Letters
Letters Camelot Revisited As Miss Lessard so aptly observed [“A New Look at Kennedy,” October], the irony of Kennedy was that the people elected him as a man of high morality and he then...
...Neither he nor anyone else suggested that it was “too bad” the U. S. had not been able to help find the path to (or just look with benevolence on) an independent or autonomous Biafra...
...confidence that competition gives spine to nations and individuals...
...His novels reflect a brace of Conservative values: skepticism of human nature and grandiose systems...
...On the three specific points raised by Mr...
...The author, James Risser, replies: I agree that readers should visit some of the national forests and see for themselves, but they had better do so quickly...
...Cliff also told the subcommittee that the Forest Service, in its timber programs, “may have stressed quantity at the expense of quality...
...Cliff said, “I don’t agree that Forest Service scientists are not objective...
...I only hope we can survive it...
...The fact that the bill was still essentially a cut-and-get-out scheme is amply documented in the House debate prior to the killing of the measure...
...The consensus was that the solution to the problem of India’s minorities (the Southerners had been rioting) lay in greater power-for the central government...
...Cliff‘s disagreement with my word “confession” is a semantic one...
...Because of the fear it would damage the Sustained Yield program (keeping lumber producing forests renewable forever) and because it did not assure the environmental safeguards, the Forest Service offered a new version with the safeguards in it...
...Perhaps you are not aware that the average for the five preceding fiscal years ending last July of budgetary appropriations to the Forest Service show an extremely interesting trend...
...The combination of Nixon following LBJ is placing quite a strain on our society...
...The culprits in this case would appear to be the Congress itself, and more particularly the Subcommittee on Appropriations which deals with the Department of Agriculture...
...But the industry’s later version was heartily endorsed by the agency...
...EDWARD P. CLIFF Washington, D. C. Edward Cliff is chief of the U. S. Forest Service...
...Again we see how perishable is an idea, a creative image, a new thought, or a moral observation...
...and politicians retreat into expediencies and pragmatism...
...3) Chief Cliff‘s third point is essentially correct...
...This version would authorize use of timber sale proceeds for reforestation and forbid overcutting...
...It is ironically moving that Buchan, at 25, joined the famous “Milner’s Kindergarten,” a circle of donnish young advisors around Lord Milner, Britain’s High Commissioner in South Africa during the Boer War...
...Forest Service,” December] is that the Forest Service is standing by while the National Forests are being razed for lumber production...
...One was Nigeria...
...Essex...
...For an American President in 1961, values like Buchan’s contributed more to a cosmopolitan style than to penetrating views of national problems...
...But they were already less than useful to statesmen in his late 19th century England...
...That war, like Vietnam, showed regular troops the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare fired by nationalism, helped dissolve Victorian complacence, and lasted a lot longer than anyone anticipated...
...No one present sought to question that commitment...
...At the present rate of financing, it will take 38 years to catch up on reforestation, he said...
...FRANK ROBINSON Atlanta, Georgia I thought the Kennedy article was excellent...
...This is especially significant because the Forest Service timber inventory estimates are used as the basis for determining the “annual allowable cut” of timber.’ Inflated estimates lead to logging at a rate which is greater than the forest’s “sustained yield” capacity to regenerate itself...
...had been unable to help hold Nigeria together...
...Three statements Mr...
...The acreage from which timber is harvested is planted or seeded promptly after logging, paid for by the sale of timber...
...First, the Chief of the Forest Service did not “confess” that $900 million was needed to reforest, thin, and otherwise improve 18 million acres of National Forest land...
...Secondly, the Forest Service did not support the original Timber Supply Bill...
...Letters Camelot Revisited As Miss Lessard so aptly observed [“A New Look at Kennedy,” October], the irony of Kennedy was that the people elected him as a man of high morality and he then converted to pragmatism...
...Risser’s conclusion [“The U.S...
...He has been saying the Forest Service needed money for such work for years, most of the land involved having been acquired by the Forest Service in poor condition or already scourged by fires or other natural disasters...
...Such a rethinking would help us ali to grapple with the profound questions raised by Isaacs...
...Finally, Mr...
...2) It is true that the timber industry first came out with a proposed timber supply bill which was so blatantly destructive that the Forest Service opposed it...
...The question of tribalism and national boundaries came up twice...
...My feeling was that these opinions did not originate from any cold calculations of U. S. national interest...
...In 1968, I attended a conference that brought together U: S. government officials and academics to discuss popular participation in development...
...Risser made in his article demand answers particularly...
