E D.1.

T
0 It I A L S
I

The Beginning
Premier BenyoussefBen Khedda of the Alg,erian Republic is right: Independence is only a beginning. Yet
for the moment it is-a happy consummatio;l, arid perhaps it is also an augury ofpeace and prosperity for
North Afnca. All men of good will, especiallyFrenchmen, rejoice with theA,lgel;i,ans.Thedirty ~7a.r~ with
Itscasualtiesandcostsandmoralsqualor
1s over. AS
Robert
, ,
C. Doty wrote in T h e N e w Y o ~ kT&nes, a dip>lomatic millstone has ,been cre,moved from -the necks of
FranceandtheWest.
- Many illusionshave gone by the board - contrived
andcalculated illusions, aswepointout
belo,w. One
is theassemonthattlie
Algel-,ians had no desirefor
freedom, that the rebellion was all the work of agitators
a n d Commun1st.s. The Algerianelectoratecanhardly
be expected to rate as the most enlightened in the world
a t thls stage, but 92 per cent of those e1,igrble went to
the pollsand
of these, 99.6 percentvotedforindependence.
IC there is trouble ahead, i t can hardly be as bad as
thetroublethathas
beell leftbehind.
A revoluti,on
normally ends with the revolutionists fallang out almong
themselves:the FrenchRevolution was morenearly
typlcalthanthe
American, one of thehappy exceptions. But the Algerians must be sick of bloodletting,
and the desireforpeaceand
reconstruc*ion
should
favorthe forces olf moderation.Then, also, this is a
disciplined revolutionarymovement,tried in the years
of struggle against superior forces. The military side of
the Algerlan achlevemen,t has been widely praised
as a
remarkabledemonstration )of organizationalability. It
is now time to devote the talents
of the organizers to
the welfare of the Algerian people. Themosturgent
prolbiem, Ben Khedd,a says, is for Ithe state t o rest on
solid and democratic institutions.
The United States, so given t o misalliances with dictatorsand losers whodeserve t o lose, inthiscasehas
backedawinner.The
occasion is apersonaltriumph
fer PresidentKennedy.Hisstatement
of July 3, ad dressed to the
Algerianpeople,concludes:
We look
forward t o workcing togetherwith you in the cause of

freedom, peace and human wellfare. Mr. Kennedy be,

THE NATIONS SUMMER SCHEDULE

Dlpring July and August, The Nation
is appearing on ahemate weeks only.
The next issue will be dated July 28.
gandoingthatfiveyears
ago;as SenatorKennedy,he
submnted resolutions inCongressurging
the Eisenhoweradmanistratlon
t o recognize theindependent
personahty of Algeria. In its issue of July 20, 1957,
T h Nntmn endorsedthlseffort
as timely and senslble, even as Rolbert Lacoste, the French proconsul in
Algegeria, was deridmg Mr. Kennedy as t h e spol-Lesman
for old m a d s and Quakers, whde J,ol~n Foster Dulles
decried overt Interposition T h e Algerians freed themselves, w r t h thelrown blood and sdfenng, but PresldentKennedyscongratulati,ons
- arenottheempty
words of onewhowaitedto
see whowould colne out
011 top.

Information ~ a p
In the June 14 BBlC L i J t e w r , Martin Harmon discusses the role of the press In war.Freed,om of information, h e writes, was an earlyvictim
of the
Algerian war. A t the root of chec,hronlc failure of Algeliaa p o l ~ c ylay an irrational insistence on taking wish
for reality. Governments assiduously
culmtivated fictions
of which they were as much the prisoners as the public:
the rebellion was the work of a handful of foreign agitators,thelastquarter
of anhour was athand,and
so on. To close the gap betweenmythandreality,
Harrison
concludes,
progressively
tighter
control
of
informatlollseemed essential.
Without the change of asyllable, the lesson can be
applsedin South Vietnam. There IS, however,one difference,whichJack
Fo1sles anticle inthis issue (see
page 12) brings out. The French ~pubhcists deceived no
one b u t themselves; theSouthVietnamesedeceive
no
one but the Amencans,a majority of whom still seem
to believe thatanarduousbutultimately
wctoriious
waris lbelng waged on aheguerrillas. This fiction is

