Oregon daily emerald., July 18, 1973, Page 5, Image 5

-Editorial
Vote for city budget; kindergartens
A crucial Eugene school property tax
rate budget election faces city voters on
Thursday. This proposal must be ap
proved. The city budget which provides for
the public schools and city services has
been reduced over $500,000 since May 7
when it was first put before the voters and
defeated.
The Kindergarten levy which ac
companies it on another initiative must
also pass if this city is to have an adequate
program for its pre-school students.
University students registered in
Eugene should vote in this election
because they share the responsibility for
their community, and help pay taxes spent
on the city budget and schools.
Unless you live in the dorms a slice of
each month’s rent is going for property tax
and there are many in the University
community who own their own homes.
Many University families have children
who attend public schools and all Eugene
residents benefit from public services that
the city provides.
The addition of a police crime task force,
with five full time members; and ad
ditional fire department funding for two
badly needed stations which will be
valuable assets to the community should
not hinder voters from passing the levys.
Whether the city budget measure wins
or loses, the property tax-rate for
residents of Eugene will drop considerably
below last year’s level. Property owners
will receive tax relief from both victory
and defeat, but if the proposals fail the
school system and thousands of students
will suffer.
The projected reduction in city budget
comes from an increase from 22 to 30
percent in state aid for schools. If the
school levy fails, the system will suffer a
$17.5 million reduction in the amount it can
raise to balance its budget for the 1973-74
year.
Six times, since May of 1968, proposals to
fund tax-supported pre-school programs
have been brought before the voters and
been defeated.
The proposal for kindergartens is
$261,000 less than that presented to voters
on May 7. The public program, if passed,
would mean the elimination of all PTA
sponsored kindergartens and the end of a
$15 to $20 tuition fee charged each month.
The school levy and initiative for
publicly funded kindergartens must
receive full voter funding approval.
Voters will not lose on Thursday in terms
of money but if the measures are defeated,
the school system and Eugene will suffer.
Commentary—
Middle East oil key to U.S., Russian relations
By ARNOLD TOYNBEE
The meeting in the United States, from
June 18 to 25, 1973, between President
Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist
Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, seems
to have led to a substantial advance in the
rapprochement between them. Both men
could be swept away, and in any event will
eventually disappear from the scene, but
the signs are that they command assent in
both countries, and, if this is the truth, the
rapprochement between the two super
powers may be expected to grow closer
and to endure in so far as the relations
between the Soviet Union and the United
States are under the control of the two
parties themselves. The danger is that
their present efforts to cooperate with
each other peacefully and constructively
might be wrecked by explosions in regions
that are not under the sovereignty of either
of them, but in which both powers are
implicated.
Before August 1914, Britain and Ger
many had eased the tension between them
(so the British, at any rate, believed) by
reaching agreement over reversionary
claims to the Portuguese possessions in
Africa and over the allocation of railway
zones in the Ottoman Empire, but peace
between Britain and Germany was
destroyed by an explosion in southeastern
Europe. The Hapsburg monarchy came to
blows with Serbia, and Britain and Ger
many found themselves at war with each
other. In 1914, Southeastern Europe was
the world’s chief danger spot; in 1973 it is
the Middle East. An explosion in the
Middle East might hurl the United States
and the Soviet Union into war with each
other against their wills.
When the brief passage on the Middle
East in the communique of June 25 is read
together with the corresponding passage
in Brezhnev’s televised broadcast of June
24, it looks as if, the Brezhnev-Nixon talks,
no appreciable advance was made
towards an agreement for positive con
certed action for achieving peace between
the Arabs and Israel. At any rate, it is
clear that Brezhnev’s discussion of the
Middle East with President Nixon has left
Brezhnev still acutely anxious on this
score.
Brezhnev’s anxiety is shared by
President Bourguiba, of Tunisia; by
Elmer Bennett, assistant director of the
U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness;
and by Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), the
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.
Bennett disclosed his anxiety in ad
dressing an energy symposium on April
11; Sen. Fulbright disclosed his anxiety (it
was the same as Bennett’s) in a speech in
the Senate on May 31. The contingency
against which these two highly responsible
American authorities gave warning was
the possibility, foreseen by them, that the
United States might try to solve its
problem of shortage of oil by conquering
some of the oil-rich Arab states.
Sen. Fulbright pointed out that these
countries are militarily defenseless, and
that the United States might be able to
conquer them without needing to send an
American expeditionary force. “Militarily
potent surrogates” are, he said,
“available,” and he named Iran and
Israel.
The state department immediately
declared that the present United States
administration has no intention whatever
of using force to secure an adequate oil
supply from the Middle East. The
credibility of this denial is surely fortified
by the recent announcement that the
United States is giving Phantom planes to
Saudi Arabia and to Kuwait. The
possibility foreseen by Sen. Fulbright and
by Bennett is sensational, but this does not
mean that it can be written off as if it were
just a nightmare fantasy. Evidently both
men fear that the administration might be
overborne by an irresistible popular in
sistence on seizing the oil that the
American people want, by criminal action
that could precipitate a nuclear world war.
This fear is not unrealistic. The oil
shortage in the United States threatens to
paralyze activities that, for perhaps a
majority of present-day Americans, are
the essence of the American way of life.
