SPAN: February 1975

IN THIS ISSUE:

CHOOSING THE SEX OF YOUR UNBORN CHILD

by Lawrence Galton

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN AMERICAN JAZZ?

LINCOLN THE WRITER

by Jacques Barzun

CAROL SUMMERS IN INDIA

by Richard Bartholomew

'The glory of Lincoln,' wrote Goldwin Smith, Professor of History at Oxford in 1864, 'has nothing in it dazzling or grandiose; it is the quiet halo which rests round the upright, self-devoted, unwavering and unwearying performance of the hardest public duty. But its quiet light will shine steadily when many a meteor that has flamed in history has been turned, by the judgment of a sounder morality, to darkness.'

To mark the 166th birth anniversary this month of Abraham Lincoln, SPAN presents a four-page photo album on 'Lincoln Land' (pages 37-40) and an article on 'Lincoln the Writer' by Jacques Barzun (pages 41-45). The portrait above was painted in the year 1908 by American artist Douglas Volk.

SPAN A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER As many of you may have read, Ambassador Moynihan's two-year leave of absence from Harvard University expires in February 1975, which means he will be leaving his post as Ambassador to India to resume his academic career. We would like to thank him for his many contributions to SPAN over the past two years. We hope he will keep in touch with India by contributing to SPAN in the future. We wish him all the best as he returns to teaching and writing at Harvard.

We try never to have the same byliner appear twice in a single issue of SPAN, but sometimes an occasion arises when we must break that rule-as we did in this issue. In the last fewweeks, the U.S. Secretary of State, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, made two vital speeches on what are probably the two most serious problems facing the world today: the food crisis and the energy -crisis. We are printing abridgments of these speeches on pages 5-8 and 46-48 because we feel these subjects are as important to India as they are to the rest of the world.

In this issue, we are proud to feature two Indian bylinersa familiar one and a new one. Familiar to SPAN readers is art critic Richard Bartholomew who, on pages 20-25, discusses American artist Carol Summers and reports on the drama of watching Summers actually create a print before his eyes-seeing the solvent being blown on the colors and watching them come to life.

The new byliner in SPAN is Hafeez Noorani, a business executive in the field of marketing as well as a free-lance writer specializing in mass communications. On his recent visit to the U.S. Noorani examined American educational television, especially such successful shows as "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company." His analysis (pages 13-15), coupled with our color picture story of "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" (pages 9-12), provides useful insights into what makes a successful educational TV program.

This issue reports on two science frontiers that may be especially interesting. On pages 16-19 science writer Lawrence Galton discusses the possibility that in a few years married couples may be able to choose the sex of their unborn child.

Since a disturbingly high percentage of choices would be for males, scientists are worried about the possibly disruptive social, psychological and political effects of free use of such knowledge. Biophysics is the scientific frontier discussed by Maya Pines in her article "Mind and Matter" (pages 28-33).

She reports on the late&tAmerican research in bio-feedback.

Biophysicists and psychologists are proving that there is a definite scientific basis for most of the techniques and "powers" used by Indian yogis for thousands of years-powers that have hitherto been a mystery to Western science.

February 12th is the birthday of an American, Abraham Lincoln, whose greatness transcends national boundaries.

We mark his birthday with two articles. "Lincoln Land" (pages 37-40) is a capsule "guidebook" for Indian tourists, showing pictures of the most famous Lincoln shrines in Kentucky and Illinois. For an article on Lincoln himself, we were searching for something new-something that would concentrate on some lesser-known quality of this many-sided man. Thousands of books and articles have been written about Lincoln the rail-splitter, Lincoln the statesman, Lincoln the wartime leader, Lincoln the liberator of the slaves, Lincoln the philosopher, Lincoln the martyr. We found what we were looking for in the article on pages 41-45, in which a distinguished American intellectual shows us "Lincoln the writer." Barzun reminds us that-no, I won't tell you more.

Turn to page 41.

-A.E.H.

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Front cover: The rich, glowing colors of "Rainbow Glacier" are typical of the work of American· print maker Carol Summers, who recently gave a series of demonstrations in several Indian cities. For a story on Summers, see pages 20-25.

Back cover: One of the most successful educational television programs in the U.S. is "The Electric Company," which teaches reading to 7- to 10-year-olds. Here, actor Bill Cosby teaches children the "st" sound. Other stars on the show are, from left: Rita Moreno, Lee Chamberlin and Skip Hinnant. See articles on pages 9-15.

Managing Editor: Carmen Kagal. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu. Editorial Staff: Mohammed Reyazuddin, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal Sharma, Krishan Gabrani, M.M. Saha. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy, Suhas Nimbalkar.

Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaha. Photographic Services: US IS Photo Lab. Published by the United States Information Service, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi-I 10 00\, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed by Arun Mehta at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Vakils House, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-400 038.

Photographs: S-Alan Berg. 9-12-courtesy Children's Television Workshop, except 9 top right-David Attie. J2 bottom right-Grey Villet, Life. 17,2J-Avinash Pasricha. 24-2S-M. Ram Harith. 27-Paul Conklin; courtesy Men's Fashion Association of America. 28-Barry M. Blackman. 29-Avinash Pasricba. 34-3S-Ernest Dunbar. 37 right, 38-Avinash Pasricha except 38 top and center left-Richard Frear, U.S. National Park Service. 39-Alfred Levy. Midwest Film Studios. 4O-Robert Huntzinger.

Back cover-courtesy Children's Television Workshop.

Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission, write to the Editor. Subscription:.One year, 18 rupees; single copy, two rupees. For change of address, send old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to A.K. Mitra, Circulation Manager, SPAN maga~ine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi-IIO 001.

U.S.-INDIA ASSOCIATION HONORS SIX FOR PROMOTING INDO-U.S. TIES House Gallery in New York City, praised The Association of Indians in America, Dr. Stella Kramrisch, Oriental art spean organization formed in 1967 to advance cialist, as a teacher and author who has Indo-American friendship, recently honordevoted her scholarship to revealing "the ed six kindred spirits for their signal inner meaning of Indian objects and their contributions to that cause.

At its second annual awards ceremony relationship to the universe." In 1950 she joined the University of Pennsylvania as in New York on November 9, 1974, the Association presented plaques of appreProfessor of Indian Art and served simulciation and tribute to John Sherman taneously as the Curator of Indian Art at Cooper; Dr. Amiya Chakravarty; Profesthe Philadelphia Museum. She taught at sorHarish-Chandra; Dr. C.K.N. Patel; the University of Calcutta from 1923 to Left: AMIYA CHAKRA VARTY Dr. Stella Kramrisch; and A.M. Rosenthal.

1950.

Right: JOHN SHERMAN COOPER The Association has a membership of T.N. Kaul, India's Ambassador to the 5,000 and represents, in the words of its U.S., delivered the Association's address president, Dr. Manoranjan Dutta, "the for A.M. Rosenthal, managing editor of hopes and aspirations of Indian immithe New York Times and a former Times grants to make their presence appreciated New Delhi bureau chief. Said Ambasin America." sador Kaul: Rosenthal "has written about John Sherman Cooper, a former U.S. India and other countries with sympathy, Ambassador to India and a former understanding and depth of feeling, which Senator from the State of Kentucky, was few foreigners are able to develop when cited as one of the most distinguished they work in other countries."

American ambassadors to have served In accepting the award, the New York in India. In delivering the Association's Times managing editor said: "I don't L~ft: HARISH-CHANDRA tribute, Arthur Lall, former Indian Amreally know why the quality of friendship _~>~Rlgl'it: STELLA KRAMRISCH bassador to the United Nations, said of in India is so deep, so true and so lasting.

Ambassador and Mrs. Cooper that, since I do know Indians have a grace for coming back from India, "their activities' friendship. I know that once Indians ... showed that a personal regard and have accepted foreign credentials, they attachment for India remains with them." are accepted for ever....

Indians open Dr. Amiya Chakravarty was once their homes to foreigners. But even more Tagore's literary secretary. He has been important than that, they open their. teaching in American universities since minds-and that is a gift for which all 1949 and was honored for his work as foreigners who have lived in India are forever grateful." an "inspired teacher of generations of American youth, awakening in them the Rosenthal cited political freedom as a wonders of the Oriental spirit and the common bond between the United States Left: C.K.N. PATEL wisdom of both their Eastern and Western and India. He said: "To talk, to hope, to Right: A.M. ROSENTHAL think freely, to criticize and be criticized heritage." In his acceptance speech, Dr. teaches at -this is the essence of America." What Chakravarty reminded members of the Professor Harish-Chandra Association that "we belong to more than Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies. binds our two nations, he added, "is the Dr. C.K.N. Patel, research scientist for realization that India too is seized with one home" and that their over-riding concern should be to help bring peace Bell Laborataries, exemplifies the modern this desire for freedom." Despite temptayoung Indian scientist. In 1964, Dr. Patel tion to go other routes toward authoriand understanding to their two homesIndia and America. invented the carbon dioxide laser which tarian rule, "India is willing to pay the Professor Harish-Chandra, a distin- attained the highest continuous power price. Just as freedom of the press inguished mathematician, was cited, in the output at infrared frequencies and the evitably means abuse of the press and words-of Dr. Robert F. Goheen, former highest energy conversion efficiency of distortions, so does political freedom and president of Princeton University, "for any laser at that time. At 36, Dr. Patel is parliamentary democracy inevitably mean his extraordina.ry intellectual accomplish- one of the youngest members ever ad- delays, archaic methods, sometimes stumments, for the stature he has won among mitted to the U.S. National Academy bling around, lots of talk. It is a question of values and I think India has shown the world's mathematicians, for the luster of Sciences.

0 Dr. Allen Wardwell, Director of Asia where her values lie." he has thus added to his native land."

IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF

SPAN

• The energy crisis: Is geothermal, solar or fusion power the answer?

• Teeming fish in the Antarctic Ocean may be the solution to the world's protein shortage.

• What you should know about mental depression.

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Indian tneater group brings the Ramayana to America.

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I am the"real"lndlan Dear Sir: S.R. Madhu's article on "Indians in America" [September 1974 SPAN] has rekindled old memories. I was in the U.S. in September-October 1971 and. met Indians everywhere except in Santa Fe. Some were teaching, some were engaged in research, some were engineers, doctors, businessmen; at least one was a water chemist. They had one thing in common: None looked unhappy.

Especially happy were the Indians of New York City because they were then in the midst of Durga Puja. To add to their joy, an image of the Goddess had been flown from India. Hundreds ()f Indians had assembled there; some had gone with American friends.

Are Indians in America eager to pick up American citizenship? I, for one, do not think so. Maybe a few are. But the vast majority told me that they were looking forward to the day when they would return to India. Were they suffering from job dissatisfaction? Oh, no. Were they finding the "cultural shock" unbearable?

No, again. The reason, they told me, was simple: They were needed more in India than in the U.S.

As to my identity as an Indian, I had a somewhat disconcerting experience in Santa Fe. I met a very kind and very old Red Indian lady there. We had coffee together and spent ,a pleasant afternoon discussing the rugged beauty of New Mexico. Only, she would not believe that I was an Indian. "No, son, you are not selling that idea to me."

I was upset. I told her that I was the real Indian and that she was an Indian because of someone else's mistake. . "Whose mistake?"

"Christopher Columbus's."

"But that was centuries ago. I was not living then."

"N9r was I. But the great discoverer saw you all the same. And when he saw you he decided he was seeing me."

"Are you trying to be funny, son?"

"No, mother. In fact, I have never been more serious in my life. I am the real Indian."

"No, son, you don't look one."

The conversation ended there.

NIRENDRANATH

CHAKRAVARTI Calcutta

Sat,ajit Ba, on John Ford Dear Sir: Satyajit Ray's article on John Ford [May 1974 SPAN] is an eloquent and learned testimony to the genius of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

That it comes from Satyajit Ray makes it all the more significant.

There are quite a few parallels between Ford and Ray-one could write a whole article on this; but I'd like to mention just one common characteristic between them-to which I have always drawn attention in lectures and articles.

Ford believed in making films for sheer enjoyment; and so does Satyajit Ray. A John Ford fan since my school days, I rarely missed a film of his shown in Bombay. I vaguely remember a two-reel Western which he had made for Universal sometime toward the end of World War I, titled The Two-Gun Man. It is not known to many a cineaste (or even some film historians) that Ford emerged as a director in his own right for the first time in that short Western. It is equally interesting that in The Two-Gun Man his name had appeared as Jack Ford, not as John Ford.

J.B.H. WADIA Film Producer Bombay

TO: SPAN Magazine

SPAN

Subscription Service Sundeep 4, New Marine Lines Bombay 400-020

Last November, U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger addressed the World Food Conference in Rome, the largest and most ambitious meeting ever to tackle the problem of food and famine. In his speech, which is excerpted here, Dr. Kissinger urged the world to make a major effort to match its capacity to the magnitude of the challenge-so that 'within a decade no child will go to bed hungry' on the face of the globe.

'TO FREEMANKIND FROM THE SCOURGE OF HUNGER' We meet to address man's most fundamental need. The threat offamine, the fact of hunger have haunted men and nations throughout history.

Our presence here is recognition that this eternal problem has now taken on unprecedented scale and urgency, and that it can only be dealt with by concerted worldwide action.

Our challenge goes far deeper than one area of human endeavor or one international conference.

We are faced not just with the problem of food, but with the accelerating momentum of our interdependence. The world is midway between the end of the Second W orld War and the beginning of the 21st century. We are stranded between old conceptions of political conduct and a wholly new environment, between theinadequacy of the nation-state and the emerging imperative of global community.

In the past 30 years the world came to assume that a stable economic system and spreading prosperity would continue indefinitely. New nations launched themselves confidently on the path of economic and social development. Technical innovation and industrial expansion promised steady improvement in the standard of living of all nations. Surpluses of fuel, food and raw materials were considered a burden rather than a blessing. While poverty and misery still afflicted many parts of the globe, over

the long run there was universal hope; the period was fairly characterized as a "revolution of rising expectations." That time has ended ....

In 1972, partly due to bad weather around the globe, world grain production declined for the first time in two decades. We were made ominously conscious of the thin edge between hope and hunger, and of the world's dependence on the surplus production of a few nations. In 1973 first a political embargo and then abruptly raised prices for oil curbed production in the world's factories and farms, and sharply accelerated a global inflation that was already at the margin of governments' ability to control. In 1974, the international monetary and trading system continues under mounting stress, not yet able to absorb the accumulated weight of repeated shocks, its institutions still struggling to respond. The same interdependence that brought common advance now threatens us with common decline ....

The political challenge is straightforward: Will the nations of the world co-operate to confront a crisis which is both self-evident and global in nature? Or will each nation or region or bloc see its special advantages as a weapon instead of as a contribution?

Will we pool our strengths and progress together, or test our

'Modern fertilizer is probably the most critical single input for increasing crop yields..•. New fertilizer industries should be created especially in the developing countries to meet local and regional needs.' strengths and sink together?

President Ford has instructed me to declare, on behalf of the United States: We regard our good fortune and strength in the field of food as a global trust. We recognize the responsibilities we bear by virtue of our extraordinary productivity, our advanced technology, and our tradition of assistance. That is why we proposed this conference. That is why a Secretary of State is giving this address. The U.S. will make a major effort to match its capacity to the magnitude of the challenge ....

We must begin here with the challenge of food. No social system, ideology or principle of justice can tolerate a world in which the spiritual and physical potential of hundreds of millions is stunted from elemental hunger or inadequate nutrition.

National pride or regional suspicions lose any moral and practical justification if they prevent us from overcoming this scourge ....

During the past three years, world cereal production has fallen; reserves have dropped to the point where significant crop failure can spell a major disaster. The longer-term picture is, if anything, starker still. Even today hundreds of millions of people do not eat enough for decent and productive lives. Since increases in production are not evenly distributed, the absolute number of malnourished people is, in fact, probably greater today than ever before except in times of famine. In many parts of the world 30 to 50 per cent of the children die before the age of five, millions of them from malnutrition.

