The dark lean man joins President Kennedy. They chat on the yacht, Honey Fitz, at Palm Beach. They laugh during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. They applaud a performance of "Irma la Douce" at Washington's National theater. They dine at a private party in the White House. Their friendship and companionship is rare and near unprecedented in Washington. The lean man, a year younger than the President has a high forehead, long swept-back hair, and a sharp very British nose. He is Sir David Ormsby Gore, a friend of John F. Kennedy from younger, more carefree days. He is a politician. He is the heir of a nobleman. And he is the British ambassador to the United States. Traditionally a British ambassador should be a career diplomat, advanced in years, prim and proper in his dealings with the chief of state. Ormsby Gore is a politician in his first post as ambassador, the only political appointment in the entire British foreign service, 44 years old, and the constant companion of his old friend Jack, who happens to be chief of state...

FOREIGN AID PATTERN - Will the developing nations have to adjust their sights and hopes to meet the new look in American foreign aid? Officials at the Agency for International Development (AID) have declined to divulge just how the new guidelines for foreign aid will affect specific nations. But non-government experts surveyed by the Associated Press have applied the principles laid down by Gen. Lucius Clay's special study committee and by President Kennedy in his foreign aid message to congress on Tuesday, and generally have come up with these conclusions...

Rep. Otto Passman, D-La., said today he finally feels vindicated in his long battle against foreign aid "but vindicated in words, not in action." So he still will wield his ax when President Kennedy's $4.5 billion foreign aid bill comes his way. For nine years, the ax of this dapper, jocular 62-year-old businessman from Monroe, La., has been a major obstacle for any foreign aid bill trying to wend its way through Capitol Hill. No bill has emerged unscathed. Passman derives his power from his position as chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. He derives his distaste for foreign aid from a simple philosophy, "Head to a bar tonight and watch some people drinking cocktails," he said in an Interview. "Then watch the drama that unfolds each time the waiter brings the check. Everyone grabs for it. We are a nation of check grabbers...."

Many congressmen grumble about the seniority system in Congress, but few want to do anything about it. In 1811, a freshman, Henry Clay of Kentucky, was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. That could not happen today. Time has clamped a tradition of seniority on Congress. No new congressman dares dream now of reaching the cores of power and influence without waiting his turn in a long line. As usual Congress opened this year with voices both inside and out calling for change. The voices include those of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower and reportedly President Kennedy...

[Uncle Sam has spent billions trying to control floods and more billions are committed for the huge job. Still floods exact a heavy toll in property and human misery each year. So is the spending worthwhile? Those most concerned with the program say yes. Their argument: If it weren't for the controls, the $600-$70O million damage bill the public pays each year would be far higher. Stanley Meisler explores the whole complex problem in the following story.] Government officials estimate that the nation's network of levees, dams, and reservoirs each year saves $600-milllon worth of property from destruction by the ravaging rivers of America. Despite this, the rivers have not been tamed. Every year floods destroy $700 million worth of property and inflict widespread human misery. And the toll may be swelling. The great flood-control program of the country, begun in the late 1930s, has not eliminated or halved or even reduced substantially the damage from floods. But its sponsors say it has prevented damage from soaring to staggering heights and blocked catastrophies that might have stunted the growth of some industrial valleys and wrecked the economies of others...

In 1914 when Carl Vinson, a 31-year-old Democrat from Georgia, came to Congress for the first time, the entire staff was made up of one secretary, paid $125 a month. The law allowed him and all other congressmen no more. Today Vinson has four members on his staff. The average representative is allowed to hire up to nine at an overall cost of $4000 a month. The average senator usually hires more. And so may the congressional committees. In a rush to keep pace with the onslaught of modern pressures, Congress has created its own private bureaucracy that now numbers more than 7,000 people and costs more than $50 million a year. There’s a chance it soon will get bigger and costlier. This week the House will debate a proposal, approved by its Administration Committee, to increase the office expenses of each congressman by $10,506 a year so he can add still another employee to his payroll. The huge bureaucracy on Capitol Hill has provoked criticism particularly from Sen. Allen J. Ellender, D-La., who leads a futile fight each year to wipe out a good number of the Senate's subcommittee staffs...

[Christian A. Herter, U.S. trade negotiator, discusses in this exclusive interview the prospect for battering down foreign tariffs.] Christian A. Herter, special U.S. trade negotiator, said today he does not feel that the significance of his new job was shattered by the recent French veto of Britain's entry into the Common Market. "In some respects the veto enhanced the importance of the trade expansion program." Herter said in an interview. "It certainly complicated the matter." Just how much the matter has been complicated may become clear in the next two months when international trade experts meet in Geneva. The Geneva talks may determine whether Herter, armed with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, can help batter down foreign tariffs and launch booming, new U.S. trade in the 1960s. Some congressmen have introduced bills that would amend the Trade Expansion Act to get around the French veto. The amendments would allow Herter to negotiate for the complete elimination of tariffs when the United States, the Common Market, and Britain together account for 80 per cent of the world's trade...

[EDITOR'S NOTE - Although the United States owns more than $3.8-billion worth of foreign currencies, it often has to dip into its own gold supply to meet expenditures abroad.] Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, D-N.Y., squired two good-looking, female assistants to the Lido night club in Paris last summer and paid his way with U.S.-owned francs. The night on the town provoked outcries back home. Powell had a quick defense. He quoted Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon as saying if Powell and other congressmen didn't use these francs the U. S. government would have to burn them. "This is money going right down the drain," Powell said. Dillon said he had no recollection of making the remarks and added that he felt these funds "require the same prudent management and careful handling as any other moneys of the government." In fact, other administration officials say that most times that a congressman uses funds like these, he forces the United States to buy more foreign currencies with American dollars. Powell's night on the town, the outcry, his defense, and the denial by Dillon reflect one of the most complex and massive problems in American international finance... [article also published in the Congressional Record Appendix, 13 March 1963, p. A1354]

Pressures from industry, Congress, and the White House bear heavily on the U.S. government agencies that regulate business and industry. Do the agencies stand fast in the face of the barrage? Not everyone agrees they do. Once again, a debate is swirling about these agencies that make decisions that may mean millions of dollars to a television company, a gas company, a department store, a railroad, an airline or an investment company. The present debate was triggered a month ago by a three-page letter that a frustrated Federal Power Commission member sent to President Kennedy. The commissioner, Howard Morgan, wrote of "pressures generated by huge industries and focused with great skill on and against the sensitive areas of government." He talked of commissioners, in face of these pressures, giving in "too quickly to the present-day urge toward conformity, timidity and personal security." Morgan, who found himself outvoted on key commission decisions, wrote that he did not want reappointment as commissioner. The House Regulatory Agencies subcommittee will open hearings Wednesday on Morgan's charges...

