Volume 7 - Issue 3

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Volume seven, number three March 25, 19741 2

Contents 2

Comment: Bored? Try law., In beat in England

Comment Bored? Try law.

"I taught our next President, Gerald Ford," said Myres Smith McDougal, Sterling Professor of Law, "and 6 A death in the Old Family Governor William Scranton, who I thought would be President. Also 10 We interrupt our regular proJustices Potter Stewart and Byron gramming to present: The Case of White, and Nicholas Katzenbach. the Personal Documentary Those two were my brightestWhite and Katzenbach.'' McDougal 12 Flying the black flag of himself wore a green printer's visor, and his eyes, almost blind from two detached retina operations, peered through thick-lensed glasses. "Ford wa.s a good B-plus student," he said of the Editor: Vice President. "He's a lot smarter Stuart Rohrer than people think. I just wish he Managing Editor: would keep his mouth shut."

Alan Strasser Myres Smith McDougal sat in an Associate Editors: office that felt as if it belonged in Steve Ballou Mississippi a long time ago. The atDan Denton mosphere, like McDougal's accent, Jane Fellner had a refined Southern tinge. Books, Tammy Jacoby articles, documents and reports were Contributing Editors: piled in disarray on desktops, Robin Errecarte against walls, in bookshelves and in Michael Jacobson front of windows until they almost Martha Scarf shut out the light. The office had the Dave Sleeper dusty yet not dusty feel of an an· Steve Sternbach tique shop whose furniture remains Design: as strong as the day it was built.

Jim Liberman McDougal sat amidst the gloom and Advertising: legal clutter preparing for his last term as a teacher of "Public Order in Lee Hanson the World Community" -a system Jon Hertz of thought known throughout the Staff: world as McDougal International CarolEliel Law. Bernard Johnson In his 40 years of teaching, Brenda Kelly McDougal has written five books on MarlaSchay international law, two books on propAnnSpnmt erty law, and countless articles. Two Publisher: of his latest books deal with the newRonaldRoel Credits: born fields of undersea and outer· Dan Denton: cover, pages 6, 7, 8 space law.

Carol El.iel: page 5 Myres McDougal parted with his P.E. Markman: page 12 memories gingerly, almost as if he Anne Sprunt: pages 2, 5 were afraid he was imposing them.

The son of a country doctor, he was The New J ounuJl is published by The born in 1906 in Burton, Miss.-a town so small that the post office has New Journal at Yale, Inc., 3432 Yale disappeared. In 1922 he entered the Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, University of Mississippi at Oxford. and is printed at Trumbull Printing Faulkner country.

Co. in Trumbull, Conn. Published "I saw Faulkner often back then," free to theYa1e community. For all said McDougal, remembering his unothers, subscription rate $5.00 per dergraduate days. "He was someyear. Copyright 0 1974 by The New what older than I, and when I atJournal at Yale, Inc., a non-profit tended Ole Miss he held the position corporation. Phone 776-9989 or of University Postmaster. And I can 432-6404. tell you this-he was a bad post· master, just terrible. He was alleged The New Journal wisMs to extend to say to students, 'Why the hell do special thanks to Leon Lipson. Yale I have to get your mail?' and then Audio-Visual Center, and Matt not get it. I took freshman English Coles. from an .in.structor who was said to have flunked Faulkner. Faulkner never participated in the major liter· ary clubs, and he had brothers who were a lot more popular, good ath3 Speaking of dissidents

Volume seven, number three

Rhodes Scholarship to study law at Oxford, England. Then, after teaching at the University of Illinois for three years, he moved to the Yale Law School, where he thought he was to work in business law with Professor William 0. Douglas. But Abe Fortas, who had worked previously with Douglas, arrived to fill that position, so McDougal was forced into land law-and ended up liking it. He denied that his family's misfortunes in land dealings had anything to do with his choice.

One thing perplexed him about Northern life. "When I moved to 4 New Haven in 1934," he said, letes and the like. Many people "there used to be stables and a lot thought Bill a screwball. of horses in East Rock Park. Neigh"Faulkner used to stroll around bors would ask me why I never the campus wearing a French beret and carrying a cane. He would make rode for pl~asure. Why hell, I rode so many horses before I was fifteen a speci81 point of walking on the I never wanted to ride another again. grass instead of the paths. Only one man I knew, a young lawyer, Riding was work back then, I just couldn't understand doing it for thought Faulkner was destined for fun." greatness. He often said that the day would come when we all would "In my younger days," McDougal recalled, "I wanted to do everybe proud to have known him. We thing-that's why I went into govthought this just ridiculous." ernment." In 1942 he went to McDougal, who hadn't read Faulkner in thirty years, echoed the Washington to become Assistant old Southern school of Faulkner crit· General Counsel of the Lend Lease .icism, "I don't deny he was a power· Administration. In 1943, Governor ful writer, but he exaggerated the Herbert Lehman appointed him Gendepravity of a great many people. eral Counsel of the Office for Relief and Rehabilitation in the State People we all knew. If you lived in Department. "Most legal jobs are a small town in the South you dull and pedestrian," McDougal couldn't help knowing everybody. added. "I found that a good part As a child I used to go with my father on calls to Negroes' and poor of the time is spent wrangling over • sharecroppers' homes. Fau.Qmer's money, or arguing with the Civil Service over who you can or can't view differed from mine and from a hire, or problems with the G .A.O. lot of other people's, too."

My boss held so many positions, "Senator James D. Eastland of half the time I didn't even know Mississippi was a classmate of whose payroll I was on." mine," said McDougal. "I was the editor of the school newspaper and He reflected over the mention of Franklin Roosevelt, and smiled. he was the business manager. We both had high hopes for political "There is little doubt that anybody careers. Senator Eastland's family from my generation thought F .D.R. a great man. I never worked with made money from land and mine him, only men who worked for him. lost it, so I went off to England to learn law in order to make a living. One story I heard about him in· volved a man who complained that "Why law? A process of eliminother bureaus seemed to be doing the ation mostly. At the time, there same task as the complainant's. were only three respectable professPresident Roosevelt replied, 'I figions in the South: medicine, law, ure if I give the same job to five and the ministry. My father was a country doctor, a very successful different people, at least one should one, and I didn't wimt to compete get it done." with him. The ministry was out, so In 1944 McDougal returned to • that left only the law."

Yale to teach.

Later in his career, McDougal An incredible array of Supreme occasionally would ask Senator East· Court Justices, Congressmen, gover· land to support various proposals. nors, and other members of the On one occasion Eastland ("In char- power elite have passed through the acteristic loyalty to friends," said Yale Law School and McDougal's McDougal) simply said, "Myres, office en route to illustrious careers. you just dictate the particulars in a He admits to no jealousy, just inJetter-! don't care what they aretense pride in their accomplish· and I'll sign it." ments. He remains close friends with After graduation, McDougal many of them, including Justice taught Latin and Greek for a time White. (continued on page 14) at Ole Miss before receiving a

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Speaking of dissidents What hope for the future?

I personally think that there is a great possibility that his family will be permitted to leave. There is one thing that is of primary importance to the Soviet government: public opinion in the United States and Western Europe, and in particular the opinion of the intellectuals. The greater the protest in the West, the more hope there is for the dissidents.

Conversely, the less we speak about them, the more they are endangered.

Most dissidents are trying to ma.k e as many contacts with the Western press as possible. In the early stages of the dissident movement, around 1965 and 1966, some dissidents were hesitant to have contacts with the Western press. But the majority of the dissidents are now of the opinion that they should try to make their cases as well known as possible. Although Solzhenitsyn is mentioned more than others, we should remember that many members of the dissident movement are not able to contact the press any more, because they are already in prisons, in camps, or in psychiatric clinics.

The dissident movement emerged Leonhard: I think the top Soviet around the spring of 1966. This was leadership had long discussions and after a period of 11 years under even some disagreement on the Khrushchev, from 1953-1964, question of how to deal with during which a certain de-StalinSolzhenitsyn. Of course, they all ization took place, a departure from agreed that he had to be fought Stalin's methods and a number of against (and all of them hated him). reforms; these 11 years were carried But most likely there was some diswith the hope that, very gradually, agreement of a purely tactical the Soviet Union would begin to nature-what was the best way to liberalize. In the first few months handle him? I can very well imagine after Khrushchev's downfall in that some of the neo-Stalinists were October, 1964, it seemed that this in favor of an open trial. Other course would continue. But with the leaders probably felt that world opin· first arrests of writers in the Ukraine ion would react so strongly that at the end of 1965 (in particular some of the Soviet foreign policy Chomovil) and with the arrest of aims might be endangered. ThereSinyavsky and Daniel in Moscow fore, the method of forced exile was and the search of Solzhenitsyn's chosen. Similar methods have been apartment in September, 1965, it used in the past two years. Some of was clear that re-Stalinization was the most famous dissidents, instead beginning. The first important proof facing trial, were permitted to go test was a letter to the Soviet leader· to the Western world-after which ship opposing this tendency, signed their passports were withdrawn. But by 29 famous intellectuals-natural we have to keep in mind that these scientists (including Sakharov), are exceptions to the rule. Roughly, writers, even a ballerina. The letter for any three Soviet dissidents who strongly opposed the rehabilitation are exiled to the West, there are at of Stalin and the return to Stalinism. least 50 who are tried in the Soviet From that time on, the dissident Union. They are put in long term movement became stronger. prison camps or into psychiatric Members and activists of the clinics. movement have very much in They decided to exile Solzhenitsyn common. They are all persecuted and for three main reasons. The first was suppressed. They are all against the to prevent a worldwide protest of bureaucratic dictatorship, Russificapublic opinion. Secondly, to keep tion, and they advocate liberalihim out of the country while they zation. But they would differ in their colored his image for the Soviet pop· world outlooks, and in the particular ulation, to prevent his becoming a formulation of their aims, and in the martyr for any resistance movement. methods by which they want to Their final hope was that if Solzhenachieve these aims. itsyn was in the West, world opinion I think that there are three main would soon forget about him. tendencies. One of these might be

The forced exile from the U.S.S.R. of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn on Febru· ary 13, following the publication of The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, offered an intemationaUy-publicized example of the continuing repression faced by thousands of Soviet dissidents. Since the downfall of Krushchev in 1963, the Soviet regime has attempted to silence the dissident movement through harrasment, arrest and imprisonment of suspected dissidents; Solzhenitsyn 's deportation is only the most recent episode in this campaign.