Many survive only with permanent damage to their intellectual and physical capacities.

World population is projected to double by the end of the century. It is clear that we must meet the food need that this entails. But it is equally clear that population cannot continue indefinitely to double every generation. At some point we will inevitably exceed the earth's capacity to sustain human life. The near as well as the long-term challenges of food have three components: • There is the problem of production in the face of population trends. Maintaining even current inadequate levels of nutrition and food security will require that we produce twice as much food by the end of this century. Adequate nutrition would require 150 per cent more food, or a total annual output of three billion tons of grain.

• There is the problem of distribution. Secretary General Marei [Sayed Ahmed Marei, Secretary General of the Rome Conference] estimates that at the present rate of growth of 2! per cent a year the gap between what the developing countries produce themselves and what they need will rise from 25 million to 85 million tons a year by 1985....

• There is the problem of reserves. Protection against the vagaries of weather and disaster urgently requires a food reser"e ....

In short, we are convinced that the world faces a challenge new in its severity, its pervasiveness, and its global dimension.

Our minimum objective of the next quarter century must be to more than double world food production and to improve its quality. To meet this objective the U.S. proposes to this conference a comprehensive program of urgent, co-operative world-wide action on five fronts: 1) Increasing the production of food exporters.

2) Accelerating the production in developing countries.

3) Improving means of food distribution and financing.

4) Enhancing food quality.

S) Ensuring security against food emergencies ....

WHAT FOOD EXPORTERS CAN DO A handful of countries, through good fortune and technology, can produce more than they need and thus are able to export.

Reliance on this production is certain to grow through the next decade and perhaps beyond. Unless we are to doom the world to chronic famine, the major exporting nations must rapidly expand their potential and seek to ensure the dependable longterm growth of their supplies.

They must begin by adjusting their agricultural policies to a new economic reality. For years these policies were based on the premise that production to full capacity created undesirable surpluses and depressed markets, depriving farmers of incentives to invest and produce. It is now abundantly clear that this is not the problem we face: There is no surplus so long as there is an unmet need ....

The U.S. has taken sweeping steps to expand its output to the maximum. It already has 167 million acres under grain production alone, an increase of 23 million acres from two years ago.

In an address to the U.S. Congress last month, President Ford asked for a greater effort still. He called upon every American farmer to produce to full capacity. He directed the elimination of all restrictive practices which raise food prices. He assured farmers that he will use present authority and seek additional authority to allocate the fuel and fertilizer they require. And he urged the removal of remaining acreage limitations ....

A comparable effort by other nations is essential. The United States believes that co-operative action among exporting countries is required to stimulate rational planning and the necessary increases in output. We are prepared to join with other major exporters in a common commitment to raise production, to make the necessary investment, and to begin rebuilding reserves for food security ....

WHAT DEVELOPING COUNTRIES CAN DO The food-exporting nations alone will simply not be able to meet the world's basic needs. Ironically but fortunately, it is the nations with the most rapidly growing food deficits which also possess the greatest capacity for increased production. They have the largest amounts of unused land and water. While they now have 35 per cent more land in grain production than the developed nations, they produce 20 per cent less on this land. In short, the largest growth in world food production can-and musttake place in the chronic deficit countries.

Yet the gap between supply and demand in these countries is growing, not narrowing. At the currenl growth rate, the grain supply deficit is estimated to more than triple and reach some 85 million tons by 1985. To cut this gap in half would require accelerating their growth rate from the historically high average of 2! per cent per annum to J~ per cent-an increase in the rate of growth of 40 per cent.

Two key areas need major emphasis to achieve even this minimum goal: new research and new investment.

International and national research programs must be concentrated on the special needs of the chronic food-deficit nations, and they must be intensified. New technologies must be developed to increase yields and reduce costs, making use of the special features of their labor-intensive, capital-short economies.

On the international plane, we must strengthen and expand the research network linking the less developed countries with research institutions in the industrialized countries and with the

'Nothing more overwhelms the human spirit, or mocks our values and our dreams, than the desperate struggle for sustenance. No tragedy is more wounding than the look of despair in the eyes of a starving child.'

eXlstmg eight international agricultural research centers. We with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. Develpropose that resources for these centers be more than doubled opment Program to convene such a group this year. It should by 1980. For its part the U.S. will in the same period triple its bring together representatives from both traditional donors and own contribution for the international centers, for agricultural new financial powers, from multilateral agencies and from develresearch efforts in the less developed countries, and for research oping countries, with the following mandate:

by American universities on the agricultural problems of devel- • To encourage bilateral and international assistance programs oping nations. . . . to provide the required external resources.

The U.S. is gratified by the progress of two initiatives which • To help governments stimulate greater internal resources for we proposed at the sixth special session of the U.N. General agriculture.

Assembly last April: The International Fertilizer Development • To promote the most effective uses of new investment by the Center and the Study on the Impact of Climate Change on Food chronic deficit countries.

Supply. The fertilizer center opened its doors last month in the The United States has long been a major contributor to agriUnited States with funds provided by Canada and the U.S. We cultural development. We intend to expand this contribution. invite wider participation and pledge its resources to the needs We have reordered our development assistance priorities to of the developing nations. . . . place the central emphasis on food and nutrition programs. We National as well as international research efforts must be have requested an increase of almost $350 million for them in brought to bear. The United States offers to share with develop- our current budget .... ing nations the results of its advanced research. We already have For all these international measures to be effective, governunder way a considerable range of promising projects: To in- ments must re-examine their over-all agricultural policies and crease the protein content of common cereals; to fortify staple practices. Outside countries can assist with technology and the foods with inexpensive nutrients; to improve plant fixation of transfer of resources; the setting of priorities properly remains atmospheric nitrogen to reduce the need for costly fertilizers; the province of national authorities. In far too many countries, to develop new low-cost, small-scale tools and machines for farmers have no incentive to make the investment required for the world's millions of small farmers. increased production because prices are set at unremunerative We also plan a number of new projects. Next year, our space, levels, because credit is unavailable, or because transportation agriculture and weather agencies will test advanced satellite and distribution facilities are inadequate. Just as the exporting techniques for surveying and forecasting important food crops. countries must adjust their own policies to new realities, so We will begin in North America and then broaden the project to must developing countries give a higher priority for food proother parts of the world. To supplement the World Meteorol- duction in their development budgets and in their tax, credit ogical Organization's study on climate, we have begun our own and investment policies. analysis of the relationship between climatic patterns and crop yields over a statistically significant period. . . .

FOOD DISTRIBUTION AND FINANCING Finally, President Ford is requesting the National Academy While we must urgently produce more food, the problem of of Sciences, in co-operation with the Department of Agriculture its distribution will remain crucial. Even with maximum foreand other governmental agencies, to design a far-reaching food seeable agricultural growth in the developing countries, their and nutrition research program to mobilize America's talent. food import requirement is likely to amount to some 40 million It is the President's aim to dedicate America's resources and tons a year in the mid-1980s, or nearly twice the current level.

America's scientific talent to finding new solutions, commenHow is the cost of these imports to be met? surate both with the magnitude of the human need and the The earnings of the developing countries themselves, of course, wealth of our scientific capacities. . . . remain the principal source. The industrialized nations can make Modern fertilizer is probably the most critical single input for a significant contribution simply by improving access to their increasing crop yields; it is also the most dependent on new in- markets. With the imminent passage of the trade bill, the U.S. vestment. In our view fertilizer production is an ideal area for reaffirms its commitment to institute a system of generalized collaboration between wealthier and poorer nations, especially tariff preferences for the developing nations and to pay special combining the technology of the developed countries, the capital . attention to their needs in the coming multilateral trade and raw materials of the oil producers and the growing needs of negotiations. the least developed countries. Existing production capacity is Nevertheless, an expanded flow of food aid will clearly be inadequate worldwide; new fertilizer industries should be created necessary. During this fiscal year, the U.S. will increase its food especially in the developing countries to meet local and regional • aid contribution, despite the adverse weather conditions that needs for the long term. This could be done most efficiently have affected our crops. The American people have a deep .on the basis of regional co-operation. and enduring commitment to help feed the starving and the The United States will strongly support such regional efforts. hungry. We will do everything humanly possible to assure that In our investment and assistance programs we will give priority our future contribution will be responsive to the growing needs. to the building of fertilizer industries and will share our adThe responsibility for financing food imports cannot, howvanced technology. ever, rest with the food exporters alone. Over the next few years Another major priority must be to reduce losses from in- in particular, the financing needs of the food-deficit developing adequate storage, transport, and pest control. . . . countries will simply be too large for either their own limited To plan a coherent investment strategy, the U.S. proposes the resources or the traditional food aid donors. immediate formation of a co-ordinating group for food producThe oil exporters have a special responsibility in this regard. tion and investment. We recommend that the World Bank join Many of them have income far in excess of that needed to balance

7

'The U.S. will increase its food aid contribution, despite the adverse weather conditions that have 'affected our crops. The American people have a deep and enduring commitment to help feed ... the hungry.'

their international payments or to finance their economic development. The continuing massive transfer of wealth and the resulting impetus to worldwide inflation have shattered the ability of the developing countries to purchase food, fertilizer and other goods. And the economic crisis has severely reduced the imports of the industrialized countries from the developing nations.

The U.S. recommends that the traditional donors and the new financial powers participating in the co-ordinating group for food production and investment make a major effort to provide the food and funds required. They could form a subcommittee on food financing which, as a first task, would negotiate a minimum global quantity of food for whose transfer to food-deficit developing countries over the next three years they are prepared to find the necessary finances. . . . .

Ways must be found to move more of the surplus oil revenue into long-term lending or grants to the poorer countries. The U.S. proposes that the development committee, created at the recent session of the governors of the International Bank and Monetary Fund, be charged with the urgent study of whether existing sources of financing are sufficient to meet the expected import requirements of developing countries. If these sources are not sufficient, new means must be found to supplement them. This must become one of the priority objectives of the countries and institutions that have the major influence in the international monetary system.

ENHANCING FOOD QUALITY Supplies alone do not guarantee man's nutritional requirements. Even in developed countries, with ample supplies, serious health problems are caused by the wrong kinds and amounts of food. In developing countries, the problem is magnified. Not only inadequate distribution but also the rising cost of food dooms the poorest and most vulnerable groups-children and mothers-to in(erior quality as well as insufficient quantity of food ....

We know a good deal about the state of global production.

But our knowledge of the state of global nutrition is abysmal.

Therefore the U.S. proposes that a global nutrition surveillance system be established by the World Health Organization [WHO], the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund [UNICEF]. ... Nutrition surveying is a field with which the U.S. has considerable experience; we are ready to share our knowledge and techniques.

Second, we need new methods for combating malnutrition.

The United States invites the WHO, FAO and UNICEF to arrange for an internationally co-ordinated program in applied nutritional research. Such a program should set priorities, identify the best centers for research, and generate the necessary funding. The U.S. is willing to contribute $5 million to initiate such a program.

Third, we need to act on problems which are already clear.

The United States proposes an immediate campaign against two of the most prevalent and blighting effects of malnutrition: vitamin A blindness and iron deficiency anemia ....

We are prepared to contribute $10 million to an international effort.

Finally, we need to reflect our concern for food quality in existing programs. This conference should devote special attention to food aid programs explicitly designed to fight malnutrition

among the most vulnerable groups. The U.S. will increase funding for such programs by at least $50 million this year.

ENSURING AGAINST FOOD EMERGENCIES ... The world has come to depend on a few exporting countries, and particularly the United States, to maintain the necessary reserves. But reserves no longer exist, despite the fact that the U.S. has removed virtually all of its restrictions on production and our farmers have made an all-out effort to maximize output. ...

It is neither prudent nor practical for one or even a few countries to be the world's sole holder of reserves ....

We commend FAO Director General Boerma for his initiative in the area of reserves. The U.S. shares his view that a co-operative multilateral system is essential for greater equity and efficiency.

We, therefore, propose that this conference organize a reserves co-ordinating group to negotiate a detailed agreement on an international system of nationally held grain reserves ....

CONCLUSION The challenge before this conference is to translate needs into programs and programs into results. We have no time to lose ....

I have outlined the contribution that the U.S. is prepared to make in national or multilateral programs to achieve [the above] goals. And I have proposed three new international groups to strengthen national efforts ....

(I) The Exporters Planning Group; (2) The Food Production and Investment Co-ordinating Group; (3) The Reserves Coordinating Group ....

Nothing more overwhelms the human spirit, or mocks our values and our dreams, than the desperate struggle for sustenance.

No tragedy is more wounding than the look of despair in the eyes of a starving child.

Once, famine was considered part of the normal cycle of man's existence, a local or at worst a national tragedy. Now our consciousness is global. Our achievements, our expectations, and our moral convictions have made this issue into a universal political concern.

The profound promise of our era is that for the first time we may have the technical capacity to free mankind from the scourge of hunger. Therefore, today we must proclaim a bold objectivethat within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, that no family will fear for its next day's bread, and that no human being's future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition.

Our responsibility is clear.

Let the nations gathered here resolve to confront the challenge, not each other. Let us agree that the scale and severity of the task require a collaborative effort unprecedented in history.

And let us make global co-operation in food a model for our response to other challenges of an interdependent world-energy, inflation, population, protection of the environment.

William Faulkner expressed the confidence that "man will not merely endure, he will prevail." We live today in a world so complex that even only to endure, man must prevail. GI,obal community is no longer a sentimental ideal but a practical necessity.

National purposes, international realities and human needs all summon man to a new test of his capacity and his morality.

We cannot turn back or turn away.

"Human reason," Thomas Mann wrote, "needs only to will 0 more strongly than fate and it is fate."

hlue

Schoolroom With 'IWelve Million Children .

America's largest schoolroom is a television studio in New York City where two fascinating shows are produced for 12 million American schoolchildren between the ages of 3 and 10.The shows are' 'Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company," and together they have had a remarkable effect on the education of American children. Both shows were created by the Children's Television Workshop, a nonprofit organization with funds from the U.S. Government as well as private foundations, to teach letters, numbers and elementary reading to young children.' "Sesame Street" uses real people as well as puppets like Oscar (top right), gloomy resident of the Street's trash can. In "The Electric

Company"-which uses a wealth of electronic gadgetry-second, third and fourth graders are taught, for instance, the "ue" sound by Singer True Blue Sue (top left), or the vowel combination "ow" through the song "I'm Just a Clown Who's Feeling Down" (singers above). Both shows are created by an amazing interdisciplinary effort: Educators plan lessons; psychologists organize tactics; and entertainers make the show. The result: Two programs that belie the old belief that instructional TV must be dull; two shows that are among the liveliest offerings ,_(>.nAmerican television today and that are being copied by many other nations around the world.

"Word Detective" Fargo North (below, wearing hat), played by comediGn Skip Hinnant, solves word problem appearing on electronic screen.

First step: Find the meaning of "dreep."

Later-after most of "The Electric Company" viefvers have decoded the message-Fargo finds the missing word, which in this case is "wash."

Step

back! ~

Inspired by the success of "Sesame Street" (which started in 1969), the Children's Television Workshop in 1971 created "The Electric Company," one of the world's most complicated and expensive television programs.

"The Electric Company" has only one aimto improve the reading ability of 7- to 10-year-olds. Now in its fourth season, the show is watched by some three million children in 20,000 schools across the United States as part of their instruction in this most basic of all educational skills.

"The Electric Company" uses music, skits, funny costumes-the full range of film techniques and electronic gadgetry-and costs over $5 million a year to produce. ("Everything you ever heard about television," says Chuck Raymond, "it's studio producer here.") It takes about 12 hours of studio time to produce six to eight minutes of a finished program. And on the TV screen, Styrofoam letters move about, apparently self-propelled; live people and animated characters play with one another, things appear and disappear as children are given their reading lessons. All this seeming anarchy, however, is controlled by a few conventional rules. One example: Anything involving letters of the alphabet must move from left to right.