For most Americans, one dynamic young man, Tom Mboya of Kenya, symbolizes the onrush of African nationalism in the last few years. On his several trips to the United States, he has been publicized in rallies, television shows, and newspaper interviews. He is, for America, the magazine cover boy of Africa. But despite all the American cheers, Mboya is in deep political trouble at home, and some of the trouble stems from those very cheers. Mboya has qualities that appeal to western taste. He is vigorous. He is efficient. He is moderate, though always frank and direct, in his speech. He seems to combine the shrewdness of a politician with the honor of a statesman. Even the British settlers in Kenya, long displeased with the American encouragement of Mboya, have now come to regard him as a main hope for their survival when the colony becomes independent, perhaps some time this year or next. They trust him and would help him. The vision of an independent Kenya led by Mboya has replaced their shattered dream of a white man's Kenya. But Mboya, now thirty-two, will not be at the helm when Kenya becomes independent...

A News Analysis - Is the present furor over Cuba based on fluff or substance? The real answer may lie in the secret correspondence of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and President Kennedy. In the last few weeks of controversy and confusion, an odd drama has been played In Washington. Critics first railed at the administration, crying that Soviet missiles and missile sites still remain in Cuba. The storm drove the administration into an unprecedented picture-show defense of its intelligence operations. But, in the defense, the administration revealed a concern and an uneasiness not about missile and missile sites but about the removal of Soviet troops. None of the published correspondence between Khrushchev and Kennedy contains any promise to remove Russian troops from Cuba. But the secret correspondence reportedly does. In short, the critics, still may have helped draw attention to a raw nerve of the administration on Cuba policy...

It is a cold winter day at the White House. A handful of pickets trudge through the snow. They have fasted and alternated in marching since the evening before. A snowstorm has buffeted them. Icy temperatures have numbed them. Their placards cry out: Ban the Bomb. Some men in khaki uniforms arrive. Police assign them another area of the sidewalk. The new arrivals, George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazis, are angry because five of their followers have been jailed in Philadelphia. "Jail Red Jews, not our anti-Communists," the Nazi placards say. The Nazis picket for 43 minutes and depart. Two smiling college students reach the scene. They, too, have a placard, and they picket, and wave it for 17 minutes. They have come to the capital only to find that the National Gallery of Art schedule for displaying a famous Leonardo da Vinci painting is such that, they won't get to view it. "We Want To See Mona Lisa," their placard pleads. A policeman notes their departure routinely. Neither the fast of the anti-bomb pickets nor the signs of the Nazis nor the antics of the college boys amaze or amuse him. They simply prove that one day is much like any other day on the sidewalk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

Reviews two books about Africa. "The Human Factor in Changing Africa," by Melville J. Herskovits; "Copper Town: Changing Africa. The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt," by Hortense Powdermaker.

For some Americans, an end to income taxes. For most, a cut. For a handful, a boost That’s the meaning of President Kennedy’s proposed tax changes. And for 6,500,000 Americans, the changes also would mean a shift in the way they figure out their income taxes. These 6,500,000 taxpayers would be nudged from itemizing their deductions into taking the standard 10 per cent deduction. For them this would make the tax cut less juicy than it might have been. No taxpayer should expect these changes to stuff his pockets with dollars overnight. President Kennedy said he does not want the changes to start until later this year and take full effect until 1965. And they won’t take effect at all if Congress doesn’t approve them...

The Katanga crisis is over. What are the lessons? Several American experts on Africa agree the world has learned that an effective United Nations can do a better job at ending trouble than a big power rushing in by itself. "One of the chief lessons", Prof. Carl. G. Rosberg, Jr. of the University of California said today, "is that the UN Secretary-General can act as an independent and effective agent in solving major disputes if he has a reliable body of supporters". Rosberg, a political scientist specializing in African affairs, was one of several experts in American universities, the State Department, and Congress, contacted by the Associated Press and asked: "What are the lessons of Katanga?"...

[Stanley Meisler, now a member of the Washington AP staff, interviewed Togo leaders last year while spending several months touring African nations] The United States likely can expect a far less friendly regime to succeed the one of murdered Sylvanus Olympio in the little land of Togo in West Africa. The situation in Togo still is unclear. But the first cloudy signs indicate that the men who assassinated President Olympio and left his body outside the U.S. Embassy Sunday want a militantly nationalist government, less tied to the West. The White House, when informed of Olympio's death, issued a statement that "the United States government is profoundly shocked by the news of the assassination. President Olympio was one of Africa's most distinguished leaders and was warmly received here on his recent visit to the United States." Three forces figure in the background of Togo's troubles: the persistence of tribalism, the influence of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and, most important, the impatience of radical youths. In Africa, young people, because they usually are more educated than their elders, occupy posts of greater importance than young people anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, an older generation still controls the key positions of power...

The 88th Congress opened for business Wednesday and dealt sudden death to conservative members' hopes of recapturing control of the key House Rules Committee. This victory for President Kennedy had been expected, but the size of his margin was a surprise. On the decisive vote in the House, his supporters won 235-196. The vote kept the size of the Rules Committee at 15 members. If Kennedy's forces had failed, it would have reverted to 12 members, leaving the committee in the grip of a coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats opposed to major elements of Kennedy's legislative program. The committee, which controls the flow of most legislation to the floor of the House, had been under the domination of this coalition until two years ago...

Keepers Of Nationalism - The poverty of tribal, rural hinterlands may be Africa's most despairing problem, but it is in the atmosphere of cities that African leaders tackle the issue. African cities, bustling and impatient, are far away from tribal Africa with its huge and potentially supreme masses. Only 12% of the population between the Sahara Desert and South Africa live in cities. But urban Africa Is vital Africa. The cities are the keepers of nationalism. Their moods create the changes that make headlines and make the new Africa. To understand new Africa, an observer must catch the mood of its cities. Let us catch the mood of three and see three different African ways of adjusting to the modern world...

Exact Cost To US Hard To Determine IRS Official Says - The United States government, through loss of tax revenue, will share substantially in the cost of paying the ransom that brought the 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners back from Cuba. The exact cost to the treasury and thus to the taxpayers may be impossible to determine. But one official, Mitchell Rogovin of the Internal Revenue Service, estimated today that the tax loss, at the highest, could reach $20,000,000 spread over three years. Rogovin added in an interview that the loss could be less. And he stressed he considered it a loss only in the sense that every time there is a disaster relief or community chest drive, the government loses tax revenue through income tax deductions...