The New Journal asked three Yale professors who have studied and ex· perienced conditions in the U.S.S.R. to comment on Solzhenitsyn 's case and its implications for the future of the dissident movement. In the following excerpts, Wolfgang Leon· hard, Adjunct Professor of History, discusses the main tendencies of the dissident movement; Victor Erlich, Bensinger Professor of Russian Literature, and Frederick Barghoorn, Professor of Political Science, des· cribe the roots and the influence of Solzhenitsyn's work.

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Volume seven, number three March 25, 19741 ~

called liberal socialist. The main spokesman of this group is the natural scientist and winner of the Lenin and Stalin Prize, Andrei Sakharov.

This reform movement is aspiring to a democratization, the abolition of censorship, the curbing of the secret police, the introduction of the rule of law in the Soviet Union, economic reform, and amnesty for all political prisoners. Some of them believe that these reforms might come about even in the one-party system, but with a tremendous change in the Party itself. The majority of the liberal-socialists would prefer a multi-party system on socialist foundations. They are combining their struggle for democratization and liberalization with a sympathy for social democratic movements.and liberals in Western Europe and the United States. Many of them are natural scientists; some are economists and they state that the Soviet Union cannot successfully achieve the scientific and technological revolution of our time if it doesn't change the system accordingly.

The second tendency is ethical or religious in nature, and is sometimes labeled ethical socUUist. Their aims are exactly the same as those of the liberal-socialists. But they strongly maintain that no economic and political reforms have any value or can really be pur sued without an ethical and moral regeneration of Soviet society. Some stress Christianity, some a non-denominational religious basis, and some purely ethical grounds. The main spokesman is Lev Venkov, who wrote Thought, the pragmatic manifesto of this ethical group. The theologian Krasnov Levitin is the most outspoken of the group. He has written many remarkable books, none of which were published in the Soviet Union, but which were spread clandestinely. It is likely that Solzhenitsyn is very friendly to this trend of the dissident movement.

There is a third trend which is oppositional Marxist-Leninist. They adhere to the October Revolution and to the Leninist period of the Soviet Union, seeing the whole departure from the original ideas as having come after Lenin's death.

Like the first two groups, they favor the democratization of society, the abolition of censorship, and the reduction of the power of the secret police. But it is not for the sake of democracy alone, but for the concept of a socialist democracy; they stress this distinction very much indeed. They also believe that a renaissance of Marxism¡might transform the Communist Party.

The most outspoken leader of this group is Roy Medvedyev, who wrote On SocUUist Democracy.

This book is as important for the third trend as Levitin and Solzhenitsyn are for the second one, and Sakharov's manifesto, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, is for the first.

These would be the three main tendencies in the Soviet dissident movement, but they work together, of course, because they have a common enemy and common aims.

When I spoke now about the three tendencies, I meant their philosophical background, and their differences in politics and philosophy.

At the same time we have those who favor an evolutionary transformation, and those who believe that only a direct revolutionary struggle can cause this transformation.

Medvedyev, a MarXist-Leninist, \las great hope that the government can be evolutionarily transformed with the help of the more enlightened reformist groups in the Party. On the other hand there is General Grigorenko, a member of the Communist Party for almost 30 years, promoted to the rank of general during World War II, and later a professor of military cybernetics in the Frunzer Military Academy (the highest military academy in the Soviet Union).

He broke away and became not just a dissident but the leading revolutionary figure of the dissident movement. He is an old and sick man now, for he has been in a psychiatric clinic for many years.

It would be difficult to say if Solzehnitsyn is evolutionary or revolutionary, because he has never made his personal viewpoint on the issue very clear. But there is no question that his books, in particular Gulag Archipelago, are much stronger in their criticism than the other two niost famous books of the Soviet dissident movement, Medvedyev's On Socialist Democracy and Sakharov's Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.

Based on the work of my good friend Boris Levitsky, who bas studied about 800 political prisoners, we can say that those who openly signed petitions with their names and addresses are primarily intellectuals; many of them are natural scientists, writers and poets, engineers, a few educated military officers, economistS, and lawyers.

But if we look at those who are tried at the political trials for belonging to the dissident movement and/or spreading their materials, we get a very different picture-only slightly more than half are intellectuals. The other half are common, ordinary people. Many are intelligent and educated blue-collar workers, among them truck drivers. There are very few civil servants and very few collective farmers, which implies

that it's primarily an urban movement and still led and carried by the intellectuals.

We have to differentiate between the dissident movement in Russia proper and the movement in the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union. In Russia proper, it's still heavily dominated by the intellectuals. In the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union, it is much more a mass movement; in the Baltic countries, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Soviet Central Asia, the struggle f()r the democratization of the regime is combined with a struggle against Russification, and .#J for national autonomy. For instance, the most vocal members of the whole dissident movement are the Crimean Tartars, who were deported from the Crimea in 1944 and are still not ~rmitted to return to their homelands. Petitions of Crimean Tartars have been signed by more than 60,000 people.

There are two ways of spreading your opinions in the Soviet Union.

One is the method of Samisdat, which is sometimes called the "five" method. This means that you type five copies of your Samisdat material; it can be a non-political reform program, poetry, a novel, or an historical, philosophical, or theological essay. You give it to your trusted friends, who in turn type five copies and return the original. Quite a lot of material is spread all over the Soviet Union with this snowball system. It has been estimated that ' J from 140,000 to 180,000 Samisdat copies of Solzhenitsyn's works exist.

T he practice is so widespread that there are people who literally do not read anything which is conventionally printed-they only read Samisdat materials. There are even jokes about the Samisdat: one Soviet citizen of about 45 goes to another one and finds that he is typing a textbook for ninth-grade physics.

So he says, "What are you doing?

Why should you retype a textbook that you can buy in every store?"

The other replies,"Well, what can I do? My son doesn't read anything printed anymore."

The second and more important way of transmitting information is through the Russian language broadcasts of Western radio stations, par~ ticularly Radio Liberty, the Russian '.J broadcast from BBC London, the German Wave, Radio Israel, and to a certain degree the Russian broadcast from The Voice of America.

Through these Russian-language broadcasts, the Soviet population gets to know the contents of the Samisdat materials because, to a high degree, Russian language broadcasts from the West transmit more Samisdat than their own com-

Volume seven, number three! March 25, 19741 5

mentaries. This is one of the reasons why the Soviet leadership is pressing so hard to stop the broadcasts.

To estimate the strength of the dissident movement would be very difficult. I would think that there are somewhere around 5,000-10,000 active members of the movement writing these materials and distributing them. This may sound like very few in a country of 240 million.

It might sound like very much if we remember that arotind 1909, eight years before the October Revolution, there were not many more than "l5,000-10,000 activists struggling against the Czarist regime.

Erlich and Barghoom explain, in more detail, the case of.Solzhenitsyn: Erlich: A major reason for the Soviets waging such a vicious campaign against Solzhenitsyn is because of the nature of his latest message, contained in The Gulag Archipelago. He takes the story all the way back to the first years of the Revolution.

Solzhenitsyn is not content with blaming Stalin for what happened in Russia. He also places a great deal of blame on Lenin, and this is absolutely unthinkable as far as the Soviet regime is concerned.

This is a regime whose legitimacy, such as it is, is largely an ideological one. They are unhappy about the violent attacks on Stalin, but challenges to Stalin can be localized-the Stalin cult collapsed in the Soviet Union ,some time ago. But the Lenin cult has replaced it, and to challenge or criticize Lenin is rank heresy.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch was a bombshell, because Solzhenitsyn broke a taboo. Millions of Russians knew about the existence of the Soviet forced-labor camp system- many of them knew it through their own experience. But this was a " non-subject," an "un-institution," as it were. As a fellow dissident put it, the crucial thing about Solzhenitsyn's debut was that he had the courage to say what many people knew to be true, but did not dare articulate.

Solzhenitsyn established himself as a spokesman, not for any particular ideolo~, nor any specific challenge to the regime, but for the millions of silent Russians who have gone through the ordeal that he portrays so vividly.

Barghoom believes that Solzhenitsyn 's roots are in the pre-Communist Russian culture, a culture that was suppressed by the regime, but never completely destroyed. Barghoom also calls Solzhenitsyn's motivation a very patriotic one that could be held by almost any Communist. Solzhenitsyn got in trouble~ ticulating his criticism ofStalin in letters to his !•choolmate, for which

he was arrested.

Barghoom adds that the Soviet press has accused Solzhenitsyn of being bou,rgeois. Yet Barghoom points out that although he came from a bourgeois family, his father died young, leaving his mother, a schoolteacher, to support the family.

He grew up in poverty.

Erlich explains the roots of Solzhenitsyn 's non-ideological approach: The dissident movement has¡drawn upon the great tradition of literary non-conformism and literary dissent which is part and parcel of 19th century Russian literature. This tradition was driven underground by Stalin in the thirties, forties and early fifties. When the air became just a bit more breathable after Stalin's death, due to Khrushchev's half-hearted but still audible call for some plain speaking; it was mainly the writer who came to the fore to offer some bits of a submerged story.

At this time, writers were heard to say, "We have been squelched as individuals. We have been pushed around, and we think the time has come for the individual to speak out.; , Barghoom states that Solzhenitsyn takes a "militant moralistic position." It is this moral outlook and his i_nsistence on teUing the truth which finally got him expelled from the Soviet Writer's League in 1969, in part because of the contentofOne Day. Erlich: Solzhenitsyn is a major writer. His importance is inseparable from, and to a large extent ascribable to, his moral force and the scope and indispensability of his message. I consider him a writer of remarkable gifts. Though he has a very fine command of language, he is not one of the greatest contemporary stylists. But he is a remarkable storyteller. The First Circle, apart from being an invaluable account of the Stalinist system, is a narrative tour de force. August 1914 is not quite so well constructed. At his best, Solzhenitsyn is a remarkably resourceful novelist. Even more striking than his ability to tell a compelling story is his ability to encompass a variety of vividly real-

ized characters within a very confining milieu-be it a KGB institute or the cancer ward of a hospital.

