxism"—that the issue came to a vote...
...Thant included the Soviet Union in his criticism by affirming his support of U.N...
...The United States, too," in Thant's view, "seems to be a prisoner of her past...
...Bahia de Pigs Isuppose that Time Magazine is a malignant influence...
...It sometimes talks about things—Albania, Sartre, the ballet—the daily papers won't waste space on...
...The learned Lausche responded amiably that he saw no difference between the two and was therefore in no mood to object to the suggestion of his distinguished colleague from New Hampshire...
...We journalists don't lie, Heywood Broun used to say—we simply leave half the truth in the overset...
...Russia's obsessive fear of encirclement," said Thant, "probably has its roots in her memories of 1919," when foreign—including U.S.—troops invaded Russia to intervene on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces, "and leads her to think in terms which are no longer valid in this thermonuclear age...
...notes in the news Cackle in the Senate Members of the United States Senate fancy themselves "the greatest deliberative body in the world," but there are moments when they behave like geese in a thunderstorm...
...The plain fact," said Thant, "is • that history does not repeat itself," but is determined rather by "a peculiar set of circumstances prevailing at a particular time and place...
...The whole performance strikes us as a self-defeating act engineered by men of midget minds who allow their obsessive absorption with legitimate but relatively unimportant grievances to blot out the much larger picture which underscores the need for a healthy, dynamic India as a bulwark of freedom for all of Asia...
...But phrase-making, as we phrase-makers know, is a trick, with the painless sell, or instant brainwash, as its uniform purpose...
...But that is just where Time and Lucifer come in...
...It is the common property of all countries...
...The Devil comes that way, too...
...It seems to me that it rates better marks than most mass publications...
...Francis said that God comes to us in little things...
Vol. 26 • July 1962 • No. 7