The words came cold and clipped from the government secretary with gray hair and pale English skin. "When that man enters a room," she said, "I can feel the hackles rise up and down my back. Even if I don't see him, I can feel that man." That man is Jomo Kenyatta. A court has convicted him of managing the savage Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. A British governor has condemned him as "the African leader to darkness and death." Yet, within a year or two, when the colony of Kenya assumes independence, Jomo Kenyatta likely will be the new nation's first prime minister. The gray-haired Englishwoman and other white settlers watch this onrush to power helplessly, with distaste and bitterness. To them, a man streaked in evil and blood is reaching for their rolling, green land. But whites number no more than one per cent of Kenya's six million people. Africans see a different Kenyatta...

President Kennedy has promised no more than sympathy to those bargaining for the release of 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners. But the evidence is clear that he has given more. Official statements in Washington maintain that the committee now negotiating with Fidel Castro in Cuba for the release of the prisoners is a private one, supported by private funds. But the prisoners, if they are released, will owe their freedom in large measure to the U.S. government. It is doubtful that the private committee could complete a deal of such magnitude without active support of the Kennedy Administration

Niyi Ishola, a 28-year-old government secretary in Nigeria, admires America very much. One of his great heroes, in fact, is the late John Foster Dulles. But Ishola has a complaint. "Soviet cosmonauts Gherman Titov and Yuri Gagarin give a much better impression than your astronaut John Glenn," he says. "Both Russians wear uniforms in their photographs, and the people respect uniforms. Uniforms show discipline. In his pictures," Ishola continues sadly, "Glenn wears a bowtie." John Glenn's bowtie has not stalled America's drive to win friends and respect In Africa. But this tale of a young Nigerian's concern with astronautical polka dots reflects the difficulty of trying to analyze the impact of U.S. policies on Africa. Africans live in a world remote from the world of Americans. Africans worry about farm plots and factory sites, not Castro and Khrushchev, about building a nation, not building an image. American assumptions about what impresses Africans, or what disturbs them, often lack a true base. The difficult problem of American race relations can illustrate this a bit. Many U.S. policymakers assume that the names Little Rock, New Orleans, Oxford do not endear the United Slates to Africa. The assumption, of course, is true. The treatment of Negroes in the United Slates does bother Africans...

President Kennedy has learned to his dismay that cannons on the White House lawn can drown out everything but Caroline and her friends. He learned this as he stood tight-lipped and at attention yesterday while cannons on the south lawn boomed a welcome for Premier Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria. After Mr. Ben Bella had conferred with the President and left, a reporter asked President Kennedy what he thought of the childish noises that came from the second floor during the ceremonies. “We will talk about that this afternoon,” he said. The President then smiled — but only slightly — whirled, and rushed into the White House. The President’s corrective measures went no further than a talking-to. "Was Caroline punished?” a newsman asked White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger last night. “Not that I know of,” he replied...

THE CAPTURE of military personnel, and of key civilians, is vital to a Pentagon publicist, but his more exciting, perhaps more significant, work centers on the capture of the mass media — Hollywood, television, the press, even the comics. The Department’s Office of News Services has an Audio-Visual Division which, among its other duties, sees to it that some movies and television shows have good chunks of military propaganda. The division examines scripts and then lends aid to those deemed worthy of cooperation from the Department of Defense. Cooperation can save a producer a good deal of money. Indeed, if he plans a movie based almost entirely on the activities of the armed services, cooperation can determine whether he will have a movie at all. For a producer clutching a script blessed by the division, the services may provide military equipment that he can’t get elsewhere: modern tanks, weapons, ships, planes. An officer, acting as technical adviser to insure the movie’s authenticity, often is sent along...

IN THE SPRING of this year, Martin Burke, Gilbert Bauer and David Figlestahler, pupils of the Holy Redeemer Elementary School in Portsmouth, Ohio, wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. In the event of war, Russian troops “will be landing inside our borders,” they told the Secretary. If that comes to pass, “the American people will defend this country in a last ditch, to the death stand, along with the military.” The civilian population must train itself for this future. “Please send us any able weapons,” the schoolboys asked. They listed recoilless rifles, antitank guns, bazookas, mortars, machine guns, browning automatic rifles and submachine guns. Martin, Gilbert and David said the weapons would help them learn about arms and would “help us prepare ourselves for our future military service.” The boys closed with a compliment: “We the senders of this letter are in full accord with your conduction of your duties so far as Secretary of Defence” [sic]. Although the schoolboys had not learned their spelling, they had learned other lessons well, for they are growing up in a time when all the channels of communication and education overflow with images of war and might and glory, images that tend to obscure the views of death and destruction that linger from other times and other lands...

IN 1975, Americans will have 111 million cars, trucks and buses. To keep these wheels rolling, the federal government has embarked on the biggest public-works project in history, spending billions of dollars for 41,000 miles of superhighways crisscrossing the nation. Millions of this money already, have been spilled over into waste, inefficiency and fraud. There is nothing secret about this. Newspapers and Congress have uncovered scandal after scandal. But the revelations have not evoked the same indignation and outcries that scandals like the Dave Beck plunder of the Teamsters treasury have caused. Instead, much of the public has a boys-will-be-boys attitude about corrupt highways. When you spend 41 billion dollars in a public program, influential and impatient people say, you have to expect some tomfoolery, so let’s get on with the show. Americans want their highways in a hurry. “When you have a program of this magnitude,” Rep. Gordon H. Scherer, (R.-Ohio), told the House last July 1, “you are bound to attract the chiselers and the grafters.”...

Since election day, committees have tossed sheaves of paper on to the desk of President-Elect John F. Kennedy. The papers give him advice on how to reshape, readjust, or revitalize America. Kennedy asked for it. The committees are the special task forces he assigned to recommend ways to solve such problems as distressed areas, defense needs, and overcrowded schools. Kennedy appointed some before election day. The President-Elect asked prominent public officials to head some task forces. He named professors to head others. In one case, the task force comprised one man. Not all the reports have been made public. Not all have been endorsed. But, in general, the reports seem to follow Kennedy's campaign promises and may give some indication of the future course of his administration...

IN ARTES PLASTICAS, one of the government cultural magazines spawned by the Castro revolution, Manuel Diaz Martinez writes that “the artist must learn to help purify the revolutionary conscience of our Latin American brothers without ceasing to be an artist, without submerging his art in politics.” These words — surely contradictory — bare the dilemma of culture in Cuba today. Like all other revolutions, the Cuban upheaval of social and political institutions has stimulated a companion effort to uproot cultural institutions and nourish new and vital theatre, music, art, movies and writing. But this new culture can also wither under the upheaval’s propaganda demands. In Castro’s Cuba, no one doubts that cultural life today is busy, almost frenzied, but no one can be sure it is vital. Havana offers abundant evidence of activity: commercial and government playhouses show a varied theatrical fare. Foreign ballet and musical troupes, some of the world’s best, visit the city often; seats are available for the government admission price of 25c...