dissipated almost daily by Homer Rigart, but relatively

few Americans read The N e w Yorb Timer. For the most
part, the Saigon government discouragesvisits of correspondents to the scene o~f action, since the results are
usuaIly so meager, but i t was[finallyforced to put on
a show battle to justi4y the hundreds of millions of dollam that Uncle Sam is throwing into the fray. The outcome was reported by Bigart and Conrad Fink
of the
Associated Press on June 27. A four-day major landair-water
offensive
against
pro-Communist
guerrilla
strongholds, according to Fink, ended
. . , in exhaustion and Ifrustration for government troops. The action
took place fifty miles south of Saigon and involved ten
SouthVietnambattalions
. (2,300 men),thirty
U.S.
Army and Marine Corps helicopters, various American
amphibiouscraftandplasticboatsandfortyorfi,fty
U.S. military advisers. The South V,ietnam pulblic-relations staff reported forty-three guerrillas killed in action
andtwenty-sixtaken
prlsoner, butthereporterssaw
neither t h e deadguerrillas
nort,helive
ones. South
Vietnam a r ~ t h m e t ~isc notoriouslyunrelisble. We lmay
assume that some relbels were k~lled- and some government troops as well - but most of the rebels simply
ran for it, as guerrillasdo,whenever they are atltacked
in force.
T h e Algerian war is over, at a ghastly cost t o France
and to Algeria. The Vietnamese war, by all indications,
will go on and on, withAsiansfightingAsians
(,in
General Eisenhowers phrase), the United States transporting and supplying the troops and the Asmerican taxpayer footing the bill. All this is made possible by the
curtain of lies behind
which
the
South
Vietnamese
government
operates.
Occasionally thetruthbreaks
through.TheAmericanpress
sh,ould bringthese fragments to the attention of rhe A.merican .people, who are
being banlboozled by both the Saigon and Washingon
adlministrations.

Prayer and Hysteria

WhentheSupreme
Coukt, ,?na six-t,o-one opinion,
decided thattheprayer
recommended by theNew
York State Board of Regents violated the Fmt Amendment, some politiciansandalargesectmion
of the press
went all-outina
verbal auto-da4C. We donot recfer
to the measured dissent of Heflbert Hoover, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Bishop James A. Pike and other reasonable
men, but to the frenzied outburstswhich Were themselvesa travesty on the spirit of religion and on common decency incontroversy.
TheNewYork
Mirror
accused the Court of an attempt to expel God from
American life and suggested that the six Justiices had
perjured themselves,forwhen
they took theoath of
office, did they notsay, (Sohelp me God? T h e Joa~rnnlAmerican ranacartoon
showingablack-robed
figure
chiseling cGodl out of In God We Trust. The rector

of anEpiscopalianchurch
in Northport, Long Island,
put a slgn on his outdoorbulletin
)board 1beginnin.g
Cong1atulations, Khrushchev, and ending, God Help
America. Representaeive George Andrsws
of Alabama
declared that the Court had put the Negroes into the
public schools and drivenGodout.Representative
John Bell Wdliams of Mississippi,in anextension of
remarks in the Congrersional Record (June 30), quoted
a long prayer-editorial in
the Yickrburg Evening Post,
full of sentimentssuchasthis:
And we prayThee,
of
dearGod,that
as the six littlemen,inthename
separation of churchandstate,haveactuallymade
ours an atheisticstate,thusbringinguntoId
glee to
the capitals of the godless communistic world, let Thy
strength and wisdom flow into Thy loyalservants, so
they mlght rise up in universal anger and demand
the
restoration of their own rights, which havebeen
so
flagrantly cast aside by the little men.
Inmany newspapers, Ned Callmer pointed out on
CBS-TV (July 11, demagoguerysupersededdiscernment or dlscretmn, T h e ,editorialists paid no attention
to what the Supreme Court had actually
decided, but
went of$ onabinge
of vituperation so violentthat
sensiblepeople musthave concluded that t,heseparatlon-of-church-and-state
clause in the
Constitution
must now bedefendedwithredoubledvigilaice.
Few
papersmentionedthefactthat
tlhe New YorkCivil
Liberties Unlon, alffiliated with the American
Civil
Llbertles Union, had provided the lawyer and paid the
costs of the action which, as Calmer pointed out, would
have set tshe casein its proper perspective in the first
place. Likewise overlooked was the fact that t,he prayer,
innocuous m itself, was drafted by state dficials, that it
was in effect compulsory, that it was recited daily, and
so const,ituted a coercive indoctrination of children too
to them and of
youngtoknowwhatwasbeingdone
teachers who were forced t o repeat the formula on pain
of losing their j o b . Nor did many commenitators trouble
t o consider Ithe widespread opinion among religious leaders t h a t nothing is more debilitating tmoreligion &an a
rendition of empty phrases without sponltaneity or feelattention was diverted from
athe fact that
ing. Finally,
the use of a phrase like So help me God, by an, adult
taking a position of public trust, has nothing to do with
indoctrination of school children against the will of their
parents,
I

<(

If prayer has any value, it must come from the heart.

If man can communicate wit-h God, it must.be through
his own feeling and when the spirit moves him. As the
President said,everyone is free to pray at home and
in church. He mighthaveaddedthatwhat
religion
needs is protection against the fanatics who use it as a
cloak Ifor their owndisorderedandirreligioussentiments, and the pohticians, who see in it the easiest and
cheapest way of cadtging votes.