Here is a typical situation showing how "The Electric Company" mixes entertainment with education. A character called the Man in the Street quizzes kids on the show about their favorite word: Judy's is "tub," because she likes to brush her teeth with a "tub" of toothpaste.

Doesn't she mean a "tube?" asks the Man in the Street. No, says Judy. After several elaborations of this theme, the young viewers have a pretty good idea of how the final "e" changes "tub" into "tube. " To help teachers make "The Electric Company" an integral part of their classroom, the Children's Television Workshop has sent out over 500,000 copies of a paperback book explaining the techniques behind the show and how it can be used as an adjunct to classroom teaching. In the words of a former U.S. Commissioner of Education: "By no stretch of the imagination can 'The Electric Company' be used j n place of an actual classroom teacher. But it provides the teacher with an interesting and significant new tool."

"Ouch! Oh dear! If 1could only read faster," cries the Messenger Man (cartoon, above left), who learns word meanings through experiences.

Left: Five stars of "The Electric Company" line up to spell out the word "yell"-and with the aid of a megaphone demonstrate its meaning.

Now in its sixth year, "Sesame Street" is broadcast by some 300 television stations in the United States. With about nine million regular viewers, it has an audience unmatched in public television history.

The "Sesame Street" set looks like a typical city street in any ordinary urban American neighborhood-a street populated by teacheractors and real children (right) and puppets ,like Big Bird (below). In hour-long packages, "Sesame Street" delivers rapid-fire bursts of simple information on the alphabet, on counting, on how to distinguish triangles, squares, circles. In punchy sequences never longer than six minutes each, the camera is constantly moving from lively animated cartoons, to films of children at play, to brief provocative scenarios -each section carrying a complete educational message. In short, "Sesame Street" and its sequel "The Electric Company" have changed the whole content of what children's instructional television should be. With their fast-moving, unorthodox techniques, they are unlike anything else in the world of instrucis all too often simply a tional TV-which teacher standing between a camera and a blackboard.

Their refreshingly witty and exhilarating approach has moved educators in the U.S. and elsewhere to take a long hard look at the power and potential of electronic education.

Three scenes Fom "Sesame Street." Right: Folk singer Pete Seeger performs for children. Below right: Puppeteer Jim Henson with his puppets (left to right) Bert, Kermit the frog, Cookie Monster, and Ernie. Be/ow: Big Bird, a seven~foot-ta/l canary, and Gordon, science teacher in '~~et.

An Indian Looks At American Thlevision

by HAFEEZ NOORANI

-Surveying the whole spectrum of TV in the United States, a mass communications specialist analyzes the success of two outstanding educational programs and discusses their adaptability to India.

Every morning, American television conjures up a world of enchantment and education for millions of children. The setting seems ordinary enough: A typical street in a typical American city. But this street is different. It is called "Sesame Street," and along it one soon meets a cast of charming puppets and real life people.

The "Sesame Street" program begins with children singing the title song. After introducing a few characters on the street, the program slips easily into its task of providing instruction sugar-coated with entertainment.

Today, the children learn about the Letter M. First the sound m-m-m-m-m is identified and matched with the letter. After that, the many applications of the letter are demonstrated in a fascinating and humorous manner.

The Letter M is invited to dinner. The table is loaded with appetizing dishes. The host identifies each dish as he offers it to the Letter M. (Oddly enough, the name of each dish begins with M.) The guest hungrily devours each until nothing is left. The host sadly says: "Never invite an M over to your house to dinner. He eats up everything. Next time I'll call a J!" In another scene, a nursery rhyme based on a pair of everything in a doll's house introduces the Number Two. The scene ends with a pair of cats turning everything upside down in the doll's house. Another situation shows sleepless Ernie (a puppet) being told to count sheep to induce sleep. He succeeds in waking up Bertie (another puppet) who had offered the advice. He counts fire engines because they are faster. But their noise wakes up Bertie, so Ernie counts balloons because they don't make a noise. But the balloons burst and Bertie is really harassed. Each time, Ernie counts no further than the Number Two. In still another scene, "Sesame Street" teaches cogniti vevalues. Four things are shown in sequence. Three of them belong together.

The program explains why they do and why the fourth does not. Another scene deals with social interaction and teaches the benefits of co-operation. The hour-long program ends with: "This show was brought to you by the Letter M and the Number Two," echoing the pattern of sponsored entertainment on commercial television.

-and "The Electric Company" is on the air.

This program began late in 1971 as a halfhour series for children between the ages 7 and 10 (as against the ages three to seven of the hour-long "Sesame Street").

George Bernard Shaw had two abiding complaints against the English language: the first concerning the inconsistencies of its spelling and pronunciation; the second relating to the inadequacies of the 26-letter alphabet.

One would dearly love to see Shaw's reactions Almost every American home has a tele- to the efforts of "The Electric Company" in vision set, and sociologists have been studying dealing with inconsistencies of pronunciation. the viewing habits of Americans for many To a layman, the efforts seem fascinatingly years. One thing they have found is that effective. Take the letter G. In English it has two sounds-the soft sound as in "giant" and American children watch TV a great dealfrom 30 hours a week among preschool the hard sound as in "game." In one of the children, to an average of 54 hours a week programs, a girl and a boy take up positions among older children. This leads to the dis- for each of the sounds while the ice-cream quieting conclusion that children spend more seller acts as referee. A lively contest follows time with their TV sets than they do with with either side providing illustrations to back their parents and teachers. up its contention. Everyone starts laughing This obviously led to the question: Can when it is realized that both sounds exist in this powerful medium be used to stimulate the "garbage" near the "garage"!

A fine way to teach, indeed! But alongside the intellectual growth of children, especial~ ly those whose opportunities are limited? the mounting data of effectiveness and ap"Sesame Street" was designed by the Chil- probation, criticism of both "Sesame Street" dren's Television Workshop (CTW) as one and "The Electric Company" is gaining moattempt to answer the question. The Work- mentum. Are these programs "raising a new shop perceived many possibilities in the very kind of vidiot?" asks Harry McMahan, a commercial programs that some psychologists television expert and feature columnist for said were warping children's minds. The CTW Advertising Age. His anxiety is based on some team uses many of the techniques developed of the more recent data on preschoolers who by commercial television and its advertising. started attending classrooms in the last couple The team's task was similar to that of TV of years. Studies show that the average Ameradvertising: To grip the attention of the TV ican child is already spending more time with audience firmly before one conveys the mes- "Sesame Street" than this child will spend sage. TV advertising had successfully accom- later, in two of the first six years of school. plished this by developing a whole new set of When children ask, "How come the teacher video techniques which were combined with doesn't wear a puppet mask or dress up like short sentences of meaningful words and an ostrich?" (as is done in "Sesame Street") music carefully matched. Working closely one wonders if the learning patterns have got with educational advisers and an impressive misaligned and too far removed from reality. diversity of professional skills, the Children's Television Workshop applied these techniques to instructional TV. The result was "Sesame Street" and, more recently, "The Electric Company."

"We're going to turn it on," goes the catchy jingle. "We're going to bring you the power"

OTHER

INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS

If educators and psychologists are criticizing CTW's programs, they are also increasingly critical of commercial television's programs of violence and bloodshed. (There is no violence or bloodshed in "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company.") Equally, there is increasing criticism and resentment of the way commercial television often tends to look upon children purely as buyers of goods. All this growing awareness of the impact of TV on young minds is finding formal expression in a Boston-based organization called "Action for Children's Television" that seeks to remedy the situation in two ways: getting a better deal for children from the networks, and encouraging the production of programs better matched with children's needs.

An outstanding illustration of what can be achieved is "Zoom," an educational TV program with an important difference: Instead of providing instruction on the basis of an adult assessment of children's needs, "Zoom" stimulates children to create instructional material from their own perspective.

In a typical half-hour program, host children present material sent by children across the entire country. There may be a "Zoom" game which aims at developing speed in learning number sequences. Another feature may be an 8mm movie produced by a child. "Zoom's" impressive success with very young children has led to a conceptually similar program titled "Flea Market," for ages 13-18. "The 21-Inch Classroom" is another successful variant in instructional TV; its program strictly conforms to the school curriculum.

'SESAME STREET' FOR NON-AMERICANS But let's return again to the most successful American instructional TV show: "Sesame Street." Its success, actually, extends far beyond the borders of the United States. With an interesting range of variants, the program is being used to teach the alphabet to millions of children in over 50 countries. It is "Villa Sesamo" in Brazil and "Operation 30 Letters" in Yugoslavia. In Curacao, the program has a dual language presentation.

The English soundtrack is clearly audible in the background while in the foreground is the live Papiamentu commentary. Research has shown that while there is strong endorsement of

using the local language as part of the program, there is also an interest in learning English from it.

Is "Sesame Street" suitable for Indian conditions? Cultural dissimilarities obviously rule out the use of many devices and situations which are essentially part of the American scene. But these problems of presentation can be solved with a little ingenuity. A more serious problem is posed by the wide variety of Indian languages and their accompanying cultures, which practically rule out any widespread use of national television for teaching the alphabet or numbers. But that is only one part of the "Sesame Street" format. The other part, dealing with the development of cognitive values, can be more easily adapted.

The aspect of "Sesame Street" most relevant to Indian conditions is that dealing with social interaction. The programs are skillfully created to show co-operation among various ethnic groups in American society. This is perhaps "Sesame Street's" greatest merit, though it may not have attracted the attention that its success in teaching alphabets and numbers has.

The attractive presentation techniques of "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" are merely the tip of the iceberg. What remains unseen is the remarkable discipline of planning, execution and follow-up research, the marshaling of varied and at times divergent skills and viewpoints. Whether the presentation techniques are adapted or not, there is unquestionable benefit in the study of behind-the-scenes skills and techniques for application in India.

American instructional television is the realization of a dream, one that thoughtful Americans dreamed when they realized the stupendous power that the medium had acquired, especially over their children. The private sector's commercial networks, motivated largely by the gains from advertising, had for years been dominating American TV and churning out entertainment of the widest appeal. Most of the programs required minimal mental effort from the viewer. Noncommercial TV had also existed in the U.S. for many years. The National Educational Television (NET), a nonprofit organization, had provided many of the more ambitious programs. (There were nearly 120 stations which were owned and operated by educational institutions or other nonprofit organizations.) The situation was far from satisfactory and called for a radical change.

The change came in the mid- 'sixties when a

Commission on Educational TV was founded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Eminent Americans were invited to study noncommercial television and recommend lines along which it might most usefully develop. Presenting its report in 1967, the Carnegie Commission stated that "a wellfinanced and well-directed educational telelarger and far vision system, substantially more pervasive and effective than that which now exists in the United States, must be brought into being jf the full needs of the American public are to be served."

As a result of the Commission's report, the U.S. Congress passed the Public Broadcast Act in the late '60s, setting up what is known in America as "public television."

This new public-sector network had access to new types of programs such as "Sesame Street" (which started in November 1969).

Today's Public TV programs offer a remarkable blend of information and entertainment: Theaoperas; classical music; "Masterpiece ter" with Alistair Cooke as host; yoga classes; and a range of programs dealing with contemporary problems and current events.

But the production costs are high and can be a major handicap to the sustaining capacity of an individual TV station. Two years ago, the Station Program Co-operative was formed to provide economy of scale for the production of nationally distributed programs, while enabling the 246 member stations to vote on which programs will be produced and carried by them. Public TV's coverage of the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon was the result of just such a democratic selection process.

"This is WABC-TV New York. Today the team from WCBS-TV covers the debate of the Judiciary Committee on the proposed articles of impeachment calling for the removal of President Nixon." This was an incredible announcement for more than one reason. For the first time in the U.S.-or anywhere else in the world for that matterproceedings of such importance were being opened to public view. After conducting the impeachment proceedings behind closed doors for nearly 11 weeks, the Committee took the unprecedented decision to permit TV coverage of the rest of the debate. Each of the 38 members of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee was allowed 15 minutes

mge of variants, the program is being used to teach millions of children in over 50 countries. to explain to his constituents why he wasor was not-voting for the impeachment of the President. The gravity and complexity of today's problems demand a new kind of dialogue between the people and their representatives. TV provides a medium that is swift and continual.

Equally significant in this context was the new social awareness of the U.S. commercial networks. They swept aside entertainment and advertising revenue to devote 10 hours of prime time, on two evenings, to present the historic impeachment proceedings, thus matching Public TV on its homeground.

This co-operative approach adopted by an otherwise fiercely competitive industry is noteworthy.

Those who saw the impeachment proceedings on TV could not help recalling the TV event concerning another President of the U.S., though the circumstances were entirely different: the assassination of President Kennedy 11 years ago. From Friday afternoon that November when the shots were fired, to Monday when the funeral took place, the entire nation experienced, for the first time, the dramatic immediacy with which TV could cover national events.

A new type of news reporting was born -the "TV press"-a type which eventually evolved so much as to cover the impeachment hearings of a U.S. President. Following the tragic event of late 1963, the TV press has been the number one source of news, according to a recent report of the U.S. Television Information Office. Since then, it has also led consistently as the most believable mass medium. If media gave conflicting reports of the same story, the reported credibility is TV, 48 per cent; newspapers, 21 per cent; and radio, 8 per cent.

"And that's the way itis." These words will probably find a special place in the American folklore of the 20th century. These are the famous last words with which Walter Cronkite closes his news broadcast each evening.

A star in his own right, Walter Cronkite of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) is considered the most reliable news source by 65 per cent of all Americans. It is the fairness and the sincerity with which Cronkite presents the news that has won him this eminence. So complete is people's confidence in Cronkite that a woman is reported to have said that if the world were coming to an end, she would prefer to hear about it from Walter Cronkite.

Many questions have arisen about TV news presentation. TV critics are aware of the limitations of TV news as much as they realize its advantages. TV Guide magazine, for example, recently started a feature called "News Watch." Each week, a political analyst or a college professor is invited to comment on TV news. Announcing "News Watch" in an ad in a trade journal, TV Guide explains that the department was opened "not because television's power is being misused or abused, but because it so easily could be." Such awareness itself can be an effective deterrent.

Naturally, a new medium that plays such an important role in the lives of the people attracts the attention of the older medium: the press. John J. O'Connor and "Cyclops" of the New York Times provide stimulating comment on stations and programs. The 16-page "TV Week" of the Boston Globe provides detailed summaries of various programs. In addition to trade journals such as Television/Radio Age, there are magazines for the general public as well. At one end of this spectrum is the academic journal Television Quarterly published by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. At the other end is TV Guide whose popularity has grown steadily. With a weekly circulation of 20 million copies, it has now surpassed Reader's Digest to become the most widely circulated magazine in America.

Though sadly lacking the tradition that newspapers enjoy-and subjected by legal constraints that do not affect newspaperstelevision stations have increasingly taken to editorializing. The strength of the trend can be gauged from the fact that membership in the National Broadcast Editorial Association, a relatively recent entrant on the TV scene, has almost tripled in the last three years. The new attitude is best symbolized in the words of one of the broadcast industry's most respected figures, Frank Stanton, former president of CBS and now head of the American Red Cross: "Any station manager worth his salt will ... risk ~orporate or governmental intervention and welcome adverse public opinion to have said on his station what he thinks needs to-or ought to-be said."

Reflecting the changing cultural scene and reacting to the challenge of Public TV, American commercial networks have changed quite distinctly. True, they still have programs of

dubious merit. Take the movies. Between 9 a.m. of one day and 3 a.m. of the next, there is on an average weekday a choice of 18 movies. On Saturday, the number nearly doubles. Suspense, fast action and violence are the main ingredients of the evening drama films. Fortunately, the networks are more than just a long round of movies. There are programs of intrinsic value. While an independent station presents "The Six Wives of Henry VIII," CBS has the classic BBC series "Civilization" presented by the inimitable Kenneth Clark. Matching ABC's documentary type program "Wild Refuge" is NBC's entry "Here Comes the Future." "All in the Family" continues to hold Number One position as a program of entertainment. It is a Number One topic of conversation as well.