LUIS MUNOZ MARIN, Puerto Rico’s first elected Governor, remains in La Fortaleza. He sits in the Governor’s Palace, confident and pleased, for the jibaros of the mountains and countryside, in overwhelming numbers, have defied their Roman Catholic bishops to elect him to a fourth term. But, while confident and pleased, he also is uneasy. Despite his victory, a threat lingers, perhaps not to his power, but (more important) to the political stability of Puerto Rico. And, while the threat evolves primarily from clericalism, part of the threat also stems from Muñoz Marín himself. During the campaign, the flare-up over the tactics of the bishops, who issued two pastoral letters forbidding Catholics to vote for Muñoz Marín, obscured some of the political problems of Puerto Rico — the very problems that set the climate for the letters. The Governor’s rout of the new Christian Action Party, a creature of the bishops, tended to fill his supporters, particularly abroad, with a heady optimism, blinding them to the dangers still enveloping democracy on the island...

THE UNITED STATES hovers over the Dominican Republic these days, waiting eagerly for a reward. The reasoning is simple: Everyone sees that the regime of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina is tottering; everyone knows the State Department nudged it a bit; surely, after the crash, the new regime will embrace the nudger. But, in the chaos and anger that will follow the fall, there will be no embrace. The sudden anti-Trujillo policy of the United States and the dramatic condemnation of the Dominican Republic by the Organization of American States (OAS) at San Jose have come too late to avert what State Department planners fear most: an anti-American, Castro-leaning successor to Trujillo. For thirty years, the United States has bolstered the brutal tyranny of El Benefactor. Now that his enemies have him on the run, the United States has jumped to their side. For the final push, this new aid may be accepted and used; but the United States will receive in return only a few cold stares, a polite nod, contempt, smoldering bitterness. However, there are degrees of bitterness and contempt, and the exact character of the post-Trujillo regime will depend on the forces used to overthrow the Generalissimo...

TO AT LEAST one Congressman, a sugar bill posed no problem. The issue was simple, Representative William E. Miller of New York, chairman of the Republican Congressional Committee, told his colleagues: You are either for Castro or against him. Since few praises for Castro have sounded through the chambers of Congress recently, Miller’s analysis, if accurate, meant that a sugar bill could be legislated with ease, speed and clarity. But the analysis was far from accurate, and when Congress, after a twenty-three-hour session during the Fourth of July weekend, finally did bring forth a sugar bill, its haggard members looked neither easy nor speedy nor clear. Their decisions had been shaped and pounded by unceasing and sometimes contradictory pressures — pressures so varied, fascinating and obvious that even a hurried survey of them can reveal some of the realities within our legislative process. The story of the 1960 Sugar Act is a case history in American politics. Despite Miller, the issues turned on much more than an attitude toward the Cuban Premier...

ONCE A YEAR America dances in a comic ballet against the backdrop of a world of terror. The dance masters call their creation, Operation Alert, fitting it snugly into a continuous show entitled, Civil Defense. This year’s show took place May 3. In New York, Civil Defense authorities qualified the Men’s Bar at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as a shelter area, and 100 men continued to sip their highballs as three mythical nuclear bombs hurtled toward the city. At Yankee Stadium, bleacherites cowered under the stands while more affluent customers remained in their comfortable grandstand seats. Several Manhattan firms stopped work, but one company declared its 400 employees “automatically dead” and kept them on the job. In Washington, Congress ignored the drill, and President Eisenhower spent the day elsewhere. Only one top government official scurried from the city to his secret command post in Virginia - Leo A. Hoegh, Director of the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization. The State Department set a new record as 4,000 employees tucked their secret papers into safes and rushed from the building in eight minutes (previous record: twelve minutes). Fifty-five schools stayed out of the drill, serving as polling places for the District of Columbia’s Presidential primary...

The underdeveloped nations of the world can't terrorize each other in a nuclear arms race. Instead, they pant through a small arms sprint. While the great nations thunder missiles into space, the weak nations gobble up the rifles left behind. There are recent - sometimes dramatic - examples. Last March 4, the French freighter La Coubre exploded in Havana harbor, killing more than 75 seamen, dock workers and firefighters. It was carting 76 tons of Belgian grenades and ammunition to the army of Fidel Castro. Last year, the new African nation of Guinea asked the United States to sell arms to her 2,000-man army. When the United States refused, Guinea bought three shipments of rifles from Communist Czechoslovakia. Conditions are perfect for this dash for little arms: 1. A glut of small arms on the world market. 2. A host of military governments and revolutionaries hungrier for guns than bread. 3. Help from major powers in satisfying that hunger. There is no official estimate of the amount of small arms available on the world market during a year. But some light on the market's vitality is shed by news dispatches and government reports of transactions...

THE BRUISED cultural feelings of Washington received a fillip of sorts during the week of April 17, when twenty-eight writers and artists from eleven countries assembled for an annual congress sponsored by the capital’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and financed by the Ford Foundation. The roster included Italian Nobel-Prize poet Salvatore Quasimodo, American poets Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz and Allen Tate, England’s critic-poet Sir Herbert Read and potter Bernard Leach, French poet Yves Bonnefoy and Brazilian novelist Erico Verissimo. Keeping close to a prepared schedule, they ate, drank and partied together, delivered lectures, plunged into panel discussions, declaimed poetry and exchanged views on the theme of the congress — the status of the artist. Leach even potted. While these activities did not tear headlines from the other major events of the week (the convening of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the opening of the Washington Senators’ annual drive to soar higher than eighth place), enough occurred to make Washington cultural buffs puff out their chests and, for at least a week, forget Howard Taubman...

ON MARCH 4, the 4,309-ton French freighter La Coubre, carting seventy-six tons of Belgian grenades and ammunition to the army of Fidel Castro, exploded in Havana harbor, killing more than seventy-five seamen, dock workers and firefighters. The series of deadly blasts triggered a series of sensational questions that hit headlines in both the United States and Cuba. Had an American agent or anti-Castro Cuban slipped aboard and left a time bomb in the hold? Had a careless dock worker dropped a match into the munitions? Had a cargo net snapped, unleashing crates of grenades against the deck? Had a plane sneaked low across the harbor and tossed bombs into the freighter? Other questions, tinged with less excitement, were also evoked. But, too theoretical, old and uncomfortable, they made few headlines. They are questions which have arisen time after time, applied to incident after incident, in the last decade. Their most cogent expression came from Colombian liberal Eduardo Santos in 1955. “Against whom are we Latin Americans arming ourselves?” he cried out before a Columbia University forum...

