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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 1962)
4 A "Everyone in Southern Oregon Read The Mail Tribune" Published Daily except Saturday by 33 North Kir t.. Ph. 772-6141 ROBERT W RUHL Editor" HERB GREY Advertising ManaRer GERALD 1 LATHAM. Bus. Mgr. ERIC W ALLEN, JR., Mng. Editor EAHL H ADAMS, City Editor HAHRY CHIPMAN. Tele. Editor RICHARD JEWETT. Sport Editor OLIVE STARCHER, Women's Editor UALt KHiurtaUN, circulation Mgr. An Independent Newinaoer Entered at second clasa matter at Medtnrd, Oregon, under Act ot March 3. 187 SUBSCRIPTION RATES By Mail In Advance. Cony 10c Daily and Sunday 1 year $15.00 uatiy and hunnay a mot. sou Dnilv and Sunday 3 moa. 4 25 Sunday Only One year S4 20 By Carrier In Advance Med ford, Ashland, Central Point. Eagle Point. Jacksonville, Gold Hill. Phoenix. Shady Cove. Rogue Riv er Talent and on motor route Dally and Sunday 1 year 1B 00 Daily and Sunday 1 mo 1.50 Carrie and Dealers Copy 10c All TermCaih inAdvance Offlrlal'Paper of City of Medford OKIrlal Paper of Jackson County United Press International Full Leased Wire U P I Telephoto Newsplcturea MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS Advertising Representative: KELSON ROBERTS & ASSOCI ATES. Offices In New York. Chi cago Detroit. San Francisco, Los Angeles Seattle, Portland. Denver 2 N E WSPAP E R NATIONAL EDITORIAL ASBOciATl5N 3fc Z7 J t gsns HSJa Flight o' Time Medford and Jackson County History from the files of The Vail Tribuna 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. 10 YEARS AGO Aug. 12. 1952 (Tuesday) Two California young wo men arrive here after a 350 mile, month-long trip from Greenville, Calif., on horse back. 20 YEARS AGO Aug. 12, 1942 (Wednesday) Visitors to Camp White ac tivation ceremonies are asked to conserve gasoline and tire rubber by taking buses. From Arthur Perry's "Ye Smudge Pot" column: "The government has let a contract for the building of the world's worst roads for testing tanks and other war equipment. The way to accomplish this nefar ious purpose is lo build a per fect road and then turn log ging trucks loose on It." 30 YEARS AGO Aug. 12, 1932 (Friday) A. Fortncr, a guest of the J. P. Brnys, announces he will return to Medford to live dur ing the winters; says Mcd ford's winters are much more pleasant than those in Ariz ona, where he lives. 40 YEARS AGO Aug. 12. 1922 (Saturday) Fishing in the Rogue river proves so unprofitable that commercial fishermen cease operation for several days. Frost specialist from Los Angeles is expected in Med ford soon to help prepare a pamphlet on the subject for local fruit growers. SO YEARS AGO Aug. 12. 1912 (Monday) The Rev. John Howard, connected with the Medford Furniture and Hardware store, is wounded critically while on a limning trip. W. P. llaker spends three days hunting near Medford. returns with one buck, one 250-pound bear, two steel head trout, 12 small trout, Jive gallons of blackberries and one gallon of huckleber ries; he announces he's going back for more. Whal's Your I.Q.7 Nine or ten correct Is superior; seven or eight is excellent; five of six Is good. 1. Osteology Is the science that I reals ( what? 2. Clara Barton, the foun der of the American Hed Cross, was ofli'n called "The Lady with a Lamp'' true or ialse? 3. What is the name of the American naturalist who was called the Wizard of Horti culture for his developments in California? 4. Is West Point's mascot mule, a goat, or an eagle? 5. How many degrees are there in a right ancle? 6. How many times did Wil liam Jennings Bryan run for the office of President? 7. Is a stereoscope some thing through which to speak, see. or hear? 8. Does sound travel faster at room temperature, or at freezing temperature? I) . Name the Senator and Representative who recently held up U. S. appropriation hills because of their refusal to compromise. II) . Docs a carpenter use a rip saw to cut across the grain, or with the grain? 1. Bones. 2. False. 3. Lu. ther Burbank. 4. Mule. 5. Ninety. 6. Three times. 7. See. 8. Room temperature. 9. Sen. Carl Hayden and Rep- Clir I ence Cannon. 10. In Ihe direc tion of the grain. ASSOCIATION SUNDAY, AUGUST 12. 1962 High School Plans Three factors played a major role in the Med ford school board's decision to operate only one high school a new one in the district: 1. The need. The present high school is crowded, and this year be instituted to help handle the increased num ber of students. 2. The board's belief tional program should thing, the educational program should continue to be improved to meet growing needs. 