...DAVID HAPGOOD New York, N. Y. David Hapgood is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly Smokey’s Strip Miners Mr...
...If he had lived and won in 1964 he would, I believe, have provided increasingly capable leadership...
...The idea that more, not less, power for India’s minorities would lessen that nation’s internal tensions did not get a hearing...
...But Chief Cliff doesn’t mention that he has recently sided with the timber industry in effectively bottling up a pending presidential executive order which would protect present “de facto” wilderness areas from logging until a decision can be made whether to include them in the formal wilderness system...
...Conn...
...JUDITH DOLLENMAYER Syracuse, N. Y. The Nation and Muumbi As a footnote to Harold Isaacs’ unique essay on retribalization and the nation-state [“The Houses of Muumbi,” December], some reminiscences may be of interest...
...The man from Washington said it was “too bad” the US...
...Burns notes Kennedy’s fondness for John Buchan-the dozens of adventure novels (among them Greenmantle and The ThirtyNine Steps) and the autobiographical Pilgrim’s Way, which Kennedy particularly admired...
...Risser says the Forest Service did not contest testimony by a University of Montana geologist that clearcutting (cutting all the trees in a timber stand) could leave National Forests barren in less than 200 years...
...In his early biography of JFK, J.M...
...The important thing is that Cliff admitted to the subcommittee that reforestation “is one of the areas of our programs that has been furthest behind and most poorly financed over the years...
...So it seems that policymakers and academicians might well rethink their assumptions about the sanctity of the nation in its present form...
...The Forest Service rebutted with a 29-page statement later in the Senate Hearings, opposing that contention based on research both inside and out of the Forest Service...
...As I think back over the last few years, I am increasingly aware of what a tragedy Kennedy’s death was...
...At the hearings, Chief Cliff acknowledged the potential importance of the geologist’s findings, but tended to downgrade them and said the Forest Service is researching the subject...
...Risser...
...But national boundaries have no more than left-over colonial meaning in the Third World, and, as Isaacs points out, the nationstate is losing legitimacy even in the West...
...He resisted a suggestion by subcommittee Chairman Senator Frank Church, that further studies be made by persons outside the Forest Service and the timber industry “in the interest of objectivity...
...While almost everything you say is true, it occurs to me that your article might have been a little bit more informative had you noted who the real culprits are...
...A broad-brush attack like this cannot be answered in this limited space, except to ask that you and your readers visit some of the National Forests to see for yourself...
...The appendix of the hearing record does contain a detailed statement by the Forest Service concluding that present timbercutting practices are causing “no drastic or irreversible depletion” of the forest nutrients...
...Thus, it is congressionally determined that timber sales be given somewhat over twice the effort given to forest renewal...
...and belief that outdoor life (especially angling and mountaineering) has nearly infinite power to revive gentlemen jaded by complexities...
...This was conveniently ignored by Mr...
...The differentness inspires public laughter, and pain for the individual...
...Since my piece appeared, researchers at the Forest Service experiment station in Utah have completed a study which shows that national forests of the west contain nearly 25 per cent less usable timber than the Forest Service has been saying...
...The second was India...
...We sounded like courtiers of Philip the Fair preparing the King’s case against the feudal barons...
...To boast of the Forest Service’s wilderness system is fine...
...faith in practical reason and a cheerful noblesse oblige toward hardy, self-sufficient members of the lower classes (and races...
...Chester Bowles, former ambassador to India, was Undersecretary of State in the Kennedy Administration...
...Cliff: 1) Mr...
...Buchan, a Fifeshire minister’s son, did brilliantly at Glasgow and Oxford, entered the Bar and eventually became GovernorGeneral of Canada (and Lord Tweedsmuir...
...This inspired anger and a feeling of betrayal in the public mind, although I am sure we could not have said it as clearly as Miss Lessard said it...
...Moderation and humor went with these views, in Buchan, and they were deeply English...
...Of the budgetary requests submitted by the Forest Service, the Congress gave 95 per cent of that for Timber Sale Management, but only 40 per cent of that for reforestation and new planting...
...To avoid ridicule and pain, artists retreat into eccentricities...
...The motivation seemed to spring from an instinctive commitment to the nation-state in whatever form it presently exists...
...No one suggested that Nigerians and Indians might be better off (and the world more peaceful) if they were permitted to organize themselves along lines other than those of the British conquest...
...WILLIAM L. PUTNAM Springfield, Mass...
...creative thinkers retreat into silence...
...CHESTER BOWLES Readers of Miss Lessard’s article might be interested in a revealing detail of Kennedy tastes...
Vol. 3 • February 1972 • No. 12