In the world of U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics H. J. Anslinger, the drug addict is an “immoral, vicious, social leper,” who cannot escape responsibility for his actions, who must feel the force of swift, impartial punishment. This world of Anslinger does not belong to him alone. Bequeathed to all of us, it vibrates with the consciousness of twentieth-century America. Anslinger, however, has been its guardian. As America’s first and only Commissioner of Narcotics, he has spent much of his lifetime insuring that society stamp its retribution in to the soul of the addict. In his thirty years as Commissioner (Anslinger is now sixty-seven), he has listened to a chorus of steady praise. Admirers have described him as “the greatest living authority on the world narcotics traffic,” a man who “deserves a medal of honor for his advanced thought,” “one of the greatest men that ever lived,” a public servant whose work “will insure his place in history with men such as Jenner, Pasteur, Semmelweiss, Walter Reed, Paul Ehrlich, and the host of other conquerors of scourges that have plagued the human race.” But some discordant notes, especially in recent years, have broken through this chorus...

A noise you hardly notice may enter your mind sometimes and, in a strange transformed way, become part of your thoughts. An experiment exploring this phenomenon was completed for the U.S. Public Health Service recently by Dr. Fred Pine, a New York University psychologist His results could shed some light on subliminal advertising, the technique in which a slogan is flashed on a screen so quickly you do not realize you see it. When this technique first received public notice, it was assumed that if, for example, the slogan "See Your Dentist Twice a Year" were flashed, the unsuspecting audience would tend to do just that. But Dr. Pine's experiment indicates it is not that simple. The slogan or noise seems to enter your mind. But it does not come out in conscious thoughts just the way it entered. In fact, images may pop up so different from the slogan or noise that only a psychologist could tell they were related. This would not do an advertiser much good. In the case of the dentist slogan, flashing it would probably not send anyone off to have his teeth examined. But it might cause some one in the audience to dream later that his is a lion tamer staring at the gaping jaws of his animal...

MEXICO CITY’S Palace of Fine Arts assigns one of its salons to modern art and another to Mexican art, but both, like all the others, exhibit the same kind of paintings. In tiers of galleries, this huge museum offers little but work by twentieth-century Mexicans. A first look is far from a dull experience. Eager for more, I marched from room to room, excited by a mural still in progress, by the stark perspective of Siqueiros, by the cluttered symbols of Rivera, by the bright colors and stunted figures of young artists, by the mystery of a powerful art spawned in a political revolution. Only later did doubt creep in. Where do young Mexicans go, I wondered, to find out about Botticelli or El Greco or Rembrandt or Degas or Picasso or de Kooning? Later, at the small Antonio Souza Gallery, the American manager discussed her related problem. The gallery displayed numerous canvases by Leo Rosshandler, a Dutch painter living in Mexico, who paints huge, frightening birds in thick blacks, browns and whites. Although visitors gazed long and quietly at them, sales were meager. “The Mexican public has not been educated beyond Mexican nationalistic art,” the manager said. “They want the usual paintings of the Indian woman with her rebozo and little child.”During my stay, a brisk controversy in the newspapers, stirred by José Luis Cuevas, has emphasized the significance of the gallery’s problem...

IN THE Federalist days, the young, fretful American Republic tried to stop pamphlets about the French Revolution from reaching the mailboxes of its citizens. Since then, in sporadic moments of crisis, the federal government has continued to screen mail and weed out what it considers foreign or dangerous propaganda. Such moments have come in the pre-Civil War days, during the two World Wars, and, now, in the Cold War. But the present little-known program, a joint effort by the Post Office Department and the Customs Bureau, is facing the heaviest attack in its existence. For the first time, law suits have been filed against it. Under the program, the Customs Bureau checks foreign non-first class mail as it enters the United States. If translators and inspectors decide the mail contains foreign - usually Communist - political propaganda, the Post Office generally holds it up and sends a notice to the addressee...

An innocent-looking envelope, addressed to the teen-ager in your family, slips into the morning mail. The envelope is opened. A letter and two photos fall out. Half-nude girls beckon from the photos. For a few dollars, the letter promises, you can get more and better photos perhaps showing less clothing and more action. Shock and anger grip you. "Can't something be done to keep such mail away from the American home?" you demand. "Must our teen-agers be exposed to this?" You investigate and find that the Post Office department, led personally and loudly by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, has embarked on a campaign to rid the mails of pornography. But there is a hitch. You also discover that in some quarters the post office attempt to clear up the mails has provoked bitterness and anger. Critics like the American Civil Liberties union and book publishers say the post office tramples on freedom of speech and of the press, and, in its zeal, too often mistakes a classic for a French post card. Through the years, they say, the post office, while attacking pornography, has tried to ban a host of literary classics...

About 100 years ago, Lord Lyons, bewhiskered, youngish ambassador from Britain, sent home a description of the city of Washington. "A terrible place for young men," he said. "Nothing whatever in the shape of amusement for them." No one doubts the accuracy of Lord Lyons' picture. Washington was just an overgrown village then. But could the present ambassador cable the same description now? Is the nation's capital still a hub by day and a dud by night? Like most questions in this federal town, these provoke more than one answer. Arguments usually follow two contrasting lines: 1. Washington is one of the world's dreariest capitals after dark. A few hours after midnight the only one you are likely to meet on the silent, black streets is a milkman or a mugger. 2. Washington is one of the world's great cultural, cosmopolitan centers. Great music, theater, jazz, night clubs, foreign restaurants, parties. There's enough amusement here for anyone. Where does the truth lie? Well, it is true that city laws tend to drive everyone home late at night...

IT IS fashionable in literary circles to snicker at Arthur E. Summerfield, the former Chevrolet dealer who may have produced one of the most publicized cases of poor judgment in the history of criticism. But the Postmaster General merely carried the logic of traditional Post Office procedures to their proper conclusion. Through the years, these procedures have led to the seizure of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Caldwell’s Tobacco Road as obscene literature, and Sholom Aleichem’s Bewitched Tailor, abolitionist pamphlets, discussions of the French Revolution, the Economist (London), and a Russian chess book as political propaganda. Vested with these traditional powers of censorship, Summerfield, a man who admits to reading little fiction, decided that D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover “taken as a whole, is an obscene and filthy work”; literary critics and at least one federal judge decided otherwise. Snickering at this difference in judgment seems like misplaced energy. Rather than examine the critical faculties of Summerfield, it would make more sense to examine the censorship powers of the Post Office...

MEXICO CITY’S Concordia, a restaurant doubling as a playhouse, introduced me to Mexican theatre. As I approached the place, several young people were milling about on the street in front, including a huge ruffian with a black eye. Spotting him, I thought that excursions to the Mexican stage were perhaps not for me. But, suddenly, he pushed open the door and jumped into the restaurant, the others rushing after him. My ruffian and his friends were actors waiting for their cues during the evening’s first performance of Las cosas simples (The Simple Things), a play by a twenty-seven-year-old Mexican, Hector Mendoza. Inside, watching the second performance, I discovered that mistaking actors for spectators was part of the production’s charm. The play was about life in a diner near a college, and the Concordia looked just like that. The actors performed around a luncheon counter and five tables in front, while the audience munched their supper and followed the play from the other twenty-five tables. At times the actors moved into the audience to borrow a napkin or ask for a match — on one occasion, to kiss a bald patron on the head. The Concordia and Las cosas simples, which evoked a Saroyanesque atmosphere, are not entirely typical of Mexican theatre, but they offered a promise that the Mexican stage bristled with vitality. Several weeks of theatre-going have fulfilled that promise...