3. The desire for the most economical pro gram in the long run. "THERE really is no question about the need. By 1965, when the new high school is scheduled to open, facilities in the present structure will be extremely over crowded, with an estimated 2,077 students. Present facilities actually will be crowd ed this fall. Preliminary planning for the new high school probably will be completed by late this year; pre paring working drawings will take almost a year, and construction will take almost V- years. Superintendent Dr. Leonard B. Mayfield has observed that the trend in secondary education is to offer opportunity beyond a basic or mini mum program. The Medford district has been providing such an opportunity an opportunity which itself probably will become a minimum program in the future as new demands arise. "yHIS program provides for the individual dif- ferences of students, a vital factor in making an educational program a quality one. Such a program, however, cannot be eco nomically justified in a high school of 1,000 to 1,500 students. As Dr. Mayfield noted: "Even with 1,500 s.tudents, we are only now reaching the point where we can implement and improve our program." ' A class, for example, offering advanced sci ence or mathematics is not economically or ed ucationally justified if 5 to 10 students enroll from a high school of 1,000 to 1,500 students. However, if 15 to 20 students enroll from a high school housing 2,000 to 2,500 students, the num ber of hours devoted to class preparation by the teacher and the classroom time can be economic ally justified. Offering: more than the minimum requires special classes designed desires of the students, carefully selected instructors," Mayfield said. THIS is the basic thinking behind the decision fni a TiQr ciinrln hinrl. oplinnl alihrniirli a hun. high-school system, and of the enriched program, bevevai alternatives were considered. Expanding present facilities was one possi bility. But this was considered impractical be cause expansion on the present site would bring it below state standards, unless additional property in the vicity of the high school was purchased. Perhaps the biggest question facing'the board was what to do with the present structure if a new single high school were built. Ihe possibility of selling it was eliminated m the early discussion stages, since there would be virtually no return on the Using the structure to community college program was considered, but the idea was set aside because development of a community college program in this area appeared to be progressing too slowly. THE program decided upon provides for mak intr tlm l ii'wmi t ut ii iitt urn nt r i innint1 li IitIi AilJ HIV. 'H.i'V Ilk IH1 IIV IHI V HIM; CI JHIllYM JMlll school, relieving crowded conditions in the two present junior highs and postponing construction of a new junior high. Space made available in the two present jun ior highs could be used for self-contained ele mentary school units, relieving conditions on that level and postponing some elementary classroom construction for a few more years. The present structure aiso will continue to house the high school shop facilities, which will serve as a high school annex. This delays a major expense at the new high school plant site. OLACK Tornado sports fans should be grati fied at the board's decision, for it will permit a continuation even, perhaps, a strengthening of the school's fine athletic tradition, which could have suffered if the number of potential athletes had been in effect cut in half by the operation of two high schools. The new school will have practice fields, and for football games the stadium at the present site will be utilized. Special education classes will be moved to the present high school structure, which also will accommodate adult education classes. DY USING the existing structure in this way, it will remain an asset to the school district and will be available for future high school use should the need arise. Or, if development war rants it, the building still could be considered for community college or vocational school use. The program decided on is not perfect, as the school board and administration would be the first ones to concede. It is subject to certain criti cisms such as the fact that opportunities for extra-curricular activities might be not as wide spread as in a smaller school. But the plan is the most economically feasible one the board has found in a year and a half of discussion. It provides for the expansion of the educational program now offered to help meet the demands of the future, and it provides for the best utilization of the present structure. E.H.A. an eight-period clay will that a quality educa not be curtailed; if any to meet the needs and and "well-prepared and its resultant curtailment was discussed at length. capital investment. form the nucleus of a "These Foreign Tour Are Nice, But I Mis Those Non-Political Trips" In the Day's News By FRANK JENKINS Let's talk about words to day. Words are fascinating things. These, for example, by Anna Hempstead Branch, in her Songs for My Mother: "God wove a web of loveli ness, "Of clouds and stars and birds, "But made not anything at all "So beautiful as words." AND these penned by the immortal George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, in his Don Juan: "Words are things, and a small drop of ink, "Falling like dew upon a thought, produces "That which makes thous ands, perhaps millions, think." HOW do words gel started? Let's take the case of the relatively modern, slightly slangy, word POSH. United Press International, which uses a lot of words and therefore should be an au thority of sorts, says it was coined more than a century ago aboard a P & O Orient liner from the first letters of the first four words in the Sailors Guide: "Port, Out bound; Starboard, Homeward bound." Like