American cars might cease to move;
American houses might cease to be heated
in the winter and air-conditioned in the
summer. If this were to happen, it is not
inconceivable that it might stampede the
American people into taking perilous
action. It is unlikely that the average
standard of morality in the United States is
higher than it is in the White House.
Bennett’s and Sen. Fulbright’s intention
was not, of course, to incite; it was just the
opposite — it was to deter. Yet rumors
bred by fear breed fear in their turn. The
mere mention of these lurid possibilities
has scared the world, and in particular of
course the Arabs. Hitherto, the
geographical range of the current warfare
in the Middle East has been confined
within the area between the Suez Canal
and the northern end of the Lebanese
Republic. The possibility that it might
spread as far afield as the Persian Gulf is
deeply disquieting.
In March there were rumors that
Israel’s military operations had been
extended equally far afield in another
direction. The Israelis were said to have
occupied some uninhabited islands that
command the straits of Bab-Al-Mandab at
the southern end of the Red Sea, where it
joins the Indian Ocean. They are also said
to have leased a strategic piece of African
coast from Ethiopia. The Israeli and
Ethiopian governments have denied these
allegations, and no evidence for the truth
of the allegations has been presented. Yet
it would be useless for Israel to obtain
assurance of free passage through the
straits of Tiran — at the northern end of
the Red Sea — if her sea-route between
Eilat and the Indian Ocean could be
blocked at the southern end. The seizure
would be a logical sequel to the seizure of
Sharm-es-Sheikh, commanding the straits
of Tiran, which has been an accomplished
fact since 1967.
If Israel did, one day, seize the naval and
military command of the mouth of the Red
Sea and of the Arab oil states along the
shores of the Persian Gulf, this would give
Israel’s patron, the United States, a
decisive advantage over the Soviet Union
throughout the Middle East. That would
upset the balance of power between the
two superpowers in the United States’
favor; and that in turn would create an
acute danger of a direct collision between
the two. In such a situation the Soviet
government might conclude that it was
being compelled to choose between going
to war with the United States and allowing
itself to fall under U.S. domination.
No wonder that Brezhnev’s anxiety
about the Middle East is still acute. In his
broadcast on June 24 he took pains to make
it clear that he feels the situation to be so
serious that neither the Soviet Union nor
the United States can afford any longer to
indulge in partisanship. He proffered
security to Israel, besides asking for the
restoration of the legitimate rights of the
Arabs. The most significant point in his
statement was that a stable peace in the
Middle East is important not only for the
Middle East itself, but “for the main
tenance of universal peace.” In general,
he declared that the power and prestige of
the two superpowers do not give them any
special privileges, but “do invest them
with special responsibility for the destinies
of universal peace and preventing war.”
This was well said. An acid test of the
rapprochement between the Soviet Union
and the United States is the question
whether it is going to bring a genuine and
enduring peace to the Middle East.
Arnold Toynbee is a columnist for The
London Observer.
C. 1973 The London Observer.
Letters
High Kuku
No need to bicker in particular with
Chris Houglum’s assessment of James
Broughton’s poetry as “cheerfully second
rate.” What intrigues me is many readers,
especially reviewers and critics in “the
solemn halls of Academe,” either treat
with condescension or dismiss out-of-hand
works of art that are fun, risible, buoyant.
And that means dismissing many more
poets than just Broughton. Lew Welch, in a
review of Philip Whalen’s On Bear’s Head,
laments:
Some of our more conservative
readers and writers of poetry
maintain he’s only silly
and flippant. Apparently they
want to believe that it must
be painful and dull or it
can’t be deep. Gloom.
What a shame these people
have missed the hundreds of years
of laughter and teachings of Zen
Lunatics, Idiot Savants, DaDa...
Laughter and zany wit
can cut through so much
grease so fast.
Aptly, I was talking with Broughton
about just this “problem” before the show
— his poetry has never tod the critical
admiration I think it deserves, though
many more readers love it than the
newspapers and quarterlies know about.
(And Broughton, Whalen, Welch belong to
the class of poets who are loved for years
before they’re acclaimed.) In our talk I
said I thought Alan Watts’ introduction to
High Kukus the most useful, pointed
comment on him, and he heartily agreed.
Here’s the point (or, This Is It):
In the contemplation of
lofty themes most people
are serious, though not
always sincere, Broughton,
however, is always sincere
but hardly ever serious.
Indeed, serious is a
questionable virtue: it
is gravity rather than
levity, and it was, again,
that devout Catholic,
Chesterton, who maintained
that the angels fly because
they take themselves lightly.
And, in company with
the angels, Broughton laughs
with God rather than
at him.
Before closing with a private homage to
Broughton and his film High Kukus, I
would like to question ever using the word
“second-rate” — imagine the revolution
that would take place if no one ever, ever
said or thought “second-rate”!
Everything first-rate by its own standard!
That’s too much to ask, I know, so in the
meantime, in Broughton’s words;
That’s just your opinion,
said the Pterodactyl,
I think I’m gorgeous.
And now here’simy bow to Broughton:
High Kuku After Seeing High Kukus
Maybe I’m dirty, impure & stagnant,
said the Puddle,
but maybe I’m a Chalice of Light!
BiP Deener