Solzhenitsyn has a sense of character that is very rare these days, w~ch in fact may now be called oldfashioned. Many of Solzhenitsyn's virtues are old-fashioned. He is not a modem writer par excellence. He is a realist if I ever saw one, operating powerfully within a 19th century realistic tradition. But I'll still take a first-rate realist rather than a second-rate modernist any time.

Barghoom, like Erlich, pl4ces Solzhenitsyn in the classical Russian literary tradition. He adds, however, that this tradition now clashes with Socialist Realism. "Solzhenitsyn was in a straightjacket in this system. " "Solzhenitsyn is a very special case," Barghoom summarizes, "because he lies somewhat outside the mainstream of the dissident movement. He regards himself as a moral critic. "As a moralist, he differs much from other Soviet dissidents in that he espouses no ideological ideas.

Barghoom thinks Solzhenitsyn has more of an affinity to the Sl4vophiles of the 19th century. "He emphasizes Russian historical values. He is a Russian patriot. " Each professor had something to say about the future-both of Solzhenitsyn and of the dissident movement: Erlich: Solzhenitsyn's future as a public force is obviously precarious.

The Soviets are doing their best to drive a wedge between Solzhenitsyn and his natural constituency, and for all I know, they may be making some headway. On the one hand they would like the Russians to forget about his existence. On the other hand, as long as they print 16-column articles about him, as they just did in the organ of the Soviet Writer's Union, they are not exactly contributing to this goal. Their hope is that he will be a 90-day wonder in the West, and that in three months he will be forgotten. Now that Solzhenitsyn is absent from Russia, they are hoping that he will sink into the woodwork. This is not so easily achieved, since he is not a man who Victor Erlich (leftI, born in Petrograd (now l.Aningrodl in 1914, lived in Warsaw from 1918 to 1939. He taught for 14 years at the University of Washington before joining the Yale faculty in 1963. He has publi$Md books on Gogol, Russio.n for1'rl41i$m and rno<Urn Russian poetry.

Soviet~ducated Wolfgang Leonhard (right) worked as a propagandist, teacMr and journalist in the U.S.S.R. and E. Germ4.ny before M ~fecUd to Yugoslavia in 1949. He came to Yale in 1966,and has written three books; his laust, Three Faces of Marxism, WQ.S recently publi$Md by Holt/Rinehart/Winston.

Fre~rick Barglworn has writun uten.sively about the diss~nts; M ediUd Chornovirs ldters. In 1963 M WQ.S Mid "hostoge" in a Moscow prison for 1~ days until Pres~nt Kennfily secured his releou.

can be easily silenced. But it is en-

tirely possible that after he finally buys a house in Switzerland some of theWestern press may lose interest in him. A great deal will depend on what he does next.

Speaking of the dissident movement in general, Barghoom says: The future of the dissidents in the U.S.S.R. will depend on the total pattern of international affairs in the next few years. It will depend on the West remaining viable and vigorous with something to say to the East.

World peace must be maintained, and the Sino-Soviet relations will also figure. All of these variables make prediction extremely difficult.

Barghoom believes that there is only a "small hope" for liberalization in the U.S.S.R. in the coming decade.

He remarks that in the last 4 or 5 months a debate has been going on between people like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn on the one hand, and people like Medvedyev on the other, about the current foreign policy line in the U.S.S.R. Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn argue that detente endangered dissenters and worked againstliberalizanon.Medvedyev says that in the long run, increased contacts with the West will help liberalization.

Barghoom: There is a need to press for the principle of individual freedom and legality and to hold the U.S.S.R. to the terms of the U.N. doctrine. When change comes, it will probably come partly from the political system through reform leaders like Khrushchev and pressure from certain elements in the population, like scientists and intellectuals, and possibly from pressure from liberal foreign communist countries like Italy.

Leonhard: In the last two or three years the Soviet regime has cracked down so hard that the power and influence of the dissident movement has been considerably weakened.

But I think they still have a great role in the future and I can foresee clearly that we will have monuments in big Soviet cities of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Amalrik, Bukovsky, and Grigorenko. 0

A death in the Old Family

by Ronald Roel

NEWS- Yale Daily (nee Yale News), of New Haven. Beloved daughter of the late Herbert W. Bowen, beloved wife of Francis M. Donahue, devoted mother of the late Henry Luce a nd Briton Hadden. Dear grandmother of Potter Stewart, R. Sargent Shriver, Kingman Brewster, William F. Buckley, James C. Thomson, Calvin Trillin, Lance M. Liebman, Strobe Talbot, and countless other Yale prodigies.

Reposing at 202 York St. In lieu of flowers, contributions to help defray expenses c/o M.A. Coles, 241-A Yale Station, would be appreciated. Services and Interment private.

For a few brief hours on the evening of May 4, 1973, it was almost like old times for the Yale Daily News, once "the best fraternity on fraternity row. " On that night, 400 of Yale's best and brightest- that long Blue line of well-bred and successful Newsies-gathered in New Haven to revive the grand tradition of the annual News banquet. It always had been the social event of the year, saturated with a sea of black ties, with an easily-found elegance that comes with easily-found l'noney, with the smells of power and impending power, with the feeling of belonging to ... well, the elite of the elite.

All this had been misplaced in the recent sweep of student unrest. Like most institutions, the News felt the battering of anti-institutional sentiments, both from within and without, and the diffusion of both the good and bad notions which had kept the paper intact for 90 years. But the rashness and disrespect of youth was forgotten that night, as 400 Yale men (and alas! a handful of Yale women) came to honor Francis M. (" Tacky") Donahue, the spirited Irish business director who was retiring after 50 years of service to the News. Donahue had come to the News as a 14-year-old office boy in 1923 after his father died and left seven children without support; not only did he eventually coordinate all of the paper's advertising accounts, he became a symbol of continuity amid change, a critical father as well as a gentle advisor and confidant to the endless string of "his boys. " So the 92nd News banquet was a " thanks for the memories": a leisurely cocktail hour in the red-carpeted President's Room of Woolsey Hall, followed by a handsome meal of roast rib of beef and Beaujolais, Idaho potatoes and asparagus with lemon and butter sauce, vanilla nutroll with hot fudge topping. Admittedly, some of the old grace had been lost. Some of the younger Newsies

wore rented, not owned, tuxedos; some laughed a little too loud; a young lady took it upon herself to smoke a cigar.

All in all, however, it was a fine affair. President Nixon sent his regards through White House Ad· visor Jonathan Rose, chairman of the 1963 News board. The alumni of happy, golden by-gone days exchanged views with their younger, brassier successors-most of them no brighter than their elders, but perhaps more interesting and questioning, less serene, but less smug. For wit and charm and eloquence, no one could match Francis' favorite chairman, William F. Buckley, Jr., who, in that manner only his own, gave the audience an object lesson in just how the English language should be shaped and spoken. He neatly skewered two of his favorite targets, President Brewster andY ale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin; reminisced over a warm and well-remembered Yale past; appealed to the young for adherence to standards and devotion to craft; and celebrated the guest of honor as "first among all who have appeared at these banquets, in the affection and admiration of this company." And when Francis M. Donahue was presented with an inscribed silver cup and assurances that $80,000 had been raised to buy a monthly annuity for him and his wife, there was little left to say.

Although The New York Times reported the next day that the banquet might indicate a partial return to the "old boy" school, it seemed clear that time had been peeled away only for the night. The 1973 News ban· quet was in fact a last supper-not a hint of the future, but the end of an age. There would be other News banquets, but the old News, like the old Yale, was dead, perhaps for the better.

The question was: what would be the new meaning of the News, the

News without the Francis Donahue myth, without the magic of the chairmanship, without the 80-hour-a-week heel, the big profits, the recognition, the promise of success? What was the long term prospect for the Oldest College Daily in the face of inflationary costs ; the loss of lucrative national advertising accounts; an introverted student body concerned more with its academic performance than its extracurricular experiences? And what of the half-million-dollar libel suit filed against the News for an error made in the paper's 1973 edition of the Insider's Guide to the Colleges?

The answers are obscure; they al· > ways seem to emerge from our blind side. But as Yale's 1974~dmissions committee chooses the class that will govern the 100th board of the Yale Daily News, one thing is certain: the future weighs heavily on the achievements of one particular Eli-Eli Spielman, the present editor-in-chief -and his band of merry (and not so merry) Newsies.

1Nicknamed the Oidest College Daily (OCD), the News is just that-more or less. Vol. I, No. 1'of the Yale News made its appearance on January 28, 1878, after a Yale senior named Herbert W. Bowen became convinced that Yale should have a daily paper.

Having obtained financial backing from classmate Frank V. McDonald 1 ("whose purse was always full"), Bowen decided to pursue the experiment. The first four-page issue began with a statement of purpose that would reflect the restless notions of studentsthroughoutthefollo~g

decades, and even to the present day: The innovation which we begin by this morning's issue is justified by the dullness of the times, and by the demand for news among us. Ever since the Record and the Courant

f')

Volume seven, number three !March 25, 197417

have changed to semi-monthlies, or in other words, have become as newsy and approachable as the Lit., there has been an apparent necessity of having an unpretentious sheet which should contain the latest news, and short, pithy articles of interest. It is our purpose to publish such a sheet daily ...

The mild-mannered issue sold for a nickel (an outrageous price) with the promise that the price would be lowered (it was) as soon as the paper was as sured of financial success. Indeed, 1it was a paying proposition from the s tart, and Bowen would write later that he and McDonald "always divided at least ten dollars a week as ne t profits." Bowen, who ultimately went on to achieve the distinction of becoming ambassador to Venezuela under President McKinley, did all the writing, editing, proofreading and selling of advertising until his graduation in June. McDonald, whom his classmate William Howard Taft would remember as "an odd stick, with something of the fanatic about him, " enrolled the News as a subscriber to the world's first commercial telephone exchange, which opened in New Haven the same day the News was born.