so: PO S H. Webster, however, doesn't recognize POSH as a word even in the New Twentieth Century dictionary, published only seven years ago. WHAT does POSH mean to you? I put that question to our head proofreader, who deals in words, and she said it sug gests to her something SOPHISTICATED like the Kennedy party at which sev eral of the immaculately clad guests fell into the swimming pool. I LISTENED in Ihe olhcr day on a discussion of a luncheon at which pctits fours (pronounced pettcet four) had been served. Web ster recognizes "pctits fours" as an English term derived from the French and defines Mountains, 'Progress By ERIC SEVAREID Aspen, Colorado - A writer who lugs his typwriter on his vacation is not necessarily least not in the first week or two of t lie disor dered collapse common to so niHiiy of us in this goncr.i I Ion w h o Srvarrld have lost Ihe art of ordered relaxation. The writer pays Ihe extra weight charge for his machine but the reader is apt to pay for a short weight package. In this val ley Ihe air is thin at 8.000 livt and while the body feels heavy, first thoughts have a quatily ot weightlessness. I am obliged to plead a spe cial guilt; sentiment obscures clarity for me. 1 have been in love Willi the American West all my life and absence has only made the heart grow foolishly fonder. I can un derstand the faults of the West but I cannot really feel them. I persist in thinking of the West as the typical Amor lea and proof to the contrary from a thousand historians and demographers never dis lodges tins feeling in the blood. I cor.liiHte to doubt thiil A meneans who have nev er felt the spirit of the West can cer feel Ihe deepest spir it of America, and I have to hope 1 am fatuously wrong, 1 suppose boyhood in a small western town can nev er he overcome. One spends half a lifetime trying, In a i " .r MEDFORD MAIL it as "Little spongecakes or poundcakes, usually orna mentally iced." The "pelits" offers no prob lem. It is the plural (mascu line) of the French word meaning "little). But what about the "fours?" Where does that come in? What docs it mean? A little research in your French dictionary will pro vide the answer. "Four" is a French word meaning "oven." So the literal mean ing of "petits fours" is "little ovens." That, as Orphan Annie is fond of saying, "figgers." It indicates, presumably, that in France, at least at the time when petits fours were in vented, these "little sponge cakes or poundcakes" were baked in little ovens. r"iHAT suggests another word whose derivation is unclear plus fours. Webster defines plus fours as "a style of loose knickerbockers, very long and baggy at the knees, worn in sports, such as golf." He fails to add that in these modern days no golfer would be caught dead in a pair of plus fours. That would dale him, quite definitely - and no elderly golfer wants to be dated.' So Where did "plus fours" get started back in the prehis toric days when they were worn. In this case, research in your French dictionary will offer no tips. In French, "plus fours" means MORE OVENS. STILL, as elderly golfers with good memories will probably recall, the darned things WERE HOT, as they were apt in those days to be made of Scotch tweed about a quarter of an inch thick nothing to be worn when the temperature soars up toward 100. So maybe they did impress their wearers as "more ovens." 4 NYWAY " The study of words and their origins and derivations is interesting. to conclude that the effort was probably a mistake, a con fusion In the spirit. It leads to embarrassing inconsisten cies. The soot of the streets of New York offends and an gels me; when I walk the Main st. of Aspen the billow ing dust from the passing jeeps and horses smells like perfume in my prejudiced nostrils. Last week in the Madison avenue rush hour my taxi driver paused over long at the green light to exchange conversational chaff with a colleague whose cab was alongside, and 1 silently cursed. Last night in Aspen I encased a dust covered j' Taxi" to ride from Main st. out to my lodgings by the Roaring Fork river. At the lighted drug store the sun i brow ned driver braked, got out. returned after a while ! and said, "I noticed Mrs. ' in there. 1 just bought a horse her daughter wanted very , badly and I thought I better i find out how things were 'with the little girl." I didn't I curse, silently or otherwise: j It seemed right and natural I to me. But the privilege of the public prints should not, per haps, exlend to private con fessionals. By training and contract writers of my ilk are engaged to apply their ink at the junctions where Ihe personal meets and gen eral, at the growing points of our collective lite, Colo r.idans have their public prob lems, and if others share my feeling that this magnificent region exists as a kind of Irreplaceable national trust TRIBUNE. MEDFORD, OREGON Matter of Fact bv jo..ph (el New York Herald THE SOLDIER-MILITANT (Joseph Aliop is on vaca tion. During hit absence hit column will be written by reporter! expert in nation al and international af fairs.) By SANCHE de GRAMONT Algiers - French military intelligence reports in Alger ia indicate that high on the young country's priority list is the buildup of its armed