A potful of hot water gurgled down on us as we waited, caught in a giggling, shoving crowd, outside Washington’s Coffee ‘n Confusion Club, a beatnik haven marking its first Saturday night of business in the nation’s capital. An irate neighbor in an upstairs apartment had tossed out the hot but not boiling water. The sprinkles from above alighting on the sprinkle of beards in the crowd symbolized one of the oddest clashes in the history of this clash-ridden federal town. For several months now, the prudery of Washington has been at war with the rebellion of its youth. The war started when a 24-year-old self-styled poet, William A. Walker, decided to open his club. Following the style of shops in San Francisco’s North Beach, it would sell coffee, pastries, biscuits, cream cheese, bagels and poetry. But Walker and his wife, Ruth, a 22-year-old graduate of Vassar, erred strategically in their first attempt by failing to consult officialdom before opening. Zoning laws promptly descended upon them, and police shut down the shop. In their second attempt, the Walkers, moving gingerly, followed every step of the law. They found an abandoned cellar restaurant at 945 K Street, Northwest, rented it, decorated it, and applied for a license. And then the smug traditions of Washington, sensing that the venture might succeed, began to stir and swat at this pesky, tiny threat of non-conformity...

For many years Howard Fast the Communist obscured our view of Howard Fast the writer. Flaunting contempt at Congress, issuing tracts against "bourgeois, decadent" authors, rallying sympathy for the Soviet Union, he stood between us and his books and kept us from a special insight into the intellect of an American Communist. Fast, who has left the party, may have represented, in some ways, the essence of America's own brand of communism. The clues to understanding him as a Communist lie in understanding him as a writer. Fast's novels had tremendous circulation in the Communist world after World War II and, in fact, enjoyed much popularity here until the press advertised his link with the Communist Party in the late 1940s. His Soviet popularity ended when he left the party in 1957. Although his resignation helped reopen doors to American publishers and movie producers, most of the fiction of his Communist period has remained unread here. We have slipped Fast into our stereotype of the ex-Communist and perfunctorily welcomed him as one more defector who finally has seen the light...

Our merry Mardi-Gras town looks beyond its wrought iron facade. In the musical chair struggle for the New World, Spain held but never kept New Orleans. A Spaniard discovered the land, a Spanish millionaire financed its colonial public buildings, a Spanish ruler laid down the city's first tax, and a Spaniard built the famous French Market. Yet France seemed to leave a greater imprint. In the eyes of the world, New Orleans always has been a bit of France, an outpost of the French language in a barbarian land. Lately the eyes have not seen clearly, for quietly and calmly New Orleans has been recaptured by the descendants of the people who lost it. Since World War II, Latin Americans have moved leisurely into New Orleans. You can not walk past the shops of Canal Street without hearing Spanish. The night clubs of the French Quarter fill up with Latin American businessmen vying with Texas oilmen in a race to spend money. The city's universities are enriched by Latin scholars and doctors studying cures for the medical, economic and engineering ills of their countries...

THE FIRST Inter-American Music Festival opens April 18 in Washington. The festival originally had been scheduled for April of last year, and New Orleans, which aspires to be the modern hub of the Americas, was the site chosen. The selection aimed to blend the old musical tradition of the city with the more recent Latin American hue that has covered the port commercially. But several months before the scheduled opening, with almost all commissioned music completed, officials mysteriously called everything off. And the music has marked time for a year. In calling off the event, the authorities concerned mumbled an odd excuse: the postponement was due to a delay in construction of an outdoor concert stage near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. This was the first inkling most New Orleanians had that anyone ever contemplated building such a stage, and since then there has not been another scrap of information about it. Last December 8, The New York Times, while discussing the upcoming event in Washington, offered a more logical excuse: the festival was postponed last year so that it would not conflict with the program of the Institucion Jose Angel Lamas in Caracas and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. But this, while justifying a change of time, does not explain the change of place. Both the initial announcement and the Times interpretation were too polite to hit the mark. New Orleans did not have a music festival last year because its businessmen, who have spent quantities of money and energy in the last fifteen years to attract Latin American trade, did not feel like wasting either to attract Latin American culture. The roots of the difficulty stretch to the nineteenth century, when New Orleans was the center of French Opera in the United States...

The Jewish War Veterans called on state and national authorities yesterday to join in stamping out "terrorist activities" directed at Jews and their institutions. Benjamin H. Chasin, national commander of the veterans' organization, said Sunday's dynamiting of Jewish centers in Miami, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn., "clearly indicates a conspiracy reaching across state lines." In telegrams to Gov. Frank Clement of Tennessee, Gov. Leroy Collins of Florida and U. S. Attorney General William Rogers, Chasin added: "State and federal agencies should join in stopping what appears to be the beginning of organized, nationwide terrorist activities. Urge you use fullest powers at your command to find those guilty of perpetrating this outrage. Swift and dynamic action is the only deterrent to the state of anarchy. We offer you our fullest support." Anti-semitism has been creeping into the southern segregationist movement for several years. It has ranged from inflammatory literature to the weekend bombings...

The balding, stocky white man pointed a finger excitedly. "You newsmen are missing the real story," he said. "The negroes don't want integration any more than we white folks do. Why don't you talk to them. Pick out any group. You'll find out what I know." The Associated Press followed the suggestion of the man in the angry crowd at Central High, the school kept segregated by Gov. Orval Faubus and the National Guard. But the results did not show what the segregationist said he knew. Nineteen negroes were interviewed, some in their homes, some at their jobs. They were rich and poor, with elegant furniture and threadbare rugs. Some spoke with college accents, others mumbled. A few were grandmothers, two were old maids. One man shoveled dirt for a plumber, another headed a large school...

The patient, his hands melted away by leprosy, laughed: "no, don't take my picture," he said. "I’ll break the camera." Is his ancient joke tragic or funny? As you walk through the corridors of the nation's only leprosarium, you get no answer, only more questions - hazy, disturbing questions about a hospital filled with conflict. You are not even sure if the government - at a cost of $1,600,000 a year - should operate such a hospital. Most of the 300 patients seem to feel there is no need. They feel social fright, not medical sense, has placed them in forced isolation, sometimes for years, sometimes for life. Their battle is not against a germ but against a public attitude that pictures leprosy as terrifying and unclean. They feel more leprosy sufferers would seek earlier treatment if it did not mean forced segregation...