It seems that just about everybody, from taxi drivers to doctors of psychology, has a theory about just what Archie Bunker, the main character, is really saying. Though the program is basically a situational comedy in the classic tradition, it examines basic social issues and values and, in a light-hearted manner, pokes fun at the attitudes that today's middle class has developed toward these values.

The watchdogs of American TV are many -and they are alert. There are the Federal Communications Commission, the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting.

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Drug Authorities keep a watchful eye on the commercial use of the medium. This plurality itself is insurance against excesses and typifies the American concept of freedom and democracy firmly based on the communication of many ideas through many channels. Most criticism of American TV outside the U.S. is based on the medium's past weaknesses. It tends to ignore the fact that the older elements of this powerful medium are changing and new elements are being added. The contemporary blend is fascinating and exceptionally relevant to the America of the '70s.

0 About the Author: Hafeez Noorani, though professionally engaged in the marketing of packaged consumer goods, often writes articles on mass communications, archeology and linguistics.

THE SEX OF YOUR UNBORN CHILD

A longing to be able to predict over millions of evolutionary years and, best of all, select the sex of is dangerous." Foreseeing an increase in male births over female, Dr. Zeisel offspring has given rise since ancient times to a rich variety of folklore finds it "not difficult to foresee some of the consequences: more homosexuprescriptions. They range from the ality, more adultery, more rape, more Hebrew Talmud suggestion that placing the marriage bed in a north-south crime in general (men commit 90 per direction favors the conception of cent of it)-altogether a profound conflict between individual whims boys and the advice of the Greek philosopher Parmenides in the fifth and the interests of a healthy society. century B.c. that wives wishing boys One need not be a religious person to Science may soon record yet another be in awe of such natural constants, should lie on their right side after intercourse to the practice, still current triumph: the ability to choose the and to fear the wrath of the gods among husbands in Germany's Spes- sex of an unborn child. Surveys show if they are tampered with." Others sart mountains, of taking an ax along see in sex selection some risk of the that most people opt for males much development of a "frontier" kind of to bed to produce male progeny and tendency that could society. Supporters of women's liberaleaving it in the woodshed when they of the time-a wish girls. aggravate crime and social tension. tion may be concerned that sex selecToday we seem to be nearing the tion could lead to sex discrimination.

Should research in the whole field point where science may well fulfill Modern research in sex selection the age-old longing. Already, choice be stopped? This article probes all has long sought to use, in one way of sex is a possibility through amnio- aspects of this controversial issue. or another, the known or supposed differences between sperm carrying the centesis, a procedure'in which a needle X chromosome for female and those is inserted in the mother's abdomen and amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus is sampled to deter- carrying the Y for male offspring. (An ovum always carries an X mine genetic make-up. This technique offers parents a kind of chromosome; a sperm may carry either an X or a Y. Depending veto power-through abortion-when the fetus is found to be upon which sperm does the fertilizing, the fetus develops as afflicted with a genetically caused illness, and there are indica- a girl [XX] or boy [XYJ).

One method of sex selection that is practiced today was protions that it has also been used (abused, some physicians say) posed in the 1960s by Dr. Landrum B. Shettles of Columbia Uniwhen the sex of the fetus is the determining factor.

Going beyond this, a few months ago investigators in a Berlin versity College of Physicians and Surgeons. Because Y sperm laboratory reported development of a technique designed speci- swim somewhat faster than X, timing intercourse with ovulation fically to isolate male-producing human sperm and, almost simul- could be a major element in determining sex, Dr. Shettles sugtaneously, in a New York laboratory researchers experimenting gested. If coitus occurs shortly after ovulation, when the egg is with mice developed a method of increasing the yield of females. still high in the Fallopian tube, there should be a greater chance Both techniques need refinement; their application to human that fertilization will be by a Y sperm. That timing of coitus has reproduction will not come tomorrow, But it is hardly do'Ubted an influence in predetermining sex has been confirmed recently any more that sex selection is scientifically possible, and serious by a Polish physician, Dr. Franciszek Benendo of the County questions are being raised about its potentially wide-ranging Hospital in Plonsk, who, after studies with 322 couples, found social, psychological and political effects. Some observers are that if ovulation occurs before or within a day after intercourse, even asking whether the whole business should be allowed to the ovum is more likely to be fertilized by a Y sperm; if it occurs proceed. three or more days following intercourse the conception of a For example, Dr. Hans Zeisel, professor of law and sociology female is favored.

The newest research takes a different tack-in fact, two difat the University of Chicago, says: "I have always thought that this is the type of discovery that should not be made. The mere ferent tacks. In Germany, investigators are using differences possibility of destroying this natural balance carefully developed between male-carrying and female-carrying sperm to separate

Experts say sex predetermination could result in smaller families-by satisfying parental desires about the first-born. It could also help reduce incidence of sex-linked genetic diseases. out mechanically the male-carrying for use in fertilization; in New York, the effort is to use the body's immunological defenses against infectious agents and foreign bodies to knock out one type of sperm or the other (thus far, the work has been limited to eliminating the male).

The efforts to separate X from Y sperm so one or the other could be implanted artificially with assured results go back many years. Recently, a German team-R.J. Ericsson; C.N. Langevin and M. Nishino of Schering A.G., a Berlin pharmaceutical firm -devised a way of culling Y sperm from X. They placed sperm separated from seminal fluid in an albumin-containing solution dense enough to offer some resistance to swimming (which sperm do by lashing their long tails). After an hour, the sperm which had penetrated into the solution were removed and stained with a dye that is capable of making Y-bearers show up as bright dots under a fluorescence microscope. Sure enough, a preponderance of the penetrating sperm were Y-bearers. By putting this sperm population through the solution-swimming process several times, the Schering workers ended up with a population in which Y sperm comprised 85 per cent dfthe total.

Are human sperm after such processing capable of normal fertilization? As yet there is no answer; trial human fertilization isn't entered into lightly. But rabbit sperm, so treated, have been found fully fertile. Reporting in Nature, the science journal, the Berlin researchers stress both the simplicity ofthe procedure "and practicality of application to humans and perhaps other mammals." So far, the ability to cull X sperm to favor female offspring has eluded them; the problem is that what is left after Y sperm are separated out is not a collection of X's alone but rather a mix of normal plus abnormal, nonmoving sperm of both X and Y types.

I

n New York, an entirely different immunological approach has been taken by Dr. Edward A. Boyse of Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Institute and Dr. Dorothea Bennett of Cornell Medical College who got into sex selection research tangentially in connection with their basic research on cells. How, they wanted to know, do individual cells fit themselves into the body's society of cells? How do they recognize where they belong? (It is failure of such recognition that occurs in cancer.)

The cell surface is the structure through which cells interact with each other and the environment. The surface can be likened to a wall composed of many bricks. Some surface components are common to all cells; some are unique to specific cells, differentiating them from all others. It is these differences in surface components which cause a transplanted organ to be immunol2gically rejected. It has been recognized as foreign because of certain antigens-tiny protein markers-on the surfaces of its cells. These stimulate the recipient's body to produce antibodies that lock onto the antigens and inactivate the cells of the transplant.

Drs. Boyse and Bennett became interested in an antigen known as H-Y male. Female mice, rejecting grafts from males, produce an antibody to H-Y antigen. This antigen is present on most if not all cells of male mice, including the sperm. However, it apparently is not evenly distributed among the sperm, which led to the question: When the H-Y antigen is present in a sperm

cell, does this indicate the presence of the Y chromosome? In other words, is this a male-producing sperm cell?

To test this, Drs. Boyse and Bennett and their coworkers collected from female mice blood with a high assay of H-Y antibody.

They then suspended in this blood mouse sperm that were to be used for insemination. Forty-five minutes later, the insemination process was undertaken.

The natural sex ratio among mice is 53.4 per cent males to 46.6 per cent females. But in this experiment the progeny of mice inseminated with the treated sperm showed a different ratio45.4 per cent for males, 54.6 per cent for females, an eight per cent reduction in males. An appreciable number of the Y-bearing sperm had apparently been knocked out by the H-Y antibody, thus favoring female offspring. Although an eight per cent reduction in males may not seem a major change, it is enough to be considered of potential importance in breeding livestock. As yet it hardly represents the ultimate change to be expected of the technique-for livestock or possibly for humans. Says Dr. Boyse: "My personal belief is that because of the technical inadequacies in work which was really just a 'first go,' the figure is very much less than what could be expected when the tools are sharpened."

In fact, he and Dr. Bennett have already hit upon promising refinements.

Dr. Boyse sees a definite possibility for varying the technique so as to select in favor of either male or female offspring. He also envisions combining the antibody-antigen, or immunologic, method with the Schering albumin-solution technique, using the latter to make a first separation of X and Y sperm and then the immunologic for a nearly 100 per cent separation.

It seems highly likely that as research intensifies, it will lead to even simpler techniques which will avoid need for artificial insemination.

But is all this really desirable?

To be sure, there are notable "pluses" for sex choice. It could help reduce the incidence of sex-linked genetic diseases-hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, two genetic conditions "carried" by females that usually afflict only males.

Parental desires, of course, would be gratified-and the gratification could contribute significantly to population control. "It would be an error to dismiss parental desires as trivial," says Peter Steinfels, an associate of the five-year-old Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., which is dedicated to examining the "ethical, legal and social implications of advances in the life sciences."

The desire for boy or girl may be a matter of simple preference ("a girl would be fun this time; we've had boys"), Steinfels concedes, but it also can be a matter of economic or political importance (to carryon a family enterprise or be the next Shah of Iran), of psychological importance (to maintain a family name or compensate for a parent's inability to identify with children of one sex or the other), of religious significance (Judaism has put a high value on having a son to say Kaddish for the deceased father).

So important are male offspring considered in a country like India, for example, that a sex-control method able to assure at least one son per family might well lead to fecundity restraint not

otherwise obtainable. In the United States, sociologist Sanford Winston in 1932 studied 55 college students and recorded anonymously their desire for children. All told, they wanted 86 boys and 52 girls, a 65 per cent greater demand for sons than for daughters. Other studies in 1951 and 1960 found a similar preference.

Second only to preference for boys, studies indicate, is a parental wish to have at least one of each sex in completed families, adding to the likelihood, investigators believe, that sex predetermination would result in smaller families.

B

ut how much would the normal sex ratio be upset-and with what consequences? Once sex control is available, the actual preference for boys is likely to be larger than studies have suggested, according to Dr. Amitai Etzioni, director of the Center for Policy Research, New York, and professor of sociology at Columbia University. "Attitudes," he declares, "especially where there is no actual choice, reflect what people believe they ought to believe in, which, in our culture, is equality of the sexes. To prefer to produce boys is lower class and discriminatory. Many middleclass parents might entertain such preferences but be either unaware of them or unwilling to express them, especially since at present there is no practical way of determining whether a child will be a boy or a girl."

There have been calculations based on census data of how much the normal ratio might be upset under several sets of circumstances. If every family had first a male child and then let come what may, all one-child families of course would be male; among two-child families over-all, there would be 1.5 males for each female; and among three-child families, two males for each female; and in toto the ratio would be 70 per cent male, 30 per cent female. If every family had first a male child and then chose, alternately, female and male, the result would be 60 per cent male and 40 per cent female offspring. If every three-child family chose two boys and a girl instead of making no choices deliberately, the population would be approximately 55 per cent male, 45 per cent female. And if every single-child family had a son only and all other families made no deliberate choices, the population would be 54 per cent males and 46 per cent females.

Any such significant change in sex ratio, some sociologists believe, could bring changes in many aspects of social life. Women generally read more books, see more plays, attend church more often, and account for a much lower proportion of crime. A significant male surplus could produce a kind of "frontier" society. With reduced availability of marriage partners, some delay in the marriage age of men, some rise in prostitution and in homosexuality might occur.

Interracial and interclass tensions might be intensified, Dr. Etzioni believes, because some groups-lower classes and minorities-seem to be more male-oriented than the rest of society.

If there is an especially great male surplus in lower status groups, the extra males would hunt females in higher status groups or in some religious group other than their own, in which females. also would be scarce.

If there were to be a very simple and virtually 100 per cent effective sex-choice technique, there conceivably could be psychological effects on children, Steinfels suggests. There might develop, for example, a general assumption (as is almost the case today with contraception) that everyone uses it. In that situation, children would assume, if second-born, that they were secondchoice. But Steinfels is not convinced that this would necessarily be serious or anything more than "just another one of the many problems in life all of us deal with."

The possibility of other psychological problems is foreseen

by Dr. Marc Lappe, a colleague of Steinfels at the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences. "Parents who are willing to invest heavily-both financially and emotionally-in experimental sex-selection techniques might be less willing to accept deviations from their idealized versions of femininity or masculinity," he says. Tolerance for gender heterogeneity which has been increasing of late might decrease. Children might be more firmly expected to live up to the parents' idealized versions of sex roles, and the problems implicit in homosexuality and Lesbianism might be exacerbated.

If gratified, the seemingly prevalent desire to have a boy might well have repercussions disturbing to advocates of women's liberation. For psychological studies suggest that firstborn are likely to achieve more, both educationally and economically.

On the other hand, there could be a dividend for women resulting from a male, imbalance. At present, without sex selection, more males are born than females. The ratio is 51.4 per cent boys to 48.6 per cent girls. But by age 20, the ratio is evened out1:1. Thereafter, the ratio changes every year to favor females.

By age 65 there are only seven males to every 10 females. But if sex selection were to bring about a heavier imbalance in favor of males in the early years, the 1: 1 ratio might be extended from age 20 to, say, age 35 or later, possibly even as late as 65. If so, one consequence might be elimination of lonely widowhood or spinsterhood for many older women.

C

ould some, or even much, of this be a tempest in a teapot?

Nobody really knows how well society can absorb sex imbalances. They have existed in the past. In 1960 New York City had 343,470 more females than males-without any noticeable effect.

They exist now-in Washington, D.C., with a preponderance of females and in Alaska with a preponderance of males. If sex selection were to disturb the natural ratio significantly, heavily favoring boys, would that continue or would the scarcity of girls make them more highly valued and soon shift the ratio back toward neutral? Dr. Charles F. Westoff, sociologist at Princeton, and Ronald R. Rindfuss, a research associate at the University of Wisconsin, recently reported on a random survey they had made of 5,981 married women about their sex preferences in children. The study showed that if sex-control technologies were to be widely adopted in the U.S., the temporary effect would be a surplus of male births in the first couple of years, followed by a wave of female births to achieve balance, and that such oscillations would eventually disappear, so that the sex ratio would be similar to the present natural sex ratio.

There is also the question: What steps might society take to curb sex selection altogether or at least limit it, if that were the choice?

Stop research? Hardly thinkable since advances applicable to sex selection often come from basic research not specifically related to it. Withhold government grants and otherwise discourage applied technology? That could be done. A tremendous amount of applied research would be needed to refine the' Schering and Boyse-Bennett techniques and to test them properly before they could possibly be used in human reproduction. But to curb that research would be to interfere with development of better solutions to such problems as sex-linked genetic diseases. 0 About the Author: Lawrence Galton specializes in medical subjects and is author of The Silent Disease: Hypertension; Don't Give Up on an Aging Parent; and coauthor of Family Book of Preventive Medicine.

CarolS ers in India In the work of American artist and printmaker Carol Summers, rich-hued colors blend, merge and melttransmuted by the mist of a finely blown solvent-into woodcut prints that glo~ with a many-textured beauty. Summers recently held a series of workshops in India to demonstrate his printmaking techniques.