strength. Item: 15 Soviet MIG jet fighters are due to arrive this month in Algeria, along with trained flying and ground crews of 290 men. The men and the planes are now based in Tripoli, Lybia, and will probably move to the military air base of Blida, 30 miles south of Algiers, which is being evacuated by the French. Item: 10 Soviet T-34 tanks based in Morocco during the Algerian war have been mov ed into abandoned French bases in western Algeria with other heavy equipment, in cluding field guns and anti aircraft guns and cannon. Economic stagnation and political crisis have thus far drawn attention away from Algeria's unique military sit uation: in the opinion of French officers, it has the best - trained and best equipped military establish ment of any African or Arab country. "All they need is a navy, and they'll probably have that soon, thanks to our military aid," a French colonel said. rPHE ALGERIAN army has -I- more than 60,000 men. Unlike the Egyptian army, which was routed by the Is raelis, the Algerians have shown their military skill against the French. Most of the men are veterans of guer rilla fighting, which demands ingenuity, courage, and un believable physical stamina. Today, this army suffers from a lack of unified com mand. The country is divided into six regions called "wila yas," each with its local com mander who jealously guards an authority won in battle. It is an army without gen erals, and already the colonels are lobbying for their stars. It is also an army beset by bitterness between the men of the "interior" who carried the brunt of the fighting and the general staff in Tunisia and Morocco. It is unfair to say that the army of the "exterior" did not take part in the fighting, for the borders were constant ly infiltrated by fresh troops. The bitterness stems more from the general staff deci sion not lo use their heavy equipment so that it could be brought into Algeria in tact as a symbol of victory. Thus, the MIGs, the can non, and the tanks were kept secretly outside Algeria to form the nucleus of Al geria's peacetime army. Po litical leaders said it would be a "waste" to use them against the French. This is a country where manpower comes more easily than weap ons. The army's favorite politi cal leader is Ahmed Ben Bel la, and the affection is mu- and Our as Switzerland s e 1 e vated calm is a kind of internation al trust for all Europeans then some of these problems concern all Americans as trustees. One of the problems of these mountain dwellers is essentially the same as the problem now engaging the passions of many alarmed groups of city dwellers, east and west. It is to preserve as much environment of space and beauty as we pos sibly can, in Ihe name of our children and grandchildren, to prevent the total mutila tion of the face of this Amer ican earth. To speak of crowd ing commercialization of the immense West may seem strange to Americans of the i East. Indeed as one flies over the Rockies at high altitude ; his dominant impression is I one of vast emptiness. ! On closer ground level ob I servation the impression al i ters. As only a few can live j on the sands of our deserts, so only a few can live on i Ihe steep sides of these rug j ged mountains. The residen tial and exploitive opportuni j ties lie in the very narrow i valleys whose length and ' number are unexpandible. Heavy huying pressures come from commercial combines, and in this particular county public spirited persons are working hard and hastily for ordinances and lax deducti ble trust arrangements to save all possible mead.iw ; land for public parks, camp ing and fishing grounds. One group of leading citizens tense, to ejvercome It, only Altop Tribune Syndicate tual. It is perhaps a tribute to French military training that both Ben Bella and his chief rival, Mohammed Boud iaf, passed their formative periods as non - corns and rose to the rank of master sergeant in the French army. A few days ago, Ben Bella told a French general who was paying a courtesy call in Algiers that one of the most memorable days of his life was in Rome in 1944, when Gen. de Gaulle person ally pinned the coveted Me daille Militaire on his shirt. The citation that came with the medal said in part that Ben Bella had saved the life of his wounded captain at Monte Cassino, carrying him 1,500 yards on his back across the lines. Ben Bella still car ries the medal on his per son, ' THE PRINCIPAL novelty of his political thinking is the use he wishes to make of the army. His rivals accuse him of being the army's tool. And yet he has taken politi cal control of the country without the army's help. He was invited to Algiers; he did not have to conquer the city. Ben Bella is an unabashed militarist. He wants to keep and even to increase the strong military instrument the country has. He wants no demobilization. He repeated ly tells the crowds that the army is the "life force" of the country, that it must pro vide the leadership for na tional renewal. If he can be compared with Castro, it is largely because of his con ception of the people's army, whose duties are varied: in the under - administrated hinterland, the army would replace absent civil servants, teachers, and doctors, just as the French army