“Ants, mommy, ants” whimpered three-year-old Sonny as he scampered from the front lawn into his home. Sonny's face was twisted into a strange white. His frantic mother searched his little body. On his left foot swelled three ant bites. Twenty-nine hours later, Sonny was dead. The boy had become the rare victim of an allergic reaction to the vicious bite and sting of an imported fire ant. There is a treatment for the reaction. But few doctors even know the Imported fire ant exists. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes the ant as an economic pest, hurting crops, land and birds. Now two Tulane University scientists have recognized it as a medical pest irritating many people sometimes killing. Dr Rodney C. Jung, a specialist In tropical medicine and Dr. Vincent J. Derbes, an allergist, do not believe the imported fire ant makes a huge or unusual medical problem. But until doctors understand the problem they may give wrong, useless treatment...

“NOBODY outside of New Orleans gives a hoot about Ewing Poteet,” claims Ewing Poteet, a smiling, rumpled ex-fiddler, as he goes about his business of trying to whirl the excitement of theatre into the heart of New Orleans. He plies one of the odd American trades. About 1,500 miles from Broadway, Poteet, drama critic for the New Orleans Item, covers the waterfront of theatre — the amateur clubs, the touring companies, the college shows. He covers the stuff few give a hoot about. No one seems to care if Poteet dulls or excites taste for theatre. No one cares if he is foolish or brilliant, if he upholds theatre or sneers at it, if he knows how to write. Yet most Americans turn to writers like Poteet when they want news and comment about theatre. At least 140,000,000 Americans do not read Brooks Atkinson every morning. The words of the New York Times drama critic or his Broadway colleagues make no impression on millions who, by harsh chance, live outside metropolitan New York. The forty-four-year-old Poteet, in his seventh year as Item critic, is more than just his newspaper’s theatre man. Most non-New York critics are the drama-music-movie-radio-television-nightclub-book-phonograph-art editors of their outfits. While Poteet does not dabble in all these beats, he does have an added chore: he spends half his journalistic hours covering the civil courts of New Orleans...

Joel LeBlanc, a 34-year-old quiet, gray-haired intellectual, stared through his glasses at a doctor lighting a cigarette. “Why is he doing that?" Joel wondered. Suddenly he thought he knew. “He hates me. That’s why. He hates me.” Joel saw another doctor smile. “Why is he smiling? Because he hates me too. They all hate me. They want to hurt me.” Joel wanted to hurt them first. He saw a stool “I'll bash that smiler's head in,” Joel decided. He rushed to the stool. Then he stopped short. Have you guessed what was wrong with Joel? He was showing symptoms of schizophrenia — a dread mental disease. If Joel was a real schizophrenic, he probably would be taken to a mental hospital like 350,000 other victims in this country. His chances for full recovery would be slight. But Joel’s symptoms disappeared in less than two hours. He was not a schizophrenic. He was a subject in a dramatic experiment that may point to a cure of the illness that accounts for half of our mental patients and one-quarter of all those who lie in hospital beds...

Mary Smith, a new student nurse, dreamed of the day she would minister tenderly among clean, white beds. In her excited young mind, she could see herself bending over a coughing little boy, her gentle hand pushing back the dampened hair from his forehead. Three years later, in the crisp uniform of a registered nurse, she entered a big city hospital. Now she had her clean white beds and the coughing boy. But when the boy coughed, it was an aide who bent over him. Mary had to scribble on charts, mix medications, prepare hypodermic needles, supervise student nurses. She had no time for nursing in the old sense. What's more, a group of Tulane University researchers have concluded, that's the way Mary wants things to be, even though she may neither realize nor admit this fact...

Twenty years ago, the late Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss), powered by two ideas, stepped into Congress. He had decided to resettle Negroes and save cotton. His first plan, to ship American Negroes to Africa, grabbed headlines all over the nation and made Bilbo the symbol of white supremacy in the South. The symbol grew so large it overshadowed the soundness of his second idea. But out of the plan to save cotton grew four regional research laboratories. These scientific centers now save American farmers, especially those of the South, millions of dollars each year...

Evangelist Billy Graham today said he almost wept when he learned Rep. Douglas Stringfellow (R-Utah) for years told a false story of wartime service. "He lost his character. Now, he has lost his friends. How terrible! How tragic!” the North Carolina minister told 16,000 persons, the largest crowd to attend a crusade sermon here. Graham cited the example of Stringfellow in a sermon on "America's Greatest Sin." The Utah congressman last night tearfully repudiated his story of World War II experiences with the Office of Strategic Services. Stringfellow's admission substantiated an Army Times story that questioned his service record. “The great sin of America is we are putting all our emphasis on the material, the secular, the body and so little on the soul," the evangelist told the crowd that filled Pelican Stadium in the cool, sunny afternoon...

Booker T. Washington School, created in a spirit of goodwill about 36 years ago, has bloomed into a difficult spot in the social landscape of this community. The Supreme Court’s recent decision to outlaw racist segregation in public schools has prompted the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People to renew their effort to make the 17th Avenue building a mixed institution...

For the third consecutive year a group of area teachers will spend part of their summer vacation learning techniques of pushing schools closer to community life, especially the industrial segment. Twenty-seven Middletown and Lemon Township teachers have signed up for Miami University’s community resources workshop this year.

Corporal punishment in Middletown schools is strictly taboo - unless the little "monster" deserves it and his parents approve of the whacking. The school board's official policy on the matter states that bodily punishment can be used when discipline, in the opinion of both parent and teacher, can be secured in no other way. Only during the past year has that been a board policy. Before that, however, it was the practical method in the school system, Acting Superintendent of Schools Hugh Butler points out...

Middletown schools, unlike the overstuffed halls of learning all over the nation, are expected to have more vacant seats in September 1954 than at the beginning of the current school year. This local quirk does not mean that baby production in Middletown fell off greatly during 1949 while it was booming throughout the United States. Less five-year-olds than usual will enter kindergarten in 1954 because of a change in Board of Education bookkeeping...

A local American Legion committee is attempting to enlist public support for a drive that will keep “horror” comic books out of the hands of Middletown youngsters. Donald Alstaetter, chairman of Post 218’s youth activities committee, wants leaders of community organizations to join him in setting up a program that would not allow local merchants to sell juveniles these books...

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday to outlaw racial segregation in the nation's public schools probably will not affect Booker T. Washington School in Middletown, R.H. Snyder, president of the Board of Education, predicted this morning. 'I can't see how the decision would affect the school in any way, "the president stated. 'School boards in Ohio have a right to set districts. The problem is a districting one in Middletown..