W

hen I learned that Carol Summers was coming to India in late 1974 to conduct a series of print workshops sponsored by the U.S. Information Service, I looked forward to meeting him again. I had first met him at Paritosh Sen's apartment in New York in 1971; and I had admired his work since the mid-1960s, when we in India first saw his prints.

At Sen's that evening, Summers was neither specifically American nor New York nor avant-garde in his opinions. He talked about India with feeling and sensitivity. When I referred to the fact that one of his prints was called "Rajasthan" [see page 24], he said that the work expressed his feeling for that region. No, he had not been to India, but he thought that Rajasthan should feel like that. He sensed it was so from the textiles and the miniature paintings he had seen.

On another occasion, in his own apartment, Summers had shown me a part of his rather fine collection of Bundi, Mewar, Rajasthani and Basohli paintings. The light was poor for the miniatures, but the specimens were good. The corner of the room where they were hung or propped had the appearance of a sanctuary. There was no attempt to draw attention to them. In fact, what was most prominent in the room was a large, circular black waterbed which was ambiguously floral in feeling (1971 was the waterbed year in New York). You could sprawl on it, or even jump on it, or float into sleep with abandon. But it was not quite right for sitting on. It was against this circular black mass that Summers unfurled the colors of the rainbow. He showed us half a dozen of his recent prints. I remember thinking that these prints were like visions seen, from time to time, at intense moments, at twilight, or at the magic hour before daybreak. The rectangles stood out vividly, set against the black of the waterbed night.

After seeing the fluid lines, the meticulous details and the evocative colors of the Indian miniatures (selected with taste and discernment), I couldn't help feeling then that it was rather daring of an American artist to show his own work. It was not that Carol was thrusting his work on us. He showed it because we had asked him what he was producing. He was not the least self-conscious about it. He was straightforward, wellmeaning, and honest-just the positive kind of artist I saw reflected in his work.

* * * * * Now we were meeting again, and in India.

In the six weeks that Carol Summers and his wife Joan were in the country (October 1 to November 8), they divided their time between hard work and intensive sightseeing.

They conducted workshops in Calcutta, Santiniketan, Baroda, Hyderabad, Cochin, Bombay, Varanasi, Delhi. Carol gave each demonstration of woodblock printing the accumulated experience of 20 years. He answered questions; he assisted participants, expounding theory and applying the knowledge of the craft. Some 200 Indian artists and observers benefited from this exposure.

Three aspects of the Summers visit are significant. First, there are the vivid and inspiring prints, the body of his work which he chose to show as an exhibition wherever the workshop was conducted. This included "Nightfall" [see page 24], the wooden plates of which he had brought along with him, and which he used for demonstration printing.

Second, there was the demonstration itself.

Those who saw it will not forget it. I won't.

Finally, embodying past work and connecting that total experience with the realities of the workshop was the man himself, Carol Summers as artist, instructor and guide.

* * * * * The elements of the Summers technique are simple enough. But it takes work-care-

Opposite page: Scenes from the print workshop conducted in New Delhi by Carol and Joan Summers. At right, Summers (in patterned shirt) explains his technique to a workshop participant.

J agmohan Chopra says of Summers: 'He has come at a time when traditional graphic processes, which are expensive and time-consuming, have led us to an impasse; and he has shown uS a way out.' ful, immaculate craftsmanship-to cover the skeletal structure of the forms on the plates with the flesh, veins and the living glow of the colors that comprise a Summers print.

I timed the Summers's demonstration at the American Embassy School, the second demonstration that the couple gave in New Delhi. It took a little over 35 minutes. Carol and Joan worked as a team. She set things up for him-the inks, the rollers and the wooden plates that had to be ready for printing in the right sequence.

Summers showed the group a few of his prints, explaining as he went on how he had created a specific effect. Coming to "Rajasthan," he said: "The blue in these two areas is really the same color. The blue appears deeper on the right and lighter on the left.

I've used more solvent to spread the color.

You can add what is called an extender which is an ingredient that reduces the color per volume of ink. The solvent transforms the ink into a dye. This tends to make the colors brighter. When you look at my prints, instead of looking at an ink surface, you are looking at the fibers of the paper."

The first wooden plate of "Nightfall," with the sweep of the sky and the little whirlpool of stars, was before him. Summers placed the dry sheet of Japanese rice paper on it.

"The paper is kind of transparent," he said, "so I can see the shapes on the plate beneath it." Working the roller, he very lightly rubbed blue ink on the paper over the doughnutshaped "aura" of the stars which stood out in relief on the wooden plate under the paper.

The inking was nowhere near being flat or regular. The holes in the doughnut remained white. After lO minutes, we could see about two dozen blue rings of the stars' aura.

Then he placed the rice paper on the second plate. What had been the "valley" of the sky in the first plate was a plateau on the second plate, with rings hollowed out like craters. He applied a deep mauve on the rice paper over this plateau area. It was clear even at this stage that colors had to be matched sensitively. The mauve blended with the blue rings, and one could anticipate what would happen when the catalytic solvent was sprayed.

Next came the third wooden plate. Joan applied white directly on its coor-shaped form, heavily inking it. Then Carol turned

the paper around so that the blue-mauve inked side was placed and registered on the third plate. (In the Summers technique, sometimes the ink is applied directly on to the wooden plate, thus coating the underside of the paper; at other times the ink is applied to the top of the paper which has been pressed onto the wooden plate.) Carol then applied green on certain areas of the paper, while Joan rolled yellow on the region that had been inked white from below, working wet on wet. "Since you are looking at the white behind, through the fibers of the paper, it appears creamy," Summers said.

B

y now one could see almost all the key forms emerging-but only as cold, hard shapes. The tonality, the depth of the colors, and the atmosphere of "Nightfall" had yet to appear. Carol and Joan then removed the paper. It was inked with blue, mauve, green and yellow areas-representing the sweep of the sky and the deep of the night settling on the darkening landscape. On the fourth plate, gray was rolled on the block and a darker shade of yellow was applied on the top of the paper.

The rice paper with the moody forms inked in from both top and bottom appeared somewhat misted by a light vei1. This emerging print was then laid on newspapers which had been spread on a workbench. Carol picked up the solvent sprayer. The act of transmutation was about to take place. With a sure, practiced sweep, he blew solvent on to the blue-mauve expanse of the sky. This "breath of life" stirred the veins and tissues of the paper, waking up, as it were, the dormant life of the ink. The viscosity of the ink was quickened. The inks were changed into dyes. These impregnated the paper. At points the mauve merged with the blue. The blue ran freoly but slowly into the dots of the un-inked paper. And seeing all this, one suddenly felt as though the night sky had become a palpable. thing. The stars twinkled.

Bits and pieces which had appeared isolated earlier got connected. The colors glowed with an incredible impulse.

Everyone held his breath. Carol put away the sprayer. He and Joan covered the glowing print with more newspapers to blot off the excess solvent, and ink. A moment later the newspapers were set aside, and the

print was revealed again.

"Beautiful," someone said, VOlClllgour aggregate feeling. "Thank you," Summers said. "It's not yet finished," said Joan.

"I've brought another 'Nightfall' print which is at this stage, but dry," Carol said, taking it out from a cylinder. "The one we've made would take about six to eight hours to dry. So we'll use this dry one, and continue.

In edition printing we would follow the same procedure. Now those of you who have seen the complete print in the exhibition will recall that there is a little rainbow. I'm going to add just that."

We now realized what role the five small arcs of Formica that we'd seen before were to play. Their original surface was a dull moss green. But one by one each of the bands was inked with the most brilliant of the hues used so far-shades of mauve, blue-green, yellow, orange and red. Each band became a flexed shaft. of color. Each lay scattered and spaced out on the table. Carol and Joan taped tlre register block. Then he assembled the bands of the rainbow. It was a tense moment. The magic of the twilight hour was being created. Carol also taped the un-inked ends of the arcs. Then, with a sure movement, like a genie moving through space, he planted the rainbow under the registered sheet of paper. The score of us present had seen an amazing sight-a man with a rainbow in his hand! The spell of color, the animation of form and the mystique of art had been articulately demonstrated. With his fingers Carol impressed the paper on the rainbow below.

Night still glowed on the sheet of paperdark and deep like the sea. He then sprayed the rainbow area. There was another revelation. The latent became manifest. Through the paper and into the palpable setting of "Nightfall" there emerged a wonderful, glowing rainbow vibrant in all its colors!

* * * * *

In its essentials, the Summers technique is a combination of printing, rubbing and "blooming." Printing from under the paper, when the ink is rolled directly on the woodblock, is resorted to when the colors are to be blended subtly or reinforced unobtrusively.

The "bloom" or fusion, only partially effected, is achieved by spraying a solvent which dissolves the inks, makes them flow, and, on evaporation, fixes them. Though in part

something of the wet-paper technique of Japanese watercolors or of Sumi-e painting is established, in the Summers technique the paper is moistened only after the impressions of the forms have been transferred on the paper. Besides, the moistening can be restricted to certain areas only, if need be. This gives the artist a great deal of control. The solvent, acting on the mass of the ink, works as a kind of catalyst that energizes and releases the dormant colors. This allows the artist to create a sense of movement. At the same time he can shade off a color-mass to give it transparency and mellowness. The print, not being blanketed under a press, is constantly visible, for control.

* * * * *

"The Summers process should prove extremely popular in India," said printmaker Jagmohan Chopra when the workshop was over. "There is the freedom that is implicit in the technique. Besides, what is of importance to us in India is the fact that with this technique you are not tied down to a workshop or a press. You can make large prints. This means that prints can be put up to stand beside paintings. Instead of cutting or carving wood, you could build up forms.

The major advantage for Indians is that we can use cheaper and more readily available materials. Of course what you keep under the paper, to make your image, will depend on what you want your image to be. Wood suits Mr. Summers. Other materials might suit us better."

As a seasoned printmaker, Chopra was enthusiastic about the Summers technique.

Inks would not be a problem, he said, but the right grade of paper would have to be found or made to match the process. I asked Chopra what, in his opinion, was the most significant aspect of Summers's visit to India.

"He has come at a time when traditional graphic processes, which are expensive and time-consuming, have led us to an impasse; and he has shown us a way out. All other media-etching, engraving, linocut, lithography-are capable of imparting a hardedge. But none of these are capable of creating the soft, blurred effect of this technique.

You can blur your sharp outline in a perfectly controlled manner; and this is where the Summers technique would have an edge over the other processes."

* * * * *

When I saw a Carol Summers woodblock print included in the Museum of Modern Art print exhibition (shown at New Delhi's National Gallery in February 1974) I was happy

because I could see that Summers was in the best company imaginable. Though this was exclusively an exhibition of graphics selected

by Miss Riva Castleman, the Museum's Curator of Prints, among the 49 names represented were some of the world's most renowned artists-famous European painters such as Picasso, Braque, and Matisse; and also outstanding American artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and James Dine.

I

tis significant that Miss Castleman had selected each artist not only for the quality of his work, but also for having innovated or refined a process in printmaking. Summers, therefore, is also with the greats on this account.

He is an integral part of the continuing tradition of abstract expressionism as exemplified in the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Sam-Francis and Paul Jenkins, his American contemporaries. However minimally, his work owes something also to the structure of atmosphere and mood as seen in Chinese landscape painting, and the allegoric and symbolic qualities of the miniature schools of painting in India.

Though his prints have a characteristic range, one can see that certain elements have been used specifically to change the feelingtone of the print. There is, for instance, the use of a kind ofliteral imagery or of a baroque design, or an inset-the sensational and "jazzy" ingredients. In this class would be things like the fish, the knives, spoons and forks in silver in "Omaggio a Pesce" [page 25], the landscaped blue nude in "Sierra Madre," the sliced red heart form echoed quietly by the fairy tale cottages in "Mezzogiorno" [page 24], the legend propped on the top of the Corinthian column in "The End." In these prints Summers juxtaposes the apparently blatant elements with the obviously subtle to create a decorative or ironical effect.

There is another class of prints which are the "pure" prints, if I may use such a term, knowing his technique and also his consistent esthetic purposes~Prints such as "Waterfall" [page 25] and "Rajasthan," "Paysage" and "Nightfall," or "The Creation of Malwa" [page 25] strike me as being essentially emblematic and symbolic. A process of sublimation has transmuted the imagery. These prints are not only pictorial; they are intensely poetic as well. ' Though all the prints so far mentioned

have the same finesse, those in the latter category evoke not only admiration but wonder (the kind of wonder described when experiencing the demonstration). One is amazed that these simple forms and nuances of color can make the kind of meaning that defies definition. And yet they are palpable, as the experience of the senses.

It would be best, therefore, to bring the vision of the artist Carol Summers as close as possible to the techniques of his craftsmanship, for a comparison.

The prints of Summers tend to be gorgeously colored, with large, bold, flowing forms.

There are great sweeps of brilliant color defining the key forms-slopes like those of hills, meanders like those of a river or a glacier [see "Rainbow Glacier" on front cover of this issue]. Sometimes these forms appear to merge at the edges where concurrent streams of color meet. Strength of color and solidity of structure are characteristics in his work. The one supports the other and often the two are indistinguishable. At the same time one does notice a continuing process of diffusion. This is what gives the colors a sense of glow. Under all that quiet there is a kind of stir.

There isn't the slightest doubt that Nature in all her glory is the subject of the art of Carol Summers. We see this projected in his vision. But natural phenomena obviously have undergone a transformation. They have become symbolized in terms of color and movement.

The over-all effect of the art of Summers exudes the resonance of poetry and of the presence of something symbolic. I will not quote Indian scripture but English poetry and leave it to Wordsworth to express what I feel: . .. I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

0 About the Author: Richard Bartholomew, who has written short stories and poetry and is coauthor of

the book Husain, is best known as an art critic for the Times of India and other Indian publications.

In 1973, he visited the United States as Commissioner for the exhibition "Contemporary Indian Painting" which was shown in America.

NIGHTFALL

36-1/2x31',

woodcut

MEZZOGIORNO

35-1/2 x 36", woodcut

The prints of Summers seem 'like visions seen, from time to time, at intense moments, at twilight, or at the magic hour before daybreak.'

RAJASTHAN 36-1/2 x 31', woodcut

THE CREATION OF MALWA 36-1/2 x 37", woodcut DREAM 36-1/2 x 37", woodcut

--.

...••.. . .. ~ . ~

OMAGGIO A PESCE 21 x 29#, woodcut, stencil, mono type, fishprint

WATERFALL 21 x 29", woodcut

IS MUHAMMAD ALl THE GREATEST? All Americans, whether they hate him or love him, are talking about Muhammad Ali, who is once again heavyweight champion of the world and who finally may have convinced skeptical countrymen that he is indeed "the greatest, "-as he's been telling everyone for years.

"I want to send Muhammad Ali and his mouth into retirement," World Heavyweight Boxing Champion George Foreman told an interviewer several months ago. He failed, and Ali and his mouth are as visible and loud as ever.

Last October 30, Ali knocked Foreman out in their "match of the century."

Muhammad Ali was the "people's favorite," but most experts predicted a Foreman victory. They cited his relative youth (Ali is seven years older) and his ferocious punching power (none of his eight previous opponents lasted beyond the second round). And subconsciously, perhaps, they

associated Foreman's understatement with menace and power, Ali's glibness with lack of it. Even former boxing champions had no doubts about the outcome. Said Joe Louis: "George is so much stronger and hits so much harder. If Ali tries to grab and hold on ... George will break his back." Ali's boast-"I'll eat him up"-was taken seriously by few.

The champ confounded all the experts and the "know-nothing writers" and flayed them at a press conference after his triumph: "I said I'd do it, but did you listen? I said I'd stick him and that he didn't like to get hit and that I'm the greatest heavyweight of all time, but did you listen?"

How did Ali manage to knock out the greatest K.O. specialist in boxing history?

Ali credits his faith in God (he is a devout Muslim).