While the two sponsors wished their successors well, they apparently were content to let the News die after their departure. Nevertheless, John W. Keller ' 79, a writer for the ..J 1878 publication, decided to relaunch the Yale News t he following year as a "pers onal, individual venture" ; that, is, a s almost a one-man editorial and fmancial operation. Not that the demand for the OCD was overwhelming: Keller's classmates told him they were disgusted with the '78 News, and the faculty were barely tolerant - one professor told Keller that "men did not come to college to conduct newspapers ."

In spite of all that, " Bull" Keller felt he had "a taste for journalism," and contracted a printer on the agreement that the printer would take all income from the publication while Keller would foot any losses.

Thus, on January 9 , 18 79, a second Vol. I, No.1 of the Yale News appeared-Keller would have changed the name, except for the expense of making a new copper plate for the title, and for the feeling that it was, after all, the correct name for such a publication. He was not as lucky as Bowen, however, and soon accumulated a large deficit. Although he returned to New Haven the following fall, hoping somehow to recover his losses, Keller eventually gave up and went to New York, there to become a journalist struggling to pay off his debts.

And so Keller left, while the News stayed to become the first college

daily in the world (both Harvard and Dartmouth already had papers, but the OCD still claimed the title as the oldest college paper of continuous daily publication). During the next 40 years, the News spearheaded a literary and journalistic renaissance at a college once known as a bastion of science, linguistics and theology.

The OCD established itself as an organization for the " solid men," the campus managers. Heeling became an honorable profession: 30 to 70 students would show up for the first News heel, which began after the Princeton game and continued for a number of grueling months, during which the heelers were reported never to have slept more than four hours a night. The heelers received points for selling ads, writing articles, digging up unassigned stories, getting coffee for the editors, straightening up the office- the idea was to accumulate the most points and win the heeling competition, for the winner of the first heel often would become chairman, if he did not end up in the infirmary instead.

Academic demands remained light during the early 1900's. Exams were considered " duck soup" if one simply studied his class notes. (Instead of special papers, "10-minute papers" covering the previous day 's assignment were sometimes required.) Thus, when students were not involved in a heel, they lived and were expected to live-with a certain Elizabethan gusto-so much so that the 1914 N ews chairman was prompted to question why the College was filled with so many "utterly s hiftless bipeds. ' ' One surviving chairman of this period is fond of telling the story of a friend who, when congratulated on commencement day for having graduated from college, turned to the well-wisher and said : " My dear fellow, being congratulated upon one's graduation from Yale is like taking a boat from Paris to New York and being congratulated upon arriving at one's destination for not having fallen overboard.' ' The Tiffany-and-Brooks-Brothers Yale that Briton Hadden and Henry Luce found when they came together from Hotchkiss was conservative in thought and Republican in politics. When the two were freshmen, the News pulled its own version of " Dewey Defeats Trwnan" : on the morning after Election Day, 1916, the editors decided to go to press without waiting for the California returns, ~ssuming that Charles Hughes had defeated the Pri.ncetonian, Woodrow Wilson. They led their election extra with a banner headline: " Charles Hughes Elected President."

As Yale became involved in the flurry of theWar, prohibition, wo-

men's suffrage, Bolshevism, the free love movement, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's new novel about college life, Hadden and Luce were tapped by Skull and Bones and for two years led the Yale Daily News as chairman and managing editor, respectively.

Three years after graduation, the two Bonesmen/ Newsies founded Time magazine, with a list of editors and contributors that read like a Yale College catalogue. Hadden would die six years later, but Luce's master stroke would remain in the minds of Newsies for decades after the founding of Time ; indeed, it was this entrepreneurial legend which seemed to give the News its special smell of ambition and success.

By the time Yale's new president, James R{)wland Angell, arrived in 1921, it was clear that in comparison to the chairman of the News , the president's role on campus would be modest. Like the presidents before and after him, Angell did not confer with undergraduates often, but when he did, he invariably met with the chairman. The two would discuss whatever was front and center for the day: pressing academic and national is sues, and campus gossip.

There were differences of opinion, of course, but it was all terribly polite.

The chairman paid attention to the president because his comments could spark interesting editorials.

And the president listened to the chairman because he was a spokesman for student opinion, a surrogate student body president for a student body that always refused to elect one. (Yale students have traditionally been allergic to "sandbox democracy. ' ') While the chairman of the News wrote most of the editorials, he had little to do with running the daily paper. Held in awe by the underclassmen, he was a powerful, almost a national, figure whose opinions held great weight (even as late as 1967, when James Reston devoted an

entire New York Times column to a discussion of the thoughtful and sensible chairman, Strobe Talbot, who was arguing against the Vietnam War). The chairmanship was perhaps the best job its holders would ever have: 1953 chairman James C. Thomson, now curator of the Nieman Foundation journalism fellowships at Harvard, recalls the time when an uncle who was editor of the Hartford Courant came to visit him at the News, and, struck by the plush quarters and freedom from publishers and outside interference, assured Thomson that he would never have it so good again.

One of the chairmen President Angell would meet was Carlos French Stoddard, Jr., w~o was a m ember of the class of '26, known for its vibrance and four freshman riots. " Tot" or "Tammany" Stoddard w~s a dedicated Newsie. As a heeler, he had seven papers delivered to his room s o he could get up at 5:30 a .m . -before the other heelers had gotten out of bed-to clip out articles for editorial suggestions . What bothered Stoddard most as he climbed to the chairmanship was the tradition of compulsory chapel attendance: it was no longer meaningful. Students would s tumble into chapel every morning ; sleep, study or read the N ews (which was in Yale Station by 7:30) while the service rotely progressed through its daily pattern; and then stumble out again.

Tammany Stoddard decided to do something about the anti-cllapel sentiments that had been building over the last 10 years-not through an angry crusade, but through a "reasonable" approach. He deftly prodded the campus with editorials. He invited the Yale Corporation to write out its defense of the morning misery. And he conducted a dining hall poll of undergraduates on the question. His findings: 241 in favor, 1,681 against compulsory chapel At first, the faculty and Corpora-

Volume seven, number

tion balked, and voted to retain ¡all existing chapel requirements. But the News eventually stumbled upon an article by a Harvard professor praising the voluntary system at Harvard's Appleton Chapel, adding that Yale's chaplain, Dean Charles Reynolds Brown, told him "he would rather preach at Harvard than anywhere else because he knows that he has a voluntary audience." Dean Brown suddenly reconsidered his previous support for compulsory chapel, and delivered an eloquent appeal for its elimination. Corporation member Rev. Henry Sloane Coffm (the present chaplain's uncle) was appalled; but the faculty took heart, and voted 29-12 to abrogate all chapel regulations. The Yale Corporation eventually affirmed this vote, and the victorious OCD claimed credit for effecting one of the most important educational changes at Yale before coeducation.

2

The Depression was actually a boon to the Daily News. Advertising was better than ever, and the News continued to earn healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your ideology) profits: the 1932 board reportedly netted an astounding $27,000 during the very depths of the nation's slump. While the college remained soundly Republican, the mood on campus, as in the nation, swung to self-criticism. This change was not reflected as much in the News as it was in the birth of an explosive publication called the Harkness Hoot.

The Hoot, established by two disgruntled editors of the Lit., was a brilliant coterie of iconoclasts, loud in speech, brutal in analysis, unin-

hibited in its attack of old Yale values. Its writers seethed at American materialism, challenged the Gothic architecture plan for Yale, and called for an end to the senior societies. Founded in 1930, the Hoot lasted four years and was discontinued by its sponsors, who thought it better to go out with a bang than to become another domesticated Yale tradition.

Perhaps the most significant change in the News at the time was a physical one: a moving of its offices from the basement of Fayerweather Hall in the Berkeley Oval (now Berkeley College) to its present Tudorstyle home at 202 York Street.

Built by Luce as a memorial to Briton Hadden, the $100,000 offices were handsome, ample, even lavish.

In his novel, The Paragon â&#x20AC;˘.John Knowles (News editorial secretary, 1949) wrote that the paper's boardroom, "because of the sober executive elegance of its paneling and its other appointments, could have made the directors of the United States Steel Corporation feel at home." Thirty years later, Luce, ever the visionary, would consider adding a wine cellar to the building, but Francis Donahue, among others, convinced him to refurbish the office instead.

The 1930's produced an impressive string of Newsies: H.J. Heinz II, Jonathan Bingham, John Hersey, William Bundy, Sargent Shriver, William Scranton, and "King" Brewster, who began his climb for the chairmanship as Potter Stewart was ending his career as chairman.

Like his predecessors, Brewster viewed the chairmanship as an ambassadorial, rather than a journalistic, venture. Being chainnan did not necessarily indicate that one was the best journalist on the board (the managing editor ~sually was), nor did it indicate that one was aimed for a journalistic career. On the contrary, until the mid-50's, most chairmen were expected to become scholars or statesmen-"men of affairs." It was the Harvard Crimson alumni who were supposed to go into mere reporting. William F. Buckley (the 1950 chairman) was an exception, of course, but even he entered a career through an ideological approach and came out the journalistic end.

For Brewster, the bright college years were ones of political pretensions, literary self-consciousness, and very sure feelings that what one was doing was terribly important"we were trying to save the world, not just Yale." (Perhaps this is why, 30 years later, he was able to understand the grand self-importance which Yale students attached to themselves during the Mayday spring of 1970-because Brewster

himself knew the feeling too well. ) Fearing that President Roosevelt was pushing the nation toward war "without a fair hearing and popular debate," Brewster joined the isolationist America First movement, arguing that students should be allow~ to attend peace rallies, and even testifying before a congressional committee that the U.S. should refrain from providing aid to Britain.

Whatever the pretensions of the day, Brewster enjoyed his command at the News-and enjoyed it fully.