Knighthood in Flower in CinemaScope - Chalk up merrie olde englande as a spot that may soon replace the wilds of Wyoming as the center of celluloid popularity. Hollywood recently has dished out alongside a steady diet of westerns, “Ivanhoe ,” “Knights of the Round Table ," and now “Prince Valiant,” which in CinemaScope gains its play at the Colonial Theater this week. The ingredients are clear...

The Movies in Perspective - II - (Second Of A Series) - "Gentes and laitymen , fullstoppers and semicolonials, hybreds lubberds! Eins within a space and a wearyside space it was ere wohned a Mookse” begins a section of a well-known book written in the 20th century. The selection is from James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake.’’ Written in English, the book’s hundreds of pages are composed of a stream of these nearly unintelligible sentences. Joyce attempted to offer the world a picture of a man's mind while the fellow was asleep and dreaming. What would CinemaScope and 3D look like if movies tried to do the same thing that Joyce did about 20 years ago?‍

Seniors at Middletown High and in fact, high schools all over the nation have more scholarship school opportunities than the boys and girls who went to school 10 years ago. Most of the additional funds, Miss Helen Hartman, supervisor of guidance at MHS, explains, comes from industries who are trying to fill the nation’s need for engineers, scientists and managers...

Two elementary school principals recently sat young and stiff and bored at the final session of a Middletown conference of their southwestern Ohio colleagues. The usual atmosphere of such meetings drowsily seeped into the room, causing the fellows to puncture the speeches with comments that were nasty although set in a proper tone... Hugh Butler, acting superintendent of Middletown schools then was introduced to the crowd, which greeted his appearance with soft, fingertip applause...

Fighting For Dog Domination - Mr. and Mrs. Robert Benge, 1236 Ellen Dr., are trying to shove a sturdy, little dog that ‘‘eats like a pig” high on the list of America's favorite canine cuties. The fellow whom they champion is the Pug Dog. At the turn of the century he was the darling of dog society. But the past 50 years have seen the Pomeranian and Pekinese pluck him off that perch in the toy dog or 15-puund class. The Pug last year was 28th in line behind the Beagle, America s favorite dog. That, the Benges believe, is too far back...

Although the minds of men bounce on different levels, all walk and eat in the same physical world. The business of schools is to train youngsters to take the best places their abilities will allow in this world. Most of the information the public gleans from schools concerns the vast body of boys and girls who act in plays or debate important questions or learn stenography or star in basketball or lead cheers or run for office or pass and flunk courses...

Middletown schools are staffed with teachers who have less training but more experience than the average faculty of city systems in Ohio. Differences however, between Middletown and the mean are slight. In fact, for cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 both Middletown's training and experience are a bit above average...

Sixth graders at Garfield School are taught by one-third of the city's staff of male elementary teachers. Since the corps numbers no more than three, however, the boys and girls are receiving the normal volume of instruction. Their teacher J. W. Riley Saylor is a man and thus, through none of his own design, possesses traits that are peculiar in the overwhelingly female elementary teaching set-up...

The face of Middletown glowed under a thin veil of white this morning. Crystals of snow last night fluffed onto the city and instead of loosening into streamlets of dark, dirt-drawing water, they huddled together and clung to the rooftops, trees and the ground. It was not the first snowfall of the season, but it was the first that left some of itself behind...

Burning porch lights will signal the start tomorrow night of Middletown’s fight against muscular dystrophy. Local letter carriers, rewalking their routes at 6 p.m., will stop at all homes where porches are lighted and collect contributions for the campaign against the disease...

Harry E. Hadley and J. Howard Stalker, candidates for positions on the Board of Education, today announced they will support the board when it asks for a tax levy in November. The board said on June 3 that it would need the additional funds to adjust wages and salaries of school personnel...

In April, 1921, a preacher, forced by illness to give up his congregation, came to Middletown High School at the request of Principal Wade E. Miller, his college roommate. The Rev. Jerome C. Schulz was to fill in for a few months, but he stayed for 32 years until the legal retirement age of 70 pushed him out of the schools this June and back into preaching...

Middletown will not let its more than 300 June high school graduates jump blindly into this sometimes difficult world. For years the schools, industries and employment service have been cooperating to give youngsters proper vocational and educational guidance and placement. Middletown high school offers such a program under the direction of Miss Helen Hartman. Her offices, filled with vocational pamphlets, college catalogues, and bulletins from trade, business, art. music and nursing schools, are always available to interested students...

Foolishly, I ate a full meal before Middletown Y-Teens, representing the natives of seven different world areas, shoved films, dances, exhibits, songs, records, favors and food — mostly food — at me during their World Fellowship Party Thursday night at the high school. The girls had spent a month studying the different countries and preparing the activities. They w ere directed by Miss Veda McCray, faculty advisor. Miss McCray suggested that I move through the different rooms and survey world fellowship...

[Stanley Meisler's first published article] It took 22 years, but I finally got up enough nerve to let a pretty nurse, Mary Jane Bishop of Cincinnati, draw one whole pint of dark RED blood from a bulging BLUE vein in my pale WHITE arm. Officials of the Red Cross and the American Legion trapped me yesterday during the first day of the bloodmobile's current visit to Middletown. I was snooping around the Legion Home on a routine check of Red Cross business when Mrs. Charles Fay, scheduling chairman, suggested a tour of the bloodmobile operation...

DESPERATE AND TENSE, the Southern segregationist swings hard, not looking at his club. As he battles for a way of life, he grabs whatever he can, and too often at hand is a weapon tinged with anti-Semitism. The fervent battle against Negro rights in the South has brought with it a subtle but powerful spread of hatred for the Jew. Few segregation groups have policies that include anti-Semitism. Most openly avow the opposite. But their criterion for propaganda is only that it attack the Negro and help keep him separated. This has left the field open for the hate drummer. He has discovered that his literature and speeches, filled with anti-Jewish sentiments, will be used as long as anti-Negro remarks are included too. For example, Robert B. Patterson, executive secretary of the Mississippi Citizens Councils, once issued a list of organizations from which segregationists might obtain reading material. “Some of these groups are anti-Semitic,” wrote Patterson, adding: "However, all of the religious groups, including the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish - have been pushing the anti-segregation issue and it is time for all of us to speak out for separation of the black and white races, regardless of our race or creed." But Patterson’s comments were too blatantly unclever...

THE ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR OF A large metropolitan daily works in so special a field only students too foolish or confident or romantic to be deterred by reality can set out for the job. Even if they dare, students have little to go on. Where do entertainment editors come from? How do they get their jobs? What do they do? Recently while preparing an article more concerned with theater than journalism, I tried to find out something about these men. Questionnaires were sent to entertainment editors on the newspapers of the 24 largest cities next to New York, whose critics were ignored because enough has been written about them and their special function. Cities smaller than San Antonio, Texas, also were eliminated, for their entertainment writers, when they have any, find little theater to worry about. Twenty-one answered...