The NATION

Sugar and Plies

Wlhere there is sugar, SenatorFulbright reminded

his colleagues in the Senate, there you will find flies.
Sugar bills havealwaysdrawn
flies co Congress, but
this year they came in swarms. I n 1956, only four lobbyists
registered
t o represent forebgn sugar
interests;
this year no less than twenty-t,wo registered. There was
Ralph W. Gardner, the great good fiiend of Rep. Harold
,D. Cooley (the sugar ,czar), representling the Britishowned island of Mauritius, way out in bhe middle of
the Indial; Ocean;DonaldDawson,
White House assistant to PresidentTruman,representingtheIndian
Sugar R/lills Associatlon; Oscar Chapman, fol;merly Secretary of theInterior,representing
Mexico;Rocco C.
Sicillano, former special assistanttoPresidentEisenhower, representing El Salvador, et al.
T o Senator Fulbrlght, the swarming of the flies suggested the f,ol-,matlonof a non-diplomatic corps made
up of registeredlobbyists,lmostlyAmericans,seeking
ever-largershares
of the premiumsugar windfallfor
foreignproducers. At stake, of course, is theCuban
quota. It was t.0 be expected thatanyattemptto
redistribute this quota would create a new set of vested
interests which would thenhaveasecondary,vested
interest in keeping Castro in power. Guatemala, fror ex,ample, hasnoquotaundertheSugarAct,butwas
given an allotment in 1960 when the Cuban quota was
up for grabs. Althmough Guatemala was warned by the
UnitedStatesthattheCuban
redistrilbution was not
to be considered permanent, i t hasneverthelessgone
aheadandexpandeditsrelativelyhigh-costsugar
p~oduction. The Domlnican Ropublic, in need of help, now
wants a larger allotment; and whJe there
is more merit
in its claim than in most, one may well doubt whether
it is a good idea t o create a lopsidedDominican dependence on a one-crop economybased on the whims
of *the Amencan Congress. The Admin~strat~on
plan for
,helping the Republic to dlversidy ,itscrops is therefore
welcome.
The fact is that the sugar set-up is a racket that can
only be maintained, as SenatorPaulDouglas,pynts
out, because theinterest of the consumer is dif,fused
and relatively weak, whereas the beet-sugar and canesugardomesticproducers
are politically potent. American
consumers
cheerfully
permit themselves to
be
taxed $550,000,000 ayeartokeep
the domesticproducers happy, aItd Congress
fanaticallydevotedin
principle to free enterprise - cheerfully goes along with
this conspicuous example of state socialism a t its worst.
But as long as consumers are wdling to bemulcted
- andtheir
inthis way, theyhaveonlythmxelves
sweet tooth - ,to blame. Buttime bpinggsIan end to
all good things and the swarming
of Dhe sugar-hungry
flies in Wnashington may blow up the scandal that will
finally force some sense and sanity into the formulati,on

.Tdy I4, 1962

of anationalsugar
policy. In the
reason $0 be grateful to the flies.

end, we mayhave

Ike the Heretic

The surest way to get a bad press, or no press at all,
is to speak out against illimitable increases in the arms
budget. Thenatlonal economynowdepends
on arms
spending in the sameway
thatdrugaddicts
crave
heroin,andever-larger
doses are needed for stability.
Remonstrance m a y bring one a good conscience, but
littlesupport. A t thelecent 8100-a-plate Repubhcan
dinner,General
E~senhowerhadtheaudacitytosay
that in his personal fbel~ef substantial amounts in our
current defense budget re,flect unjustified fears, plus
a reluctance in some quarters to relminquish outmoded
concepts. He added that he was sure he ,would receive
little company in either party..He was right.
The
most
ti&-fisted
opponents of government
spending loosen up when I t comes to spending on ar;ms.
W,hen SenatorHarryByrd
showed signs qf resistance
to raking the debt limit from $300 biIl8ion to $308 billion, Treasury Secretary Dillon was sent to show him
the lighlt. The Secretary polnted out that if Mr. Byrds
Senate Finan,ce Committee did not raise t.he debt ceiling, defense cuts of 15 per cent wouId have to be ord,ered
and Mr. Byrd would be 7blaImed fmor leavlng the natlon
naked before its enemies, even though t>heavms bud,get
would stdl be some 10 per cent higher than under the
Eisenhower administration. Mr. Byrdgave
in likea
cream puff under a steamroller.
General Eisenhowerdid, get some company
Senator Proxmire. Mr. Proxmiresaid
he welcomed the
statement by the former President, <a man who is cert a ~ n l y an outstanding
authority
in
our defense.
H e reminded his colleagues thmatIthe
defensebill had
passed the Senate UnanimoqsIy, with no consideration,
no delbate, no discusslon of most of the veryheavy
requestsfor spendlag. H e askedGeneralEisenhower
to specify exactly in what items defense spending might
be reducedandsuggested
that this would be an immenselyhelpful service.
Despite the great apathy whic.h has heretofore balked
efforts .to curb the hypertrophy
of thearmsindustry,
t h n idea
holds
out some
promise.
Advertisinghas
taken sucha hold onAmericanperception
chatonly
endless reiteration will mxkeanimpression.
The press
is forced to giveGeneralEisenhowerfront-pagespace
andat least single-column headlines, but t,hendrops
the subject because it is never picked up and deveIoped
by otherpublicfigures.
Mr. Eisenhower will get nowherewithmild,generaldemurrers
a t longintervals,
but if he would unleash his falmous temper and overcome his tendency to indmolence, he )might find himself making progress. Win or lose,. i t would be the
greatest service he could render his country. --,

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