He directed "distressingly little attention to education" (although he claims his grades went up during the heel); spent a fair amount of time gossiping with President Seymour, looking for things to write about; and usually wrote three editorials a week- the three other editorials (there was a Saturday issue) being written by the vice chairman, who was Brewster's roommate, or the incoming chairman. One of the Brewster regime's most notorious editorials, which was to be quoted 25 years later in Time, asserted that college girls should not be entitled to wear slacks: ''The women of Wellesley, Smith, and Vassar should be deprived of their pants." As chairman, Brewster naturally received credit for the editorial, but he claims he never wrote it. Perhaps, he says, it was his roommate...

The News was autocratic by nature: a particular chairman's editorial policy, however objectionable, could not be overturned by his board. In times of violent disagreement, dissenting editorials and disclaimers appeared iri addition to the regular editorials; the letters-andeditorial page frequently became a great battlefield. Francis Donahue recalls several instance$ when Buckley came to him saying, "no ads on the editorial page, Francis, I have a lot of anti-Buckley stuff to run."

Although Buckley later reminisced that it was sometimes only through the support of his fellow Irishman, Francis, that he was not handed a vote of no confidence by his board, the freedom and integrity of the chairman remained unimpaired. The editorial page was provocative and thoughtful; people read it-could not help but read it.

Like Buckley three years before him, James Thomson made the most of his editorial freedom as chainnan.

In the face of a solidly Eisenhower/ Republican Yale, he waged a fullscale campaign for Adlai Stevenson in 1952. While Thomson plastered the chairman's office on the second floor of the News building with Stevenson posters, his business manager (and close friend) covered the first floor with Eisenhower para-

tbreel

March 26, 1974j 8

phernalia. On September 29, 1952, Thomson presented a full-page editorial entitled, "The Time, the Place, and the Man." It began: Two months and two days after the close of the national conventions, there can be little doubt in the mind of the independent voter: the American people have seldom in their history been offered the chance to vote for a presidential candidate more ideally qualified for the staggering responsibilities of the job and more keenly aware of the crucial issues of the time.

That candidate is Adlai E. Stevenson.

An FDR Democrat since childhood, Thomson found it great fun to run the News through the heart of the McCarthy era, when he could vent a certain righteous indignation and experience the "special esprit one gets from being in the minority and being right."

Despite Thomson's liberal gusto, his fight for Stevenson ("the incarnation of Independent Man"), his defense of academic freedom and his plea for clemency for the Rosenbergs (who were convicted of espionage and sentenced to death), he was still working under the old Yale.

Heeling still meant one had to give up going to classes and doing any academic work for several weeks. To Thomson, being chairman meant ma- ~ J joring in the News: getting up during late morning; going over to George and Harry's for breakfast; picking up the mail; conferring with the business manager and managing editor; perhaps meeting with President Griswold or Dean DeVane in early afternoon; then working on the editorials; breaking at 7 p.m. for martinis and dinner at Fence Club; going back to the News to work until 1:30 or 2 a.m., with perhaps another break for steak sandwiches and beer brought in by the heelers; then to the room for a little bedtime reading before going to sleep around 2 or 3 a.m.

The News still exuded the myth of opening up the secrets of power in America, of an extraordinary involvement in the world of grownups-which was important to the students of the '50's, who had endless Q "soul talks" (bull sessions) about why people kept camng them the silent generation. There was still an atmosphere of tweedy people and white-shoe society. Election to a top editorial seat on the News still meant earning a handsome bit of money: the three top offices-chairman, managing editor, and business manager-took half the year's profits, which usually amounted to about $2,000 each. (This would increase to about $3,000 during the economic

Volume seven, number

threef March 25, 197~ 9

boom of the mid-1960's, but would demia instead. Elected vice chairman never match the huge sums earned of the News, Yates became a Rhodes during the 1920's and '30's, equivaScholar, worked several months as a lent today to salaries of about London correspondent for Time, and $10,000 to $12,000.) then returned to Yale as an AssisAs G. Gaddis Smith (chairman, . tant Professor of Political Science1954 and now master of Pierson and watched his younger brother beCollege) put it: "We were the last come sports editor of a later News classes of the 1920's, the last genera- board.

In spite of the growing student tion of students who acted the way their fathers did in college." suspicion of consolidated, autocratic power, Newsies did not question the chairmanship, for students were still By the mid-1950's, however, the prep riding on a crest of self-importancea notion that they had a role to play school tone of Yale slowly began to for history-and it seemed worthfade. When Calvin Trillin took over while to have a strong leader to rethe chairmanship in 1956, Yale was flect that importance. At the same still strongly entrenched in the old era, but in the midst of a transitional time, the News brand of journalism remained full of jokes and fun and period; the freshmen who were to camaraderie, memories that would graduate with the Class of 1960. would reflect the mere tip of the mas- remain vivid years after graduation.

So at the end of the '60's, the News sive social changes of the next dewas still the best fraternity on a cade. For the moment, there was a cool, "preppy" feeling about the Col- dwindling fraternity row. lege, even though there probably were more public than private school And then came Mayday, 1970, the students attending Yale. Students were careful not to show overt ambi- climax of several years of student activism, which swallowed the Coltion or too much enthusiasm-that lege during three months of frenzy was bad taste.

Even through the non-coeducation and rhetoric that seemed almost beyond belief in the face of today's years of the 1960's, the News reYale. The issue of the Panther and mained the strongest community at the Bulldog getting together created Yale, and the chairmanship was deep splits in the Yale community, clearly the most important office on campus. Admittedly, the Newsies of and razed the highly hierarchical the '50's would have been shocked to social structure of the college. A learn that members of the 1966 OCD "higher" emotion-swept ideology blanketed the normally organizationboard campaigned openly (again, conscious Yale; once again, students bad taste) for the chairmanship for in a piqued self-consciousness were six weeks, meeting and eating lunch confronting the great questions that with fellow Newsies who had the their fathers had ignored. The probpower to vote. But as always, the lems, politics and prestige of the News continued to take itself very seriously. To those involved with the News were petty by comparison, paper, it seemed like the center of the almost...laughable. And those who took the institutional status and Yale experience-a student governautocratic discipline of the News ment, a media center, a social group seriously were more than floating and a power elite all rolled into one. anomalies; they were a clear and Not only was there a certain headipresent danger to the revolution. ness one felt in belonging to the The dazed OCD, unused to this News, but a tremendous concern for severe second class citizenship in its craft. It seemed as though the subown territory, began an intensive limation which came out of the noncoeducated community brought out coverage of student strike activities.

The managing editor, John Coots, an intense creativity, as well as the gathered a staff of reporters, organworst features of male competitiveized them in pairs, and sent them out ness. with handfuls of dimes so that they Until the last chairman, Alan could phone in developments in their Boles, left office in 1968, the News areas every 15 minutes. Reporters maintained a strict heirarchy, with an environment of open. brutal com- were even stationed at the top of petition. People didn't climb to pow- Kline Biology Tower, where, as one er over the backs of dead bodies, but Newsie put it, viewing the strike even so, the politics of the climb took activities was like watching "a football game between the pigs and the a heavy toll. The losers sometimes played by the "marbles rule": if you freaks."

Despite the emergence of a strike don't give me all the marbles, I'll newsletter-an information and take my marbles and go home."

Others didn't: Doug Yates, who lost propaganda sheet created by "the people" of Yale-the News' coverage the chairmanship on the second balof Mayday spring was broad, lot in 1965, merely lost his taste for brilliant in spots, and more accurate politics and pursued a career in aca-

3

4

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than a.n y other newspaper: like the and disorganization that many News of the civil rights '60's, the Newsies felt there was once more a modem OCD proved it could rise need for an overall guiding hand. to the challenge. Nevertheless, the Along with the crisis in power reportage of the News was objective came a crisis in product; the daily at a time when objectivity was not newspaper contained poor reporting, considered "relevant." And its edisloppy editing, shabby layouts. Stutorial policy was hopelessly divided dents did not seem to care about beover the strike at a time when the longing to the News, and developed Yale community pressured for solian "ad hoc" attitude, doing an ardarity. ticle or some hasty editing, and then At one point, a group of strikers leaving for some other pursuit. To carrying flaming toilet paper rolls aggravate matters, it suddenly apthreatened to trash the News builpeared that the News, always a guarding; but the real concern of the paanteed moneymaker, was in deep fiper was not a threat from the outnancial trouble. After clearing proside, but a collapse from the inside. fits of $17,000 in 1970 and $9,000 in A year before Mayday, the News 1971, the paper unexpectedly found board decided to abolish the veneritself $3,000 in the red. Lucrative ated position of chairman and estabnational advertising in the News lish a ruling order more in spirit with plunged as big advertisers, like cigathe growing current of radicalism: ret companies, began looking for that is, six smaller boards (news, mass-circulation markets. Printing business, photo, administration, edi- costs were increasing by 10 per cent torial, and publications) which would each year. operate as "communes" of power, To add to its problems, the News with no one person in charge of each found itself involved in a half-million board. While the "commies," as dollar libel suit over an item that apFrancis Donahue called them, fulpeared in one of its special publicafilled the philosophical demands for a tions, An Insider's Guide to the more democratic decision-making Colleges-a collection of pithy reprocess, everyone knew that they did views of many of the country's top not work very well; the democracy academic institutions. The suit cenwas too ill-defined, and-like many ters around an error made by Yale organizations-had too many Michael Spencer, the 1973 editorial leaders. page editor who also edited the A return of the chairmanship was fourth edition of the Insider's Guide out-at one time, the drive for the (which appeared in the fall of 1972): "King's" slot was the great lure for "million-dollar-Mike," as he is now students, but now, most staffers called, stated in a review of the felt that too many people worked too University of the South (Sewanee, hard on the paper for there to be one Tenn.) that two Black students had individual who held all that power. been killed during a student disorder So over the next three years, the there. (The note should have been apNews retained the commie system peared instead under the review of only in name, 'With each board conSouthern University.) trolled by a particular editor who The University of the South diswas not necessarily responsive to a covered the mistake while the guide communal decision-making process. was in the midst of distribution, and The king was dead, and power was telephoned the News to demand that consolidated in the hands of feudal the books be removed from circulalords, but there was still the problem tion and that the newspaper issue a ofoverallindirection.The1971board public apology to the University of produced a working structure that the South in The New York Times. one Newsie called "The Flying 8 and Taken aback, the News called its The Fabulous 50," a handful of dediNew York publisher, who instructed cated individuals who did most of them to insert an errata sheet in each the day-to-day work with several guide to correct the situation. The dozen unreliable board members.