wore many hats during its program of "pacification." The army, in Ben Bella's view, would also give Al geria the position of Afri can and Arab leadership he secretly cherishes. There are plans for train ing camps in Algeria for oth er revolutionary African movements. The Angolan reb els who previously went to Tunisia for training will soon find Algeria inviting them for military and political in doctrination. The Algerian guerrilla schools will draw heavily on the methods of similar schools behind the iron curtain and in Red China where the Al gerian rebels themselves were trained. Ben Bella knows that the French have left him one of Africa's wealthiest nations. He is willing to abide by the Evian agreements in ex change for continued French aid, since this will leave him free to seek a favored posi tion among African leaders. As principal guardian of one of the few genuine peo ple's revolutions, he sees the soldier - militant: the man who combines the qualities of a combat veteran, a po litical commissar, and a tech nician. It will be interesting to observe the part the army plays in Algeria's first elec tions this September. America here has been known to sneak out of their modern, picture window homes and saw down highway billboards in the dark of night a revival of frontier vigilanism in the name of esthetics! These fights can be lost, one by one, until all is gone. Nothing could be more de pressing than to hear from Cervi's provocative "Rocky Mountain Journal" that old Central City with its famous opera house is fraying at the edges with the blight of creeping honkytonkism. What is dawning upon peo ple here too, it seems to me, is the realization that "prog ress" can no longer be de fined only in the traditional American sense of change, of building and booming. It must now also be defined to mean preservation and pre vention of change, as it has meant in England for many years past. The Denver Post blazons Ihe words "Rocky Mountain Empire" on every front page but no doubt it means an empire of power and wealth and population. But the visi tor can wish at least to see an empire of space and calm, of natural beauty and human dignity. Such an empire in the middle of an increasing ly crowded and ugly Ameri ca could he the pride and the frequent refuge for all of us, the chalice in which to hold in perpetuity the Holy Grail of the oldest, the truest American spirit. (Distributed 1962 by The Hell Syndicate. Inc.) IAU Rights Reserved) Washington Report By William (cl United Feature Syndicate Washington The curiously hard problem for the whole top Republican field for 1964 ,7S?tSb.'i-i Presidential possibilities 1 1 may be stated Li if in a single i " im sen'ence: Each ,; Jfc must show he j I can survive e-yi''j the mere pres- em Deiore ne .LJ can even be jj Sin to post his name as a true aspirant for the big prize of the future. Each must prove that he can walk before he can claim to run. Each must meet and win the harsh trial heats of 1962 before he can offer him self for the great payoff race of 1964. Each, in a word, has got to establish that he is master in the houes of his own state be fore he can even begin to talk of being the elected master of the United States of America. WITHIN this context of the realities, all oossible con tenders can as yet move for ward only in small, creeping steps. Circumstance has now enabled George Romney, the former automobile indus trialist, to be the first of the three main 1964 "possibles" to pass the first small but vital hurdle on the long, long road to the top. This Romney has done by well outdistancing his Demo cratic rival for the Michigan governorship. Democratic Gov. John Swainson, in Michigan's party primaries. Romney's 4 to 3 edge in vote- pulling over Swainson in this "popularity contest" does not, of course, necessarily imply his election in Novem ber. It means at the very least, however, that he has given clear evidence that the name of this amateur in politics has a real and wholly discern ible, and hereafter undeni able, general drawing power. A famous anecdote tells of a Briton who, when asked what he had done during the great war, replied with hon est pride: "Sir, I survived. Of the first battle in a long war, Romney can fairly say not only that he has survived but that he has survived most impressively, and most use fully to the future of George Romney. Drummond Reports (Walter Lippmann is on vacation. Roscoe Drummond reports from Washington in his absence.) (c) 1962 New York Herald Tribune Inc. THE CONTINENT OF CHISIS Buenos Aires At the very moment when the Alli ance tor Progress holds some nickering hope thai tilings can be oetter, a deepening crisis is being written across the whole face of the Western hemisphere. The "crisis continent" is not somewhere else; it is the American continent here at home, trom the Rio Grande border to the tip of Argentina and Peru. T he greatest source of danger to tne free world is not in Africa or in Asia, however doubtful these areas may be; it is in the Western hemisphere. The United States is wrap ped up in it inescapably lor better or for worse in its dangers, in its potentials, in the heroic, tardy, prudent, and uncertain effort called the Alliance for Progress. lis