A number of other explanations are also offered: Ali's diligent preparation -he trained long and hard for six months; his incredible capacity to absorb punishment-he laughed off

Foreman's sledge-hammer blows to the body; Ali's surprise tactics-he did not dance around or dodge his opponent as he often does, but wore him out by inviting him to hit; the power of Ali's own punch-"People write that he is not a slugger but the fact, is that he does hit," said ex-lighthea vyweight champion Archie Moore.

Whether or not Ali is the greatest heavyweight boxer in history, he is unquestionably boxing's greatest showman.

Striding out of the ring like a conquering Caesar, he spotted a camera and chanted with clenched fist: "Ali-Ali-Ali." Some choice quotes after his triumph: "Never make me an underdog again till I'm about 50 years old.... I got radar built in me, I knew what he was going to do .... Don't ever match no bull against a master boxer. The bull is stronger but the matador is smarter .... I hope the boxing world will finally recognize me as the professor of boxing .... Me knocking out George? That ain't me, that's Allah!"

PEPSI-COLA FOR RUSSIANS American businessmen are talking about the growing trade with Soviet Russia. A few months ago, Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev sampled the first bottle of "Russian" Pepsi-Cola-the famous American soft drink now made at the PepsiCo plant in Novorossisk on the Black Sea. (He tried the old Russian technique of opening a bottle by smacking its bottom. Maybe that works with vodka, but the Pepsi cap held fast.) Brezhnev

liked the Pepsi-Cola, reports say.

Fellow Russians also seem to like it. They're buying 200,000 bottles a day, at 50 cents a bottle.

PepsiCo is one of several American companies operating in the Soviet Union. Other American firms are helping Russians solve consumer, technological and agricultural problems. Forty U.S. companies are participating in the $5,000 million Kama River truck plant, the world's largest, 960 kilometers east of Moscow.

The Coca-Cola company may soon build vast greenhouseswhere crops will be grown in artificial climates-in an attempt to ease Russia's food shortages.

And a U.S. design firm is trying to give a bright contemporary look to several Soviet products. But PepsiCo is the first U.S. corporation to hold board meetings in the Soviet Union. (It meets every month beneath a portrait of Lenin.) Such meetings may lose their novelty, when a U.S.financed $110 million international trade center is built near the Red Square in Moscow. It will enable Americans to do business with the Russians in comfort. When completed in 1978, it will have 625 apartments, 600 hotel rooms, restaurants, a swimming pool, a convention hall and a shopping mall-in addition to offices for 1,200 employees.

American businessmen cocking an eye at the Soviet Union have one more reason for cheer: The U.S. Congress is likely to pass a bill granting liberal trade terms to Russia and East Europe. The bill will spur U.S.U.S.S.R. trade, increase the inflow of U.S. technology into the Soviet Union-and perhaps, as an offshoot, release more Russian vodka and caviar into

ERICANS ARE TALKING

~BOUli the United States. That, some say, will produce the same effect as Pepsi-Cola did in the Soviet Union-a flood of goodwill for a "friendly rival."

THE END OF THE PEACOCK ERA Casual elegance is the 'in' thing in men's and women's fashion in America. For men, it's the end of the "peacock era," a comeback to quiet, conservative styles. And women everywhere are lowering hemlines, returning to "total femininity." One fashion authority observes that "men are looking more like men, women more like women."

Why is this happening?

Sol Kent, a fashion director in

Atlanta, says: "In a time of economic uncertainty, customers turn to clothing of lasting value, not something to be worn as an amusing gag, here today and gone tomorrow." As Dr. A. Steven Frankel, psychologist at the University of Southern California, explains it: "After living through a frenetic period in history, people are relaxing a bit."

Whatever the reasons, the results are clearly visible: The hippie look is out. Fabrics are getting softer, woolens lighter, skirts longer, colors more muted. The "big look" is catching on-swirling skirts, voluminous .coats, full capes.

Full, soft capes dramatize the new look for American women.

~(J ~

~

~

,

The new look "heralds the end of unisex," says Marylou Luther, fashion editor of the Los Angeles Times.

There are, of course, exceptions to the general trend.

Many women are resisting long skirts. A typical comment: "It's the ugliest fashion change I've ever seen." And one fashion director says: "Women are liberated on skirt lengths .... They will be wearing skirts in a range of lengths, from two inches above the knee to just below the knee."

Americans are also talking about fashion trends in individual cities. In New York, there is no question that the skirt well above the knee is out. In Chicago, women look much better than ever before, says Martha Faris, fashion director of Chicago's chic Bonwit Teller store. "Women on the bus are wearing flowered skirts instead of jeans -and they don't seem to mind the whistles they get." As for men, says Mrs. Faris, they're asking for "the vested suit in pure flannel or wool instead of synthetic knits. They want a plain shirt, or for informal wear, the yoked Western shirt."

"We are emerging from the 'anything goes' period when the bizarre and the outlandish became chic and fashionable," says a Dallas couturier.

Speaking of hem lengths, Kim Dawson, director of the Dallas Apparel Mart, says: "Anything from mid-knee to ankle is acceptable. The micro-mini is passe." Men's fashions in Dallas are "on a much saner course than they were five years ago." The trend is toward the traditional.

In San Francisco, a city of traditionally well-groomed

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Leisure sUits-best-seners with American males of all ages.

women, there is a "nostalgic return to the styles of the '30s and the '40s." Muriel Sinclair, who runs a chain of women's stores, says: "Pants are classic, and jeans are part of the casual California look. Jeans will always be there." Catching on with young men is the "European look" of suits designed by Pierre Cardin and Yves St. Laurent. These close-fitting suits, says one authority, "look well on young men, who today are taller and thinner than their fathers were."

All this is making fashion designers and clothing manufacturers quite happy. Says a manufacturers' spokesman: "The name of the game is change. Without change, we're out of business. Right now, the pendulum is swinging again." 0

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t th, oppo,;te"'"m' from th' ,lfor" to manipulate feedback, rapid signals such as a flash of light or a beep show the the brains of others, a movement to teach people how to control volunteer that he is doing well. While taking part in an experitheir own brains has been gathering speed in recent years. Some ment at Harvard Medical School, I was amazed at how much of America's most imaginative researchers are now involved in it, I cared. Sitting alone in a dimly lit, soundproofed room, with no as well as thousands of students, volunteers and camp fol1owers distractions and nothing to do but focus on the beep, I began of all kinds. Together they are soaring off into a beautiful world to feel elated every time I heard it. I didn't know what the experimenters had decided to reward (it turned out to be lower blood where everything seems possible-the world of bio-feedback.

It is not necessary to drill a hole in the skull to control the pressure, combined with a lower heart rate), nor what I was brain, they say. Nor is it necessary to take drugs. Al1 one needs doing to earn it, but every time the beep went on it was like hitting is concentration, coupled with precise information on what's the jackpot. What surprised me most, however, was the speed going on in one's brain at the time it occurs. Then, with training, with which everything took place. The beeps sometimes followed one can achieve the kind of self-control that people have always each other incredibly rapidly-up to 32 times a minute. At other dreamed of but seldom attained. One can become oblivious times, of course, there were long, dull periods without any evito pain, exceptionally alert or fall into a creative reverie, at will. dence of success. As psychophysiologist Bernard Tursky exOf course yogis and Zen masters have known such skills plained, the signals had to be almost instantaneous so as to for years, but they learn them the hard way, through a lifetime reward the appropria.1e heartbeat and allow me to control the of meditation and study. In the West, people want speed as well next one, which came less than a second later. The speed at which as hard evidence. Today, both have become available through the body works is the strength of bio-feedback. Just because of bio-feedback, a technique that depends on electronic gadgets the short time lapse between heartbeats, one can learn very which measure and amplify physiological changes so small that rapidly, through much trial and error, while the clock hand barely moves. until recently they were almost totally ignored.

By now hundreds of volunteers have learned to produce small changes in their blood pressure, lower their heart rates, alter their brain rhythms or stop the activity of a single cell in their spinal cord-functions previously believed to be "involuntary" or be- 'I believe that men are as smart as rats. yond human control.

However, we may not yet be as clever They have done all this without drugs and without black magic. at training them,' says a brain scientist.

For bio-feedback simply extends normal ways of learning. Everything we learn depends on some sort of feedback-from eyes, ears, hands, feet, other people or other sources-that shows us whether we are succeeding or failing in what we are trying to do.

Bio-feedback requires lightning-swift measurements, rapid But under normal circumstances, we are limited in the kind of calculations of whether each change is a step forward or backfeedback we can get from our body. We don't have words to say ward, and instant displays. It is a child of the computer age. what's going on inside us. Very often we can't even identify it. But it might never have developed without the persistence and Small increases or decreases in blood pressure remain hidden wide influence of psychologist Neal Miller, a big-boned, bouncy from consciousness. So do changes in the rhythm of our brain man in his early 60s, who maintained for years that the body's waves. With the aid of bio-feedback equipment, however, such internal functions could be brought under -voluntary control, internal fluctuations can be measured, displayed and evaluated even though the textbooks said this was impossible. instantly to tell the learner whether he is improving or not.

Miller, who had won fame for his book Social Learning and It's somewhat like helping a blindfolded man learn to type. Imitation, written with John Dollard in 1941, stood nearly alone He could never make any progress if he didn't know what letters in his belief that, through practice, one could learn to control he was producing. But if someone told him the name of each the internal organs and glands, just as one controls the skeletal key as he struck it, he could begin to type certain letters at will. muscles (arms, legs and other visible parts). The skeletal muscles With time and practice he could even learn to type rapidly, until are triggered by the motor area of the cortex, through nerves at last his fingers would seem to do their work by themselves. running down the center of the spine. Internal respol:sCS are Suppose the person who named these keys also handed the man regulated by the "emotional" areas of the brain-the limbic a raisin as a reward for each letter he typed correctly. This .would system and particularly the hypothalamus-through two chains be called operant conditioning-the kind of training, system- of nerve fibers traveling down the sides of the spinal cord. Ever atized by B.F. Skinner, in which rewards (or positive reinforce- since Plato, people have considered these internal functions to ments) are used to shape behavior [see SPAN August '74]. If be somehow inferior. The nervous system that controls them was the man had strong reasons of his own for wanting to type, how- supposedly "involuntary" and independent-hence its name, the ever, simply knowing that he had struck the right key would be autonomic nervous system. Most psychologists believed that it its own reward. could be conditioned in the classical way, a la Pavlov, but could "You must care," says Rockefeller University's Dr. Neal not be taught through trial and error. Pavlov's dog salivated E. Miller, "otherwise the results cannot be rewarding." In bio- naturally at the sight of food. When a bell consistently preceded

the food, the dog learned to associate the two and eventually bio-feedback-at least in the laboratory. Others who suffered began to salivate at the sound of the bell, even when no food was from hypertension learned to lower their blood pressure, though presented. However, it could not be expected to learn any re- the changes were too small to be very useful. Migraine patients sponse other than salivation. Skinner taught pigeons skills that cured themselves of headaches by increasing the blood flow in no pigeon had ever had before-for example, how to play ping- their hands, which relieved their heads. These changes were not pong-through a step-by-step reinforcement of some of the as dramatic as those in animals, nor did the people involved movements they produced by trial and error. Such methods learn as rapidly, probably because the training conditions could not be controlled as carefully. Nevertheless, there is growing were reserved for the skeletal muscles, however. In the traditional view, the autonomic nervous system was too "stupid" to learn by evidence of success with bio-feedback, especially in the control of the brain. operant conditioning.

The shortcomings of the autonomic nervous system seemed so obvious that Miller had a terrible time convincing any students to work on what later became bio-feedback. Even the paid assistResearchers feel that 'man can change ants whom he assigned to the project did it halfheartedly, believing it was a waste of time. Finally, a young man, Jay Trowill, himself through voluntary action, can reshape volunteered to run some experiments. He faced an immense tech- his personality, improve his health, in a nical problem: proving that any change in a rat's heart rate sense remake his world through bio-feedback.' resulted from direct control over the heart itself and not from some other muscular exertion to speed up the heart or relaxation to slow it down. It was extremely difficult to prevent such "cheating." After a series of discouraging attempts, Trowill paraMiller and his group had noticed something strange about the lyzed his rats with curare, the substance that South American rats in their heart experiment: Those that had been trained to Indians use in poison arrows. This stopped them from using any speed up their hearts seemed more "emotional"-they squealed, skeletal muscles at all. Since curare does not affect the internal squirmed and defecated more-than those that had been trained organs, however, the rats could still use their heart muscles. In to make their heart rates go down. Their brains also contained this totally helpless condition, the rats were required to control more of certain neurotransmitters, which meant that their central their heart rates. Of course, none of the ordinary rewards such nervous systems had become more excitable. Evidently the change as food or water held much appeal for them. So the experimenters in their heart rate had triggered changes in their brain chemistry implanted electrodes into the rats' brains and stimulated their as well as their behavior. pleasure centers every time their heart rates changed in the desired direction. Some rats were rewarded for speeding up their heart and others were rewarded for slowing it down. By 1966, after three years of painstaking work, Trowill had unequivocal h, n<Xtst"P was to t,y to tm;" th, bm;n d;"dly. Tbis t;m, proof that rats could achieve direct control over their heart rates, cats were the subject-wide-awake, noncurarized cats that could without any assist from their skeletal muscles. move freely despite the long wires connecting their heads to lab As soon as the rats learned to produce small increases or instruments. The wires led to electrodes implanted in their brains' decreases in heart rate, Miller and Leo DiCara, his principal pleasure centers. A graduate student, Alfredo Carmona, stimuassociate, upped the ante-from then on the rewards came only lated some cats in these pleasure centers every time they lowered for bigger and bigger changes. By "shaping" the rats' heart rates the voltage of their brain waves, and others whenever they raised in this way, they produced changes of roughly 20 per cent in it. Before long, he had two different kinds of cats on his hands. either direction, after only 90 minutes of training-an almost The group that had been rewarded for high-voltage, low-freunbelievable speed. quency brain waves "sat like sphinxes, staring out into space," Clearly, the mechanism for self-control of the internal organs Miller recalls. The other cats, which had learned to produce was there. Not only was it there, it was also surprisingly precise. low-voltage, faster waves, paced about restlessly, sniffing and Miller and DiCara pride themselves on having trained some rats looking around. To make sure that this was happening through to perform a yogalike trick: dilating the blood vessels in one ear direct control of the brain and not through eye movements or more than in the other, a sophistication that Miller finds "eerie." some other activity of the skeletal muscles, Carmona repeated These results opened up all parts of the nervous system, the the experiment with curarized rats and proved that they could internal organs and the glands to highly specific forms of training. change the rhythm of their brain waves at will.

Could human beings learn as well? "I believe that men are as None of these was "beyond voluntary control" any more. "There is only one kind of learning," Miller declares happily. "We are smart as rats," says Miller. "However, we may not yet be as now forced into a radical reorientation of thinking about func- clever at training them." tions ordinarily concealed inside the body."

Very fittingly, the first person to offer evidence of Zen-like Soon a number of patients whose hearts skipped a beat suc- control over the brain through bio-feedback was a serene psychoceeded in training their hearts to beat in a normal manner through logist of Japanese descent, Dr. Joe Kamiya, of San Francisco's

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Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, whose early experiments antedated the Rockefeller work. Kamiya had come to the problem from quite a different angle. He had long been interested in states of consciousness-the inner states that change so radically during dreams, under drugs and at other times. However, his training as a behaviorist made such vague concepts as "mind" or "consciousness" taboo as subjects for research. Behaviorists were supposed to study only what could be measured-specific stimuli and responses. So, while doing conventional research on EEG (electroencephalogram) changes during sleep and dreams in Chicago in 1958, Kamiya "bootlegged" some work on the

Men who have experienced the alpha state use these words to describe it: 'Calm; alert; relaxed; open to experiences of all kinds. It's akin to the good feeling that comes from taking a massage or sauna batha relaxed, put-together sort of feeling.'