News did so, and assumed that the Just before the election of the 1974 matter was closed -only to be inboard, the News decided to become a formed of the suit four months later. "features paper" as well as a newsThe University of the South felt paper, thus establishing the posithat the errata sheet was "totally tions of news managing editor and insufficient to correct the problem," features managing editor, and according to the university's vice changing the format of the paper chancellor, J. Jefferson Bennett. The from a New York Times front page sheet simply contained a reprint of to a tabloid style. Neither Bradley the original review, omitting the Graham, the 1974 news managing erroneous lines, but did not inform editor, nor Richard Fallon, the feathe reader of the exact nature of the tures managing editor, had sovererror. The university, a small Episeignty; what resulted was a concopal school which takes its ties to the Oxford tradition very seriously tinual battle over jurisdictional (indeed, faculty and students are rerights, with such bitter resentments (contillued on pagel3)

We interrupt our regular programming to present: documentary filmmaker Arthur Barron set out in 1965 to produce "The Berkeley Rebels," a film for CBS about four student leaders of the Free Speech Movement, he had in mind "a highly personal film.~' In his preparatory notes heremarked, "It is intimate. It is emotional. Its style is human revelation rather than reportage. Its goal is to enter the world of these kids, rather than to observe and report on it."

But the film in its final form was quite -:lifferent from what he had intended. "I had to insert a CBS correspondent, Harry Reasoner, at the beginning and end of the film, and write dialogue for him, which put a kind of stamp on the film and toned it down." In Barron's words, CBS cut out "those evocative elements which had not developed spontaneously out of a given situation."

But the network did more than that. They cut one unstaged sequence, for instance, in which a boy and a girl are tickling each other on a bed. "CBS asked me," Barron recalled, "'What right did we have to pry into their private lives and feelings?' That kind of comment was terribly revealing to me about their attitudes.

"What is beautiful or interesting for its own sake or what is timeless or ageless or universal about the human condition doesn't matter. The notion of really going after a person and getting some real naked insight, that's terrifying to the networks.

They don't want that. It's not news."

Barron's complaint echoes the position of a number of producers of personal documentaries who have found the commercial network market closed to them. While some filmmakers consider the network's strict demands for objectivity a necessary evil of their profession, others-like Barron-feel stifled.

But many of the most creative filmmakers refuse to adapt to commercial network standards. Consequently, the mainstream of the documentary movement runs outside-and in spite of-the networks, and far from the public eye.

Should the commercial networks produee and solicit clearly subjective films? The issue surfaced in the Yale Law School Auditorium last fall during a Poynter Journalism Fellowship symposium on doctumentary films. A panel of critics, network officials and filmmakers demonstrated the impasse which the networks and personal film makers have reached.

At one extreme, television critic Stephen Scheuer blasted the networks for their innocuous documentaries and demanded that they sponsor the more personal documentaries of private filmmakers. At the opposite extreme, NBC's Lucy Jarvis pounded her fist and insisted that the networks-as commercial entertainment corporations-have no obligation to buy and air subjective films. "We are businesses," she stated, "not social or artistic benefactors." And between the two positions ran the theme that is anathema to one and idol to the other-objectivity.

From the first days of television, documentaries have been news films.

In the 1940's, employing cameramen and directors trained in World War II, commercial television provided both the audience and the financial backing that gave new impetus to the documentary form.

But the adoption of the documentary by the newborn television indus¡ try also cast the documentary into the role it still plays today-illustrator of the news. Harnessed to the network news, "reportage" film merely supports the analysis spoken by an anonymous and authoritative narrator.

Just as the documentary is still under the aegis of the network news departments, so it is still bound by television's standard of objectivity. ''I have to know that every foot of film is objective," declared William Leonard, vice president of CBS News. "We are a news department and that means objectivity."

But the objectivity the networks seek is only an ideal-perhaps an ideal alien to the very nature of film-and is impossible to achieve.

While the narrator can approach objectivity through precise and explicit language, the vocabulary of visual images is far less controllable.

The juxtaposition of two images can breed a third that is not necessarily intended, perhaps not even true. Such an inference occurs in ABC filmmaker Stephen Fleischman's "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Coal." The narrator here argues the dangers of a mining dam, one of which collapsed in heavy rains a year before and destroyed the town of Buffalo Creek, W.Va. While the narrator speculates about the danger of a similar dam in another town, the screen shows that town during an unusually heavy storm. ("It just happened to be raining that day,'' explained Fleisch-.

man.)

Every scene involves subjective decisions -choice of lighting, staging of interviews, camera angle.

The camera is a fine liar. It offers its own "interpretation" through exposure, framing, lens distortion, or simply the effect of its presence on the subject. As the controversy surrounding "The Selling of the Pentagon" illustrated, the editing room is often the scene of even more radical "interpretations."

When CBS aired this documentary expose of the Pentagon's promotional techniques in 1971, the network was immediately accused of bias and distortion by the government. CBS was charged with having edited an Army colonel's filmed comments out of its proper sequence, changing the meaning of his remarks.

To preserve their claims to objectivity, the networks responded by trimming the blatantly subjective elements in their documentaries. One CBS directive declared, "Staging or false depiction through editing or any other means is intolerable. " A CBS filmmaker was suspended for posing an alcohol salesman as a drinker in a Los Angeles bar.

Another was reprimanded for posing his daughter as a hitchhiker.

By revealing the subjectivity of news documentaries, these incidents taught the public what every filmmaker knows: "Though we present the film in the manner of truth with a capital 'T'," said AI Wasserman, former NBC and CBS filmmaker, "our method is not like that at all."

"You must take your preconceptions into the film," agreed Fleischman. "You cannot be involved without being subjective. A documentary cannot be pure exposition. It needs conflict and drama-all subjective elements." Every documentary is ultimately a personal film-a complex of human subjective decisions.

Personal documentaries make a virtue of this fact by portraying situations-rather than arguing issues-with openly subjective cinematic techniques. But the commercial networks inhibit the development of these films by denying them airtime.

Certainly, personal documentaries appear from time to time-for example, Fleischman's mental retardation film ("The Long Childhood of Timmy"). But these exceptions tend to avoid controversy, and cover their subjectivity with a newsroom ve-

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The Case of the Personal Documentary The networks say that controversy on commercial television is dangerous. It can offend potential sponsors. It can provoke both legal battles and, under current FCC guidelines, demands for rebuttal time. As a result, controversy is rarely sought and never bought from outside sources. One of the more controversial recent documentaries was "A Question of Torture," an txpose of the tiger-cage torturing of political prisoners in Saigon jails.

Though produced by a prize-winning crew for Granada Television in England, the film was turned down by all major American networks.

Leonard explained that CBS refuses to buy these independently produced documentaries for the same reason it taboos in-house personal documentaries-CBS must be responsible for the film's objectivity.

He admitted, though, that he has no way of knowing if every foot of film is, in fact, "objective"even when CBS produces the film.

He must trust his filmmakers to be fair.

The networks do have the power, though, to make any film seem objective. They wrap all the subjectivity into a slick news documentary that bears the stamp of the network. The film speaks with the same deceptive authority as does the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. The stamp of objectivity in network documentaries cuts the documentary genre off from its openly subjective roots. Robert Flaherty, one of the first American documentary filmmakers, believed that the most honest cinematic portrayal required manipulation of his subject matter. He built his films around consciously imposed romantic themes like man's struggle for survival in the cold north or on a tropical island. To document what he felt to be the truth about the Eskimo lifestyle in "Nanook of the North," he employed fictional techniques like scripting and staging.

Flaherty used forms of distortion to translate a personal, subjective experience into cinematic reality.

But subjective realities are not in~the stock of network truths.

"The rationale behind personal films, like Flaherty's in the thirties," said Al Wasserman, "is a rationale the networks have never accepted. Sure, every network filmmaker would like to do personal documentaries, but they're extremely difficult to get money for. The networks go for the big-money, big-issue films that make

by Dan Denton

the definitive statement."

To date, the only nationwide television market for personal documentaries has been PBS, the noncommercial network. Because it makes no claims to any "definitive statement," PBS can air clearly biased documentaries -like the Black militant film, "Black Jour~ nal." Since it recognizes the subjectivity of film, it has become the only forum for documentaries like Frederick Wiseman's.

Wiseman, a Harvard Law School graduate, gave up his Cambridge law practice after he bought his first movie camera. He has been m8king documentaries ever since, and hiring other lawyers to defend them.

Wiseman's films explore the power structures behind such American institutions as a hospital, a police station, a boot camp, a juvenile court and an asylum for the criminally insane. He uses no musiC and no narration. "Narrative in documentaries always sounds condescending to me," says Wiseman, "as if someone is trying to tell me what to think.

"I work under the assumption," he says, "that if you just watch people in meaningful interactions you can see truths more illuminating than any narrative can give you."

The truth he attempts to convey in his films is not in the form of a rational argument. It is something more complex and subtle, depicting the quality of his personal experience in making the film. He does no research before beginning his work.

Themes begin to unfold only as he shoots and reacts to the scene.

When his reactions are settled, Wiseman retreats to his editing room to recreate his experience.

"Editing is a purely subjective process," he believes. "This thi.n g of objectivity is a lot of crap, as anyone with average intelligence and twenty seconds to think about it knows. The issue is fairness. I use subjective techniques to make a personal documentary statement that is fair to my subjective experience in making the film.''