purpose: to turn eco nomic despair into hope be for economic despair turns Latin America into nearly to tal turmoil. Calamity is not certain, but success is far from assured. At this stage there are danger signals everywhere 1 have been in Peru. Chile. Argen tina, and Brazil, which em brace nine-tenths of the con tinent and more than half of its exploding population of 214,000,000 people. T DO NOT mean that the picture is all dark, that all is lost. It is still within reach of a massive mutual effort to speed economic growth and I begin to close the gap between I concentrated wealth and wide spread misery before it is too j late. But the race between a 'better life and restless frus t tration has been going on for a long time and frustration is j leading by several long laps. ! In trying to look at the j whole face of the hemisphere ! as it slowly, hopefully begins this effort, here's the sum of the forces that makes its suc cess so imperative, its failure ! so tragic: j Asset The past decade ; has brought a steady disap pearance of the old-style dy nastic and military dictator ships. Only three remain Taraguay. Haiti, Nicaragua. , Added to them is the repres- sive out-thrusting Soviet-ori-I entated Communist dictator ! ship of Kidel Castro. There are many shortcomings in the i S. White riiHIS is-the prudent way of -- looking at the Michigan result. For if it be true that one swallow does not maka a summer, it is surely trua that one summer primary does not make a governor or a future president. All tha same, caution can be over done. And the Michigan Re publicans, and the Republi cans generally, are by no means foolish in their re joicing at what Romney has thus far done in Michigan. He has shown that Re publicanism - or at any rata his kind of Republicanism -is in a most healthy condi tion in so key a state as Mich igan. This is the very stale where so long the excessively "liberal" Democratic party ol such as Mennen Williams and Walter Reuther of the CIO has orbited triumphantly out into the wild pink yonder from the launching pads formed of the trained legions of labor political action com mittees. (For the benefit of the liberal-minded, there is no slightest suggestion here that Williams, Reuther and com pany are not thoroughly good Americans. There is only a pained suggestion that mun dane things like budgets fara ill in their enthusiastically reformist hands.) 4 ND Romney has also gain "ed g certain subtle but real psychological edge over Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller by the very fact that he has survived so clear ly in his first test. Though Nixon won his pri mary in California, it was by no such happy margin. And he is now bitterly engaged in a general election campaign with Democratic Gov. Pat Brown amid wide indications that he is underdog. Rocke feller, who is up for re-election in New York, is as yet to go to bat this year in any important way, though his renomination is, of course, foregone. It would be quite absurd to say that in these early days Romney has surpassed these two comparative veter ans in the real race - tha race for the presidency in 1964. But it is entirely sound to say that in this first go round he has made them sit up and take more than dua notice. new regimes, but this victory over most of the Latin Amer ican dictatorships is a signif icant step forward and proof of the passion for freedom of all Latin American peoples. Obstacle The new Latin American democracies are the targets of terrific social tensions and political stress before they're ready. In Ar gentina and Brazil the mili tary have asserted substantial power and in Peru the new junta is dominant. The liberal Bctancourt gov ernment in Venezuela is be ing battered from left and right. The conservative Ales sandri government in Chile is fighting for its life against the growing power of the ex treme left. None of the new democracies is secure. Obstacle Weak and em battled governments, seeking to make democracy work, face most formidable economic and social problems mount ing inflation, rising prices, de clining export income. Condi tions are getting worse, not better. Per capita income has ceased to grow in nearly ev ery Latin American country and dropping in some. Tha result is economic stagnation and ominous mass discontent. Obstacle If the Allianco for Progress is not merely going to enrich further the already wealthy, then great social reforms are widely needed. Those who want to maintain completely the stat us quo will resist these re forms and often the govern ments are largely controlled by those who want little change. TN THE face of these fan- tastically formidable ob stacles, can the Alliance suc ceed adequately and in time? Candidly, no one really knows. One thing is clear: this is a momentous struggle against poverty and dictatorship. If the under-privileged, under paid, long harassed people of Latin America cannot find a way to achieve economic hope by democratic means, thev will demand it at any politi cal cost and accept any politi cal system they think will benefit their lot. The only visible conse quences of failure by Ihe Alii ance for Progress are wide spread Communist dictator ship or widespread military dictatorship or both.