EEGs of people who were wide-awake. He wanted to see whether he could train them to recognize the comings and goings of various rhythms in their brains, starting with the most prominent rhythm of all, the alpha rhythm, which Austrian psychiatrist Hans Berger had discovered in 1924. He pasted electrodes on their scalp, watched the pattern of their brain waves on an EEG, and rang a bell sometimes when the alpha rhythm was present, sometimes when it was absent, asking the volunteers to guess which state they were in. Every time he rang the bell they had to reply, and each time he told them whether they were right or wrong. During the first hour they usually guessed right only half the time, which suggests that nothing more than chance was operating. But by the second hour of training they could guess right 60 per cent of the time, by the third hour they were right 75 to 80 per cent of the time, and after a while some of the volunteers could actually guess right every single time-as often as 400 times in a row!

"The subject had learned to read his own brain, or his mind," Kamiya announced. "He had become aware of an internal state."

Even more exciting was something Kamiya discovered by accident: Having learned to recognize his alpha waves, one of the volunteers also knew how to turn them on or off at will. And when Kamiya tested the others, he found that all his subjects were able to do so, at least to some extent.

• Now that was a really extraordinary development, and when Kamiya moved to California he set out at once to see whether people could be trained to control their brain waves without first going through the discrimination phase. He found that they could. The 10 volunteers in his experiment had no previous preparation. They simply sat in dark, soundproofed rooms, with electrodes on their heads, and tried to keep a tone sounding.

They were told that the tone was turned on by their brain waves

when they were in certain mental states. After a while they were told to try to keep the tone off as much as possible. At the end of 40 reversals, eight out of the 10 could control the tone. When asked to turn it on, they had alpha waves 55 per cent of the time, and when asked to turn it off their production of alpha dropped down to 17 per cent.

However, they didn't quite know how they did it. They knew only that it couldn't be forced. The more they tried to produce alpha, especially at the beginning, the less they had. They would try all kinds of tricks: mental arithmetic, thinking sexy thoughts, listening to their breathing or focusing on the back of their head, all to no avail. Then they would give up-and suddenly improve.

"Gradually they'd sift out the crucial mental state from what's irrelevant," Kamiya said. It usually took at least four or five sessions to gain any real control. Once they had achieved good control, however, they retained this skill for weeks or months.

Of the hundreds of volunteers he has trained so far, nearly all preferred alpha to the nonalpha state.

What's so good about being in alpha? I asked Kamiya. "Here are the words that subjects use to describe it," he replied. "Calm; alert; relaxed; open to experiences of all kinds; pleasant, in the sense that to be serene is pleasant, as opposed to the hassle of American life. It's akin to the good feeling that comes from taking a massage or sauna bath-a relaxed, put-together sort of feeling. It's receptive, as opposed to a getting, forcing frame of mind. You have to let it occur spontaneously, then be happy you have it."

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he alpha state itself is probably not creative, he explained. "But a poet told me that just before he's ready to write a good poem, he's in a state that seems very similar to high alpha.

You see, alpha is a state of attention directed toward letting things happen." How can it be a state of attention, if you can't focus your attention on anything in particular? I asked. "That's one of the most peculiar things about it," said Kamiya. "It's probably best described as a shift in the focus of attention. You can't let yourself get drowsy, as this would take you out of the alpha state. You remain alert, expanding your focus of attention in all directions."

Brain waves in the alpha range-a frequency of 8 to 13 cycles per second-may represent the brain's way of idling between states of high mental activity and sleep. Some people, especially those who are introspective and intuitive, normally produce large quantities of alpha, while others produce very little. The reasons for this difference are unknown. Nor is it known which of these groups benefits more from training, though all kinds of people can learn to increase their output.

When Kamiya's subjects told him they felt calm and tranquil in alpha, he realized at once that this sounded like a .Zen state.

But he didn't like the idea. Kamiya was still a proper behaviorist and he hadn't planned to dabble in meditation; he thought he was conditioning alpha. The temptation was too strong, however, and finally he hooked up some experienced Zen meditators to his EEG feedback system, just to see how they would do. When

they learned to control their alpha waves much more rapidly than other people, he was forced to take notice.

"And so we found ourselves at the back door of a centuriesold tradition that we, in the West, have very little understanding of," he says. "Right now in the United States, a growing number of people, especially college students, are interested in meditation.

Many of them seem to have cultivated their interest through drugs such as LSD. But I don't think it's transitory-some interest in Eastern meditation practices will be here in our culture to stay."

In Sanskrit there are 20 different names for varying states of "consciousness" or "mind"-yet we are limited to these two words. If Kamiya's subjects find it so difficult to give satisfactory verbal descriptions of their experiences while turning on alpha, it may be partly a language problem. However, he believes it really reflects the fact that "we have not been trained to name various physiological states. As children we have never been spanked or rewarded for them. Nor do we sit around the living room talking about how much alpha we've had."

He hopes that a "vocabulary of moods" will soon be developed, a vocabulary much more precise than the words available to poets today. If you were a Martian and wanted to find out the earthlings' dimensions of taste, he notes, you could start out with sweet, sour, salty and bitter, since all tastes are combinations thereof. But how would you begin to understand human moods and feelings? What are their basic dimensions? His long-range goal is to develop co-ordinates for the various qualities of experience associated with brain-wave changes. Then one could describe a melancholy mood, for instance, as a specific point on this map of consciousness. Kamiya is no longer an orthodox behaviorist, but he still believes in precise techniques. "We must be able to index our experience," he says.

The difference between operant conditioning and self-education through bio-feedback is sometimes elusive, but it is important: It's merely a question of who is at the controls. In operant conditioning, the experimenter decides on tasks, rewards and punish-

"Would you mind turning down your damn alpha waves a little? I'm trying to read!"

ments,and the subject may not even know that he is being changed.

In self-education, a person learns to bring a normally unconscious process under conscious control and gains an extra measure of freedom.

'In Sanskrit there are 20 different names for varying states of "consciousness" or "mind" -yet we are limited to these two words.'

In B.F. Skinner's opinion, we have no choice but to use operant conditioning, in one form or another, to change people's behavior. He believes this is the only way to ensure peace without repression. Disagreeing, most of the researchers involved in biofeedback believe that man can change himself through voluntary action. He can reshape his personality, improve his health, in a sense remake his world through bio-feedback.

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io-feedback i' a veey new field of ,.'meb and it i, moving along with explosive speed in many directions. "We are now embarked on a historic search into our interior to see what has always before been hidden to man," Dr. Gardner Murphy, former director of research at the Menninger Foundation, told members of the American Psychiatric Association recently. "It is a shocking possibility. What shall we see? Are we prepared, really, to face the tremendous blinding flash that's going to come?"

Along with all the discoveries of what our brain, our muscles and our autonomic nervous system are doing, Dr. Murphy warned, will come some larger questions-some very sticky, complicated philosophical issues, like the nature of individualitywhich now lie half concealed in the research reports. Though the notion that we can't observe the process of thinking is quite old, it may no longer be true. "What with feedback, and slow motion of all sorts, and tremendous gains in equipment, so that what is little becomes enormollsly big to the observer, perhaps before very long the little indirect awarenesses-such as when I become aware that my words aren't clear, I must hurry, I mustn't overstate my case and so forth-all these little phases of thought will be right there on the panel." It may even be possible to observe evidence of the will, or at least of decision making, and the final confirmation of an act of will.

"There is only the limit of our own ingenuity," he declared.

While some of the claims now being made by the bio-feedback researchers may turn out to have been overbold, Dr. Murphy concluded, most of them will prove to have been not bold enough. 0

About the Author: Maya Pines, who was on the stafJofLife magazine for many years, is now afree-lance writer and contributor to such publications as Harper's and the New York Times Magazine. In addition to The Brain Changers, she has published two other books: Retarded Children Can Be Helped; and (coauthored with Rene Dubos) Health and Disease.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN AMERICAN

To jazz lovers around the world, the name of Willis Conover is almost as familiar as that of pianistcomposer Duke Ellington or trumpeter Louis Armstrong. But Conover can scarcely playa note. His fame rests on the superb evangelistic job he has done over the Voice of America program 'Music USA.' Interviewed here by Robert Stearns, Conover speaks of the jazz 'greats' and of today's young .iazz musicians.

QUESTION: You've spent a long time with Philharmonic. The jazz idiom is as varied as automobile, your dimensions extend to jazz. Why do you like it so much? the number of people playing it because it where the fenders are-literally an extension CONOVER: Well, first, I don't like all of it, really is an honest form of expression. You of yourself. I think the honesty of jazz has any more than I like all of anything or of can't lie in playing jazz; you play yourself. a great deal to do with its appeal. Certainly any way of doing something. That being said, the excitement and vitality in it do. the things that are called jazz-the different QUESTION: Is this the secret of its appeal Another aspect of jazz's appeal is its enways of performing music, all of which are to Americans, and non-Americans too-this tertainment factor because jazz has involved lumped by people under the word jazz-are fact that you're playing for yourself? the folk idiom as well as a European influence so different from one another that in some CONOVER: Not so much playing for your- in harmonies and in choice of materials, in instances, there is almost no connection. I self; you are playing yourself, that is, being addition to its Afro-American roots. think it would be difficult to find a connection yourself with one more kind of voice. Because between, let's say, the traditional jazz of with the best of the jazz musicians, the instru- QUESTION: In something you wrote once, Preservation Hall (in New Orleans) and the ment is simply an extension of the manyou mentioned the element of freedom in jazz, music of an avant-garde jazz soloist who another voice box, really, almost literally the fact that the jazzman can improvise and might be accompanied by the New York spoken through. Just as when you drive an go where he wants to, within the format of the

piece. Is this something that foreigners believe is typically American, and is that part of the appeal of jazz to them?

CONOVER: To the extent that the element of freedom in jazz is an element that is noted by its followers, I would say that it's accurate to say that it is. It reflects the system that we have in America. But I'm not making a propagandistic speech. I've drawn this parallel before: In America, as elsewhere, we have certain rules and laws that we agree in advance to abide by. Some of us do it better and some of us do it worse than others, but having reached that agreement we are then free to do anything within that agreement that we wish to do.

And the same is true in jazz. There is a key and a chord progression, except in the avant-garde of course, a tempo, a length of time, a duration of the performance that is agreed upon by everyone participating, and once that agreement is reached, the musicians are free to play anything they want within that. And so there is a structural parallel between the music and the system of the country in which the music was formed.

are probably John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Ornette Coleman (though I'm not sure whether he's as much an influence on others as he is an inimitable, individual sound, although occasionally you can hear people who are playing in Ornette Coleman's style). And there are others. But the most recent phenomenon in jazz is the incorporation of certain elements of rock, and certain elements of Eastern music as well as of Eastern philosophy and religion. The most popular example of this at the moment would be the Mahavishnu Orchestra under the guitarist John McLaughlin who had been with the Miles Davis group. Beginning with the album Bitches Brew-Miles Davis's first really popular success-whether he intended to or not, Miles probably turned around a lot of rock fans into hearing something by him and his associates and in turn was turned around by what he heard in the music they had been listening to up until that point. So that there now is a kind of fusion of rock elements, jazz elements, the music of the East, country and western. (which would be white folk music).

QUESTION: In looking back to the period since World War II, what major musical personalities would you say have been most important in jazz?

CONOVER: Charlie Parker and the people alongside of him, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Max Roach and a number of others, Oscar Pettiford and so many.

Then there was the resurgence of interest in Lester Young via his admirers, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and musicians of that sort, which tend to at least superficially cool down a little bit. Then on the West Coast, a number of graduates of the Stan Kenton Orchestra got into something that lacked most of the volume that is associated with Kenton's music and approached chamber music, which was interesting and at least a change.

QUESTION: It's amazing when you listen to jazz over the years, you tend to say to yourself, "They can't invent anything else; they've come to the end," and yet they still seem to find a whole new stream ....

CONOVER: Yes, and then there is the socalled avant-garde, which in most cases is a return to a form that died decades ago: Dada.

So there are exceptional performers who play with musicianship and with vitality and who are interested in exploring the possibilities of this direction.

QUESTION: Would you put the Modern Jazz Quartet in that area?

CONOVER: Not in that geographical area, so much, though they may have played out there at that time. The Modern Jazz Quartet was basically the rhythm section of the old Dizzy Gillespie big band, which decided to go ahead as a unit. I think probably the Modern Jazz Quartet plays more "coolly" simply because that's the way John Lewis wants it to be played. He wants to have a balance among all the four instruments, and therefore it has to be played fairly quietly because you can't make cymbals and bass be as strong as piano and vibes unless you

bring down the volume on piano and vibes.

You want it to be a quartet, not a group of four soloists, though with room for occasional soloing too. I think that the one proponent of the West Coast style of jazz I was describing a while ago which did endure would be the Gerry Mulligan quartet, which again was bass, trumpet, baritone sax and drums, and he wanted all four instruments to have the same dynamic levels. So that was a genuine quartet and it was in many ways an outgrowth of what was referred to as the Cool School of Jazz.

QUESTION: Who would you say are leading influences today?

CONOVER: The enduring influences of today

QUESTION: Is jazz today still very much black-despite the strong infusion of white musicians since the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in the 1920s?

CONOVER: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was primarily an entertainment group, of course.

QUESTION: Yes, and stole most of its music from their black colleagues, I assume.

CONOVER: Well, again, I'm not disagreeing with the word "stole," but I'm also not accepting it as necessarily so. You're stealing air that someone else has breathed as soon as you walk in a room. Critic Albert Murray has written, "We are all Afro-Americans."

There has been an interaction and I know that where blacks in the South grew up in areas in which they did not have any kind of social relationship, good or bad or whatever, with whites, jazz did not develop.

They stayed blues singers and itinerant guitar-

Charlie Parker once said: 'First, learn your instrument every possible way. Second, learn all about music. And then, forget all about the instrument and all about the music and just play your head off.'

ists and things of that sort. It's only where two separate cultures interacted that jazz grew up. Certainly in such an area where there was no meeting between whites and blacks, the whites would not have produced jazz either.

Jazz has been, at the least, with its strong black roots and with its strong white participation, something unique in music and in artistic performance.

It's a liberating music. In my notes for the listing of records I compiled recently for the jazz section of the new White House Record Library, I made a comment on this, about the different attitudes that people have. There are various theories that people hold passionately because the theories bolster their view of life in general. One is the GrassRoots Theory: Jazz is the natural expression of untutored musicians. Its opposite is the Ivory Tower Theory: Jazz is so demanding an art that only schooled musicians can play it well. There is the Historic Origins Theory: Only that which is old is good-versus the Progress Theory: Only that which is new is good. The Masses Are Always Right Theory: Whatever is liked by the greatest number of people is good-versus the Masses Are Always Wrong Theory: Whatever is liked by the greatest number of people is bad, what's good is only that which is appreciated by the few people of discriminating taste.

Finally, there is the Only Blacks Can Play Jazz Theory versus the Anybody Can Play Jazz Theory, to which I added, "Some of the best jazz musicians I've heard are Germans, Swedes, Poles and Russians. Neither Germans, Swedes, Poles or Russians nor white Americans, however, have produced an Armstrong, an Ellington, a Charlie Parker or a John Coltrane, but they were influenced by all four and by other Afro-Americans, as other Afro-Americans influenced Armstrong, Ellington, Parker and Coltrane. Jazz doesn't run in the blood or issue from the skin; it comes from participating in a culture."

QUESTION:

Would you agree with some of these things you see in the public press, that we are in a jazz revival?

CONOVER: The only real jazz revival is the revival of interest in jazz on the part of critics who've ignored it. People have been playing it all along.

QUESTION: And youth is still interested in jazz, you'd say?

CONOVER: I'm not sure that the word "still" applies. I think youth is now becoming interested in it, after having realized how empty so much of what they have been interested in has been.

QUESTION: Isn't it true that a good many colleges have their own big bands, making and playing their own music, and high schools too?