But because Wiseman's statement is visual instead of verbal, it is rich in a way that reportage films can never be. "I have a mind that resists any kind of absolute clarity," he says. As a result, he offers no argument that can be accepted or rejected apart from the film. His statement is the film itself. You can watch it more than once, and each time learn more of Wiseman's

vision, and find fresh images to build your own.

Wiseman's films will not be found on commercial television. He has made several unsuccessful attempts to convince commercial networks to air his films, and the failure makes him cynical.

"It's a total waste of time to argue with the networks," he says.

"They always want to cut and censor-and if my film is going to be changed like that, then it's no longer my statement and should not exist.

I don't believe in participatory democracy filmmaking. Sure, the networks have their argument, but they just don't test the limits of it they hate to take a chance on films like mine."

When artists like Wiseman forsake the battle for commercial airtime, the fight for subjective and cinematic documentaries is left to tired critics and a few unhappy filmmakers. As the Poynter symposium illustrated, the debate is at an impasse damaging to both sides.

The personal documentary is a form that now attracts the most innovative filmmakers, and one which-regardless of commercial television-will mature. Technological improvements, like less cumbersome and obtrusive equipment, have already made the personal documentary an accessible creative form.

Because these films require only a cameraman and a director, the large network crews of the past are unnecessary. As a result, both local stations and private filmmakers can now produce documentaries. And innovations in transmission-videotape cartridge systems or the long awaited cable television-will eventually provide a non-commercial forum for these films.

But the commercial networks can grow along with the documentary.

This would mean abandoning the pretense of objectivity, and freeing film from mere reporting. It would mean believing that the proper truth to broadcast is the sum, and not the lowest common denominator, of many subjective truths, and that the networks are forums for truths rather than arbiters of Truth.

But more importantly, it would mean admitting the subjectivity of film and unmasking the artist who makes -and is- the documentary. 0 Dan Denton, an English major in Berkeley College, is in the reel o{The Yale Exper-

â&#x20AC;˘ Flying the black flag of himseH A Review of Ted Hughes'poetry

by John Romano

Crow, Harper & Row, 1971.

Selected Poems, 1957-1967, Harper & Row, 1973.

-----

Ted Hughes' reputation is only to a small extent a product of the three volumes from which the poems in Selected Poems were chosen: The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Lupercal (1960), and Wodwo (1967). Rather, it is based primarily upon his fourth book, Crow, which was published in this country with enormous impact in 1971. It was perhaps the most widely discussed new book of poetry to appear in England or America since the posthumous appearance of Sylvia Plath's book, Ariel (1966). It has been held in such esteem that, especially among writers of poetry, no poet is more frequently named as the most considerable contemporary talent.

This judgment is a controversial one at a moment when Lowell and Merwin and Ammons are alive and busy, especially in circles where the taste for poetry is all but dominated by an admiration for the later Stevens. The judgment is not my own, but Hughes' prominence should not surprise us, for all that. Crow does offer much of what readers of recent poetry have been particularly starved for: a direct address to the senses, an impression of sheer power unhampered by selfconsciousness-a left to the body under a clear blue sky, or is it a black sky? Consider the hairiness: Flogged lame with legs Shot through the head with balled brains Shot blind with eyes Nailed down by his own ribs Strangled just short of his last gasp By his own windpipe Clubbed unconscious by his own heart Dragged under by the weight of his guts ("A Kill")

Even when the vision repels, the voice is irresistible: I

Crow saw the herded mountains, steaming in the morning.

And he saw the sea Dark-spined, with the whole earth in its coils.

He saw the stars, fuming away into the black, mushrooms of the nothing forest, clouding their spores, the virus of God. And he shivered with the horror of Creation. ("Crow Alights") Perhaps inevitably, the lucidity is misleading. It is secretly tenebrous, if openly ironic: God tried to teach Crow how to talk. " Love," said God. "Say, Love."

Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea .

And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.

"No, no," said God, "Say, Love. Now try it.

LOVE." Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito Zoomed out and down To their sundry flesh-pots. ("Crow's First Lesson") It ls also man-hating and God-hating:

Crow laughed.

He bit the Worm, God's only son, Into two writhing halves.

He s tuffed into man the tail half With the wounded end hanging out. ("A Childish Prank") and crisply woman-hating: He lifts a chair-fear lifts himHe smashes the egg-shell object to a blood-rag, A limping sprawl, he tramples the bubbling mess.

The s hark-face is screaming in the doorway Opening its fangs. ("Crow's Account of St. George") Along with the, er, refreshing qualities of the voice, Crow offers some of the interest of narrative, characters and events, next to which the "confessional" poet's divulgences pall. Like Zarathustra, a palpable influence, or like Clint Eastwood, whom he resembles ~a d.!fferent way, the waggish, implacably violent anti-hero of the poems has undeniable, if ghastly, charisma. What he evokes is rooted in the most appalling recesses of our being, and if it isn't entirely pleasant it is nonetheless instructive. Though I hesitate to use the term "authenticity," I think it is to some extent true that we read ourselves when reading Crow, and there is merit in that. But this acquainting of the self with the self sharply restricts the matters Hughes can put before us. For Crow, as for Zarathustra, philosophy and style are one; when we have once heard the cry of Crow, and its echo within us, we know all he can teach us.

This is perhaps a reflection of Hughes' inestimable debt to D.H. Lawrence, and if so it is not an entirely flattering reflection; his is an art that instructs through the blood, but that which the blood can know seems, at times, remarkably limited: Who owns these questionable brains? Death.

All this messy blood? Death.

These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.

This wicked little tongue? Death.

This occasional wakefulness? Death.

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.

Who owns all of space? Death. ("Examination at the Womb-Door")

So far I have been guilty of confusing the voice of Crow with that of the poet, where the schooltrained sense of a reader of poetry will tell him that the meaning of Crow may only be adjudged by a scrupulous calibration of the distance between the two. But perhaps A. Alvarez is right that very few of our prepared approaches to poetry will be of avail in confronting Hughes' "Extremist" work, though he errs in thinking it the finest thing in the world. Such a sweeping view of the iconoclasm of the volume may well explain my sense that the poet-narrator is himself a casualty of Crow's aggressive nihilism. Not that Hughes is Crow himself, but rather that the distance between Hughes and Crow cannot be measured within the poems at all.

The implications of such a thought remind me of a lecture delivered in 1968 by Charles Tomlinson, another British poet. His topic was British poetry

)

Volume seven, number threel March 25, 19741 13

since 1945; Hughes' Wodwo had just appeared, but in discussing Hughes he chose an earlier poem from LupercaJ., "An Otter": Brings the legend of himself From before wars or burials, in spite of hounds and vermin-poles; Does not take root like the badger. Wanders, cries: Gallops alot;1g land he no longer belongs to; Re-enters the water by melting.

He keeps fat in the limpid integument Reflections live on. The heart beats thick, Big trout muscle out of the dead cold; Blood is the belly of logic; he will lick The fish bone bare. And can take stolen hold On a bitch otter in a field full Of nervous horses...

Although Tomlinson's own very fine poetry exhibits a sensibility very different from Hughes', he was painfully fair to the purpose and achievement of the poem. And yet my clearest recollection is of two remarks which he appended almost casually to his reading. The first was that Hughes had learned a great deal from Lawrence, an observation that has permanently conditioned my respo~sf' to the poems. The second observation had reference to the poem's delight in a certain order of feelmg, in the blood belly of logic, a relish that is almost audible in the lip-smacking of "He will lick/The fish bone bare." Tomlinson said that there was much in ' ' An Otter" of the sensibility that led to the building of the concentration camps. As a reaction to "Otter" this is surely an exaggeration; in light of Crow, I am inclined to agree.

Although Selected Poems is ultimately a less interesting book than Crow, less original and achieved as poetry than the later work, it is the more humane volume of the two. From among several directions implicit as possibilities in his earlier work, Hughes progressively inclines to the dark and chilly path Tomlinson has all too accurately described. If Crow is anticipated in poems as early as "The Jaguar" , "Hawk Roosting" , and "Esther's Tomcat", unfulfilled promises are held out in "The Horses", in "Bull Moses", and especially in "Skylarks" (a longer poem from Wodwo (where, indeed, the promise is partially fulfilled. With its wierd echoes of Stevens and its strangely lyrical tone, "Skylarks" is ultimately uneven; mannered in some parts ("Sing/ Obediant as to death a 1deadthing"), it is passionately and totally realized in others. Its importance, however, is that in it Hughes achieves a bala.n ce he rarely reaches in Selected Poems, and has plainly chosen not to achieve again. It is a mixed singing, a vision of undeluded hope and sympathetic despair:

0 song, incomprehensibly both waysJoy! Help! Joy! Help!

Olark 0 John Romano, a third-year graduate student in English, has written an article about Sylvia Plath to appear next month in Commentary.

A death in the Old Family

(continued from page 9) quired to observe the Oxford gowning tradition and wear their academic gowns¡to classes and all official university functions), is particularly sensitive to the News' error, says Bennett, because it was the first private university in the South to voluntarily integrate its student body. So the university sued, and the News was put in the unhappy position of having to defend itself through the New York firm of Baker, Nelson & Williams. The suit could drag on for years.

When the tired and frustrated 1974 board members met las t fall to"choose their successors, it was clear that the once glorious Yale Daily News, "the old lady on York Street,'' needed a slug of Geritol.

The OCD was in dire need of a thorough financial restructuring if they were to survive the financial stringencies of the sour ' 70's. But this already had begun through the efforts of a new business director, Matthew Coles (editorial page editor, 1973), who assumed the brunt of Donahue's work last fall. Although Cole's Irish wit undoubtedly will not remain around the News as long as that of Francis Donahue, Coles has already begun to leave a distinctive mark on the organization. For tax advantages, he changed the News from a partnership arrangement to a non-profit corporation, eliminatingat least for the immediate future the opportunity to earn big money on the News. (The News is the last Ivy League paper to do so. ) He established a classified ads section, formalized office records which had been kept only in Donahue's head, and spearheaded a number of new OCD special projects, like the News!WYBC guide to rock music scheduled to appear in May. Special projects have traditionally made the most money for the News.

In addition to Matt Coles, the News needed something it had missed for four years-a leader. Not a chairman who could snap his fingers and yell "Heeler!" for instant service, but an editor-in-chief who could integrate the various departments, rebuild the spirit and sense of craft in the paper. For that role, they elected Eli Spielman, a sports writer who had written only one news article prior to his election, but who has a quiet sense of vision, and a desire to leave his stamp on the News.

Today, Spielman must contend with a complex and diffuse mood on campus that seems to prevent any of Yale's formerly prominent extracurricular activities from assuming their lost status. Part of the demise of Yale's institutions arises from a renaissance of individtlalism, a flourishin~ of small group activities and

burgeoning of opportunities for more personal and less conventional expressions of achievement. In our bleaker moods, we have termed this grim professionalism, a narcissistic thrust, a desperate need for private time and private space and personal comfort- we cannot pin it down, but this is the drift, the flavor of what is around us.

All this seems true in part, for many of us, punished by the '60's or having felt the punishment received by our older brothers and sisters, have withdrawn to private modes of established success, without feeling any internal struggle. Somehow, inexplicably, the movement got derailed, and we are waiting to see what happened ...

But this is merely the surface phenomenon, and somehow, it smells of the need for explanation to the older generations. Grim professionalism has been progressing since World War II, with the flowering of corporations and the dramatized need for expert manpower; it is not a foreign trend. Besides, students, as individuals, respond to what is exciting and good - adjectives most Yale activities have failed to inspire during periods of mass movements.

If Eli Spielman can prove that the News is worth writing for again, grim professionalism will become known as sense of craft once more, and students will be back at 202 York Street.

And it appears as if Spielman has the energy and the perspective to. meet the task. He works at the News until exhausted, but it is clear to him that he is happiest while working in journalism; academic courses remain a hobby and a luxury. He understands the needs of internal structure and discipline, but sees himself as a teacher, sensing the old undergraduate tradition of learning from one's peers, offering and inheriting a rich mode of thought, responses, and attitudes from one class to another. He recognizes the creative impulse that has spawned the Yale Daily News Magazine and the ability of the magazine and the daily paper to work in peaceful coexistence-a cross-fertilization of interests - borrowing from each other' s strengths rather than resenting each other's limitations. He is concerned with News reporting as an expression of the thick and subtle issues on campus as well as a means for providing a service to Yale.

All the dedication of Matt Coles and his band of Newsies will not bring back the old News: that experience has died, like the commie News. But the 1975 News may mark the beginning of a new era of good news-and when all else has passed, that is something worth saving for Francis Donahue's grandchildren.O

Pf

Volume seven, number three! March 25, 19741 14

We're N- HftWt County's w 1horizecl Men:edeaBenz deelw. We' re en w thoriud F a-t de.e.r • -u. end c:en ~ you the compe-te line of F iat cars-bought by more Europeens then any other m ike.

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Also In The Repertory This Wee k U.S. Premiere

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they discover t hat the omnipotent newsmagazine god s have been lying to them. Editors and journalists are among the chosen few who can still convince p eople that life has order , so who am I to explode another man's religion ? I report that icicles hang from my radiator, ink freezes in my b all-point pen if I let it sit too long, I 'm going blind from reading by candlelight, 20 percent of the university has died of consumption since January, and if the ice doesn't break soon we'll be driven to devouring the tawny flesh of our beloved mates.

I can't wait until I have children and am able to impress them by telling them how I lived through the British Depression in the winter of 1974. My imagination suggests hundreds of Paul Bunyan stories as I sit here in my cozy, centrally-heated room with 500 watts of light glaring and my component system shaking the walls.

There have been a few power cuts, but they lasted only a few hours before life-giving electricity was restored. During one of them I was forced to leave a lecture, sacrificing the dubious pleasure of hearing a recording of T.S. Eliot reading his poetry. (The genius could write, but he sure couldn't read very well.) And during a late-night cut everybody in the college wandered through the corridors seeking someone suitably warm to sleep with.

More than anything else, the energy crisis has supplied us with material for endless hours of mindbending polemic discussion over pints of lager in college bars. Every Marxist on campus is eager to coattail passersby to deliver a reasoned explanation of how Marx predicted thjs energy crisis 100 years ago and it is only through collective action now that the world can be saved.

Meanwhile, every natural scientist in Great Britain is trying desperately to convince the authorities that his particular research is part of the new wave of "alternate technology" and will solve the nation's energy problems.

Perhaps, as a member of an institutionalized living complex complete with cleaners, cafeterias and social committees, I've been shielded from the brunt of the crisis. "People in the North are heating their sitting rooms In heat in Eng land with coal and sleeping with hot water Universjty of Kent, Canterbury, bottles," an activist first-year co-ed England-All the friends who write revealed to me. "People in the North from America seem terrifically conhave always heated their sitting cerned about my health. Everyone rooms with coal and slept with hot wants to know how I manage to keep water bottles," I revealed to her. from dying without heat and So where's the crisis? electricity.

True, industry was on a three-day Of course, I write back perpetuatweek. But no one is feeling the effects just yet. "It will take a few ing the myth. Americans become disillusioned and alienated when months," the experts tell us. But

(continued from page 2) "Byron White has a good story on me," said McDougal, cocking his visor up on his balding head. "He came to me his first year in Law School and asked for some personal advice. He said he had been offered $15,000 to play football for three months, and wanted to know if he should take it. I said, well, let's talk about this for a while-and then I told him to take the offer. He didn't listen to my advice and stayed to become number one in his class.

Much later he reminded me of our talk and said 'I bet you thought I was just a big, dumb, country boy.' -which I certainly did!"

"Lawyers can operate even when they're old," McDougal pointed out.

"Unlike doctors, an old lawyer is better than a young one." The recent energy crisis and increased oil exploration have placed a large demand on expertise about the law of the sea and other forms of international law. McDougal has acted as counsel and consultant in arbitrations and controversies involving both governments and large private companies.

When he retires, McDougal plans no fishing trips. His office will continue to burn late lights; he will continue to monopolize the services of a law librarian; he will continue to locate articles in the morass of his office; and he will continue to attend conferences throughout the world on international law. His retirement will consist of "writing books," adding to his impressive list of publications that already occupy most legal libraries of the world.

"It's a process of dying," he said gently. "When you become older your interests are limited and you enjoy your work. I don't have the energy anymore to bother Senators or write long articles. Younger associates write letters to The New York Times and I sign them." The myopic clerklike professor, dwarfed by his books and clutter, sat back in his swivel chair. "One more thing about the law," he remarked. "Since becoming a lawyer, I've never been bored a day in my life." 0 Daue Sleeper

I)

~-

Volume seven, number three! March 25, 1974115

•

Paul Erlich, champion as he is at in· stilling fear and panic into the masses, told us we would be walking on each other by 1975, too. Experts get paid for pulling panic levers, but ordinary people don't get p aid for much of anything. (Not even for crawling through coal-infested tun· nels 12 hours a day.) So the British public s trolls leisurely along, vaguely curious, waiting for the next new shortage and hoping someday they'll run out of politicians.

The most irritating problem the average consumer faces in his day-to· day life is shops without lights.

There exists somewhere in the laby· rint h of recent British " period of crisis" documents an elaborate series of lighting regulations. If you sell books you are under different regulations than if you sell food .

Some shops have electricity three days a week, some four, and some even five days a week, but not during dinner or tea. I suspect the police here in Canterbury aren't even sure what the rules are, but at the begin· ning of January they slapped a couple of heavy fines on shops that could afford them. So now most shops do withou t lights. Instead, they post large placards reading, "We may not look like it, but we're open for business."

Two days each week this university is under a " 50 percent power regulation." This means that on Tuesdays and Thursdays a little man with a ladder marches through the offices and corridors taking bulbs out of every other light socket. One won· ders if what they pay this man to do his job doesn't cost more than the electricity they save.

And during the.first week of Feb· ruary the student's union occupied a building to protest the expulsion of a student. In the evenings the student marshalls patrolled the halls crying, "Switch off all lights. It is illegal to switch on any lights." I kept wonder· ing if it wasn't illegal to occupy the building, but I suppose everybody has to set his values somewhere.

Imaginative commercial enter· prises have added their own twist to the crisis, turning it to profit as usual. An advertisement for " The Fuel-Crisis Motorist's Guide to Seeing Europe" regularly nms in the newspapers. The aver,.ge British homeowner is encouraged to buy more insulation for his house because 10,000 of the 20,()()()..odd kilowatt hours of electricity he uses to heat his house escape between the chinks in the walls. You can even buy a windmill for less than 200 pounds (450 dollars).

A local gas board ran a contest in January asking participants to sug· gest ways of conserving energy. The winner was a lady who suggested

that husbands and wives, lovers and anyone else so inclined take baths to· gether to save both water and heat.

Well, the myth of the stiff and moral Britisher got a boost from the reac· tion around the country. Letters poured in to the newspapers declar· ing bathing together to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The House of Lords condemned the practice a s im· moral, and someone reportedly over· heard the Queen remark, " We are not amused."

In fact, Royalty has been right up on the front lines of the energy bat· tle, fighting with tooth and claw.

When Princess Anne inspected pro· gress on her 20,000 pound (45,000 dollar) five-bedroom house s he was careful never to have on more than one light at a time. However, the price the country paid for her wed· ding could probably have paid for enough heat to warm the country through the winter of 1980, with enough left over to make a down· payment on the sun.

Admittedly, the situation here in England will get worse. The miners' decision to call a national strike sparked a new battle in their continu· ing war with a Government deter· mined to preserve the wealth and pri· vileges of the rich (under the pretense of "the fight against infla· tion"). The effects of that battle will no doubt include more frequent and longer power cuts, which, for the moment at least, will mean less work for the British citizen, more drinking to keep warm, and much more sleeping and bathing together.

But there will always be an England.O Curt Peoples The peripatetic Mr. Peoples, who earned a degree in English from Ohio University, has been known to "bathe around."

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