How widespread is this?

CONOVER: Very, very widespread-500 to 600 big bands in colleges and 60,000 to 70,000 in high schools. All of a sudden, jazz has become an "in" thing with a lot of youngsters who say, "Rock, oh that's old-fashioned, have you heard jazz yet?" That's fine. And the best of them have created astounding orchestras.

QUESTION: In looking at jazz musicians as people, and looking back at your friends and acquaintances in jazz, which of them all have come across to you as being really great human beings-I mean, above all the others?

CONOVER: Bassist Milt Hinton, who was with Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.

He's one of the most in-demand musicians in New York. He's a warm, genuine human being. And I always liked Louis Armstrong as a person. Onstage he was doing his act and he believed in it and he was great at it.

He never stopped being a great musician as well as a great entertainer, but offstage he was always gracious to people. But he was also genuine.

Clark Terry is a delightful guy to hang out with, the trumpeter who has been with the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands, among others. And I like Zoot Sims. Zoot is a kind of "diamond-in-the-rough" sort. I like Bobby Hackett, a real gentleman. Dizzy Gillespie I always enjoyed being with. Gerry Mulligan I find extremely interesting, except I sometimes have to say, "Hey, Gerry, shut up and let me talk now, too." Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland are lovely ladies. I'm sure I've forgotten somebody.

Dave Brubeck I've known for a long time.

They all stand out in different ways. I get along well with Ornette Coleman and with Gil Evans and Bill Evans. Stan Kenton is an amazing person, whether you like his music or not. There are so many ....

QUESTION: In retrospect, it must be gratify-

Willis Conover, one of the world's great jazz authorities, lives in New York. But each week he commutes from his apartment to the studios of the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., where he works frantically, recording a batch of a dozen or so "Music USA" programs at a time.

Tie loosened,feet in slippers, cigarette dangling, he hovers restlessly about a note-cluttered table.

Jigging slightly to the flow of sound from the loudspeakers, gesturing with symphony-conductor fluency to the engineer in the control room, he delivers his deep-voiced commentaries into the microphone, deftly putting it all together into the special Conover package of entertainment and authoritativeness. Conover has done thisfor the last 20 years as host of "Music USA," his three-quarter-hour, six-Ilights-a-week program.

ing to reflect on the contributions you've made in promoting jazz. You've made an impress.

CONOVER: I've been told that and it's hard for me to realize if it's true. But that's not the reason I'm doing it. It's a deep personal involvement. It's like jazz, a combination of an arrangement and improvisation. Generally there are certain things that I have to do-that I know I have to do. And have a general scheme in mind for my activities and it's freeflowing improvisation within that. It's an experience, sometimes an exhausting one, but it's like Charlie Parker told somebody, maybe the young Miles Davis, "First, learn your instrument every possible way. Second, learn all about music. And then, forget all about the instrument and all about the music and just play your head off."

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I

TOURING AMERICA

LINCOLN LAND

They have turned back the clock in H odgenville, Kentucky, where Abraham Lincoln was born; in New Salem, Illinois, where he spent his youth; and in Springfield, the Illinois State capital, where he flowered into a national political leader. All three places have been restored to what they looked like when Lincoln lived there. In this month of his birth anniversary-Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809-many tourists will visit these shrines to pay homage to one of the greatest Americans, to try perhaps to relive the past by strolling amidst the faithfully reconstructed buildings and other landmarks of the era, such as the wooden rail fence at left.

(In his youth, Lincoln split man)' such rails to make a living.)

One monument popular with tourists on a Lincoln pilgrimage is the tomb in Springfield, at the entrance to which is a massive bronze bust of President Lincoln. Although the bust was put on a high pedestal to discourage visitors from touching his nose for good luck, many parents still boost their children up (photo above). Says a guide at the tomb: «I'm sure Abe wouldn't mind a bit to have a youngster touch his nose."

Lincoln once wrote: 'There is no romance nor is there anything heroic in my early life.'

Springfield home (right), visited by 700,000 tourists each year, was given to the State of Illinois by Lincoln's son in 1887. In this house, which still bears the original nameplate that identifies the home as that of "A. Lincoln," the family lived for 25 years before it moved to Washington when Lincoln became President in 1861. He loved the house, so different from the crude log cabins of his boyhood. He delighted in tussling with his sons on the carpet, in sprinting with them up and down the stairway.

Tourists find the Lincoln home in Springfield almost as it was in 1861.

The wallpaper isfaithfully reproduced, and much of the furniture, books and clothing are displayed as iftheLincolns still lived there. The dining table is set with dishes used to serve Lincoln's favorite dessert-whipped cream mixed with sherry. In the kitchen are utensils used by Mrs. Lincoln and the maids. Next to a window in Lincoln's bedroom is his walnut desk with several of his books and a pair of his spectacles (above). In the adjoining bedroom (right) are the toys and desks used by the Lincoln children and in the rear is Mrs. Lincoln's room which has her original furniture, including one of her rocking chairs (far right).

Replica of Lincoln's boyhood log cabin home at Knob Creek, Kentucky, is shown at left. Lincoln was actually born a few miles away in a similar cabin near what is now Hodgenville.

Two years later· the Lincoln family moved to the Knob Creek cabin and remained there for five years before . moving north to the State of Indiana.

The original Knob Creek cabin was razed and burned as firewood in 1870 by the cabin's owners, who failed to realize its historical significance.

The replica was constructed in 1931.

Early years of Lincoln were spent in New Salem, Illinois, where he lived from 1831 to 1837. Here, he worked as a clerk, served as postmaster and surveyor, studied law, and finally got elected to the state legislature, after which he moved to Springfield. Within afew years, New Salemfell into decay and almost disappeared until it was reconstructed in the 1930s as a state parle At the entrance to the park is a statue of Lincoln (right), book in one hand and rail-splitting axe in the other. New Salem's simple buildings, such as the one above, have been rebuilt as they were in the 1830s. Once, looking back over the years, Lincoln wrote: "There is no romance nor is there anything heroic in my early life.

The story ... can be condensed into one line: the short and simple annals of the poor."

to Lincoln are all over the U.S., but the one most visited by tourists is the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., which/orms the backdrop in this unusual photo. Robert Huntzinger created this effect by multiple exposure in co-operation with the National Collection 0/ Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution.

Memorials

Lincoln the Writer Statesman, philosopher, humorist, orator-the various facets of Abraham Lincoln's personality have been widely discussed by historians over the years. On these pages, an eminent intellectual examines Lincoln in a little known role-. as 'the maker of a style unique in English prose.'

A

great man of the past is hard to know, because his legend, should stand-I will not say, instead of, but by the side of all the which is a sort of friendly caricature, hides him like a others. No one need forget the golden legends, yet anyone may disguise. He is one thing to the man in the street and another to find it rewarding to move them aside a little so as to get a glimpse those who study him closely-and who se1<lomagree. And when of the unsuspected Lincoln I have so vividly in mind. a man is so great that not one but half a dozen legends are I refer to Lincoln the artist, the maker of a style that is unique familiar to all who recognize his name, he becomes once more a in English prose and doubly astonishing in the history of Amermystery, almost as if he were an unknown. ican literature, for nothing led up to it. The Lincoln who speaks This is the situation that Lincoln occupies in the United to me through the written word is a figure no longer to be deStates. Everybody knows who he was and what he did. But what scribed wholly or mainly by the old adjectives, shrewd, humorous, was he like? For most people, Lincoln remains the rail splitter, or saintly, but rather as one combining the traits that biography the shrewd country lawyer, the cracker-barrel philosopher and • reports in certain artists among the greatest-passionate, gloomy, humorist, the statesman who saved the Union, and the compas- seeming-cold, and conscious of superiority. sionate leader who saved 'many a soldier from death by courtThese elements in Lincoln's makeup have been noticed before, martial, only to meet his own end as a martyr. but they take on a new meaning in the light of the new motive Not being a Lincoln scholar, I have no wish to deal with any I detect in his prose. For his style, the plain, undecorated lanof these images of Lincoln. I want only to help celebrate his birth- guage in which he addresses posterity, is no mere knack with day by bringing out a Lincoln who I am sure is real though un- words. It is the manifestation of a mode of thought, of an outlook seen. The Lincoln I know and revere is a historical figure who which colors every act of the writer's and tells us how he rated life.

'Lincoln acquired his power over words in the only two ways known to man-by reading and by writing. His reading was small in range and much of a kind: the Bible, Bunyan, Byron, Defoe, Shakespeare, Aesop's Fables,' books characterized by their terseness and strength.

Only let his choice of words, the rhythm and shape of his utterances, linger in the ear, and you begin to feel as he did-hence to discern unplumbed depths in the quiet intent of a conscious artist.

But before taking this path of discovery, it is necessary to dispose of a few too familiar ideas. The first is that we already know all there is to know about Lincoln's prose. Does not every schoolchild learn that the Gettysburg Address is beautiful, hearing this said so often that he ends by believing it? The belief is general, of course, but come by in this way, it is not worth much . . One proof of its little meaning is that most Americans also believe that for 50 years Lincoln's connection with the literary art was to tell racy stories. Then, suddenly, on a train journey to Gettysburg he wrote a masterpiece. This is not the way great artists go to work-so obviously not, that to speak of Lincoln as an artist will probably strike some readers as a paradox or a joke. Even so, the puzzle remains: How did this strange man from Illinois produce, not a few happy phrases, but an unmistakable style'?

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n this point the books by experts do no better than the public. A recent collective attempt to write a literary history of the United States does indeed speak of Lincoln's styles, in the plural: but this reference is really to Lincoln's various tones, ranging from the familiar to the elevated. Like all other books that I have searched through, this authoritative work always talks of the subject or the occasion of Lincoln's words when attempting to explain the power of his best-known pieces. It is as if a painter's genius were explained by the landscapes he depicted.

Lincoln has indeed had praise as a writer, but nearly all of it has been conventional and absent-minded. The few authors of serious studies have fallen into sentimentality and incoherence.

Thus, in the Hay and Nicolay edition of Lincoln's works, a famous editor of the 1890s writes: "Of style, in the ordinary use of the word, Lincoln may be said to have had little. There was nothing ambitiously elaborate or self-consciously simple. in Lincoln's way of writing. He had not the scholar's range of words.

He was not always grammatically accurate. He would doubtless have been very much surprised if anyone had told him that he 'had' a style at all."

Here one feels like asking: Then why discuss "Lincoln as a writer?" The answer is unconvincing: "And yet, because he was determined to be understood, because he was honest, because he had a warm and true heart, because he had read good books eagerly and not coldly, and because there was in him a native good taste, as well as a strain of imagination, he achieved a singularly clear and forcible style, which took color from his own noble character and became a thing individual and distinguished. . . ."

So the man who had no style had a style-clear, forcible, individual and distinguished. This is as odd a piece of reasoning as that offered by the late Senator Beveridge: "The cold fact is that not one faint glimmer appears in his whole life, at least before his Cooper Union speech, which so much as suggests the

radiance of the last two years." Perhaps a Senator is never a good judge of what a President writes: This one asks us to believe in a miracle. One would think the "serious" critics had simply failed to read their author.

Yet they must have read him, to be so obviously bothered.

"How did he do it?" they wonder. They think of the momentous issues of the Civil War, of the grueling four years in Washington, of the man beset by politicians who were too aggressive and by generals who were not enough so, and the solution flashes upon them: "It was the strain that turned homespun into great literature." This is again to confuse a literary occasion with the literary power which rises to it. The famous documents-the two inaugurals, the Gettysburg Address, the letter to Mrs. Bixbymarvelous as they are, do not solve the riddle. On the contrary, the subjects have such a grip on our emotions that we begin to think almost anybody could have moved us. For all these reasons-inadequate criticism, overfamiliarity with a few masterpieces, ignorance of Lincoln's early work and the consequent suppression of one whole side of his character-we must go back to the source and begin at the beginning.

Pick up any early volume of Lincoln's works and start reading as if you were approaching a new author. Pretend you know none of the anecdotes, nothing of the way the story embedded in these pages comes out. Your aim is to see a life unfold and to descry the character of the man from his own words, written, most of them, not to be published, but to be felt.

Here is Lincoln at 23 telling the people of his district by means of a handbill that they should send him to the state legislature: "Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but holding it a sound maxim that it is better to be only sometimes right than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them." And he closes his appeal for votes on an unpolitical note suggestive of melancholy thoughts: "But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." .

One does not need to be a literary man to see that Lincoln was a born writer, nor a psychologist to guess that here is a youth of uncommon mold-strangely self-assertive, yet detached, and also laboring under a sense of misfortune.

For his handbill Lincoln may have had to seek help with his spelling, which was always uncertain, but the rhythm of those sentences was never taught by a grammar book. Lincoln, as he himself said, went to school "by littles," which did not in the aggregate amount to a year. Everybody remembers the story of his reading the Bible in the light of the fire and scribbling with charcoal on the back of the shovel. But millions have read the Bible and not become even passable writers. The neglected truth is that not one but several persons who remembered his childhood remarked on the boy's singular determination to express his thoughts in the best way.

His stepmother gave an account of the boy which prefigures

the literary artist much more than the rail splitter: "He didn't like physical labor. He read all the books he could lay his hands on.... When he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards if he had no paper and keep it there till he did get paper, then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it."

Later, Lincoln's law partner, William H. Herndon, recorded the persistence of this obsessive habit with words: "He used to bore me terribly by his methods .... Mr. Lincoln would doubly explain things to me that needed no explanation .... Mr. Lincoln was a very patient man generally, but ... just go at Lincoln with abstractions, glittering generalities, indefiniteness, mistiness of idea or expression. Here he flew up and became vexed, and sometimes foolishly so."

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nyouth, Lincoln had tried to be a poet, but found he lacked the gift. What he could do was think with complete clarity in words and imagine the workings of others' minds at the same time. One does not read far in his works before discovering that as a writer he toiled above all to find the true order for his thoughts -order first, and then a lightninglike brevity. Here is how he writes in 1846, a young politician far from the limelight, and of whom no one expected a lapidary style: "If I falsify in this you can convict me. The witnesses live, and can tell." There is a fire in this, and a control of it, which shows the master.

That control of words implied a corresponding control of the emotions. Herndon described several times in his lectures and papers the eccentric temperament of his lifelong partner. This portrait the kindly sentimental people have not been willing to accept. But Herndon's sense of greatness was finer than that of the admirers from afar, who worship rather storybook heroes than the mysterious, difficult, unsatisfactory sort of great manthe only sort that history provides.

What did Herndon say? He said that Lincoln was a man of sudden and violent moods, often plunged in deathly melancholy for hours, then suddenly lively and ready to joke; that Lincoln was self-centered and cold, not given to revealing his plans or opinions, and ruthless in using others' help and influence; that Lincoln was idle for long stretches of time, during which he read newspapers or simply brooded; that Lincoln had a disconcerting power to see into questions, events, and persons, never deceived by their incidental features or conventional garb, but extracting the central matter as one cores an apple; that Lincoln was a man of strong passions and mystical longings, which he repressed because his mind showed him their futility, and that this made him cold-blooded and a fatalist.

In addition, as we know from other sources, Lincoln was subject to vague fears and dark superstitions. Strange episodes, though few, marked his relations with women, including his wife-to-be, Mary Todd. He was subject, as some of his verses show, to obsessional gloom about separation, insanity, and death.

We should bear in mind that Lincoln was orphaned, reared by a stepmother, and early cast adrift to make his own way. His· strangely detached attitude toward himself, his premonitions and depressions, his morbid regard for truth and abnormal suppression of aggressive impulses, suggest that he hugged a secret wound which ultimately made out of an apparent common man the unique figure of an artist-saint.

Lincoln moreover believed that his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia planter, and like others who have known

or fancied themselves of irregular descent, he had a powerful, unreasoned faith in his own destiny-a destiny he felt would combine greatness and disaster.

Whatever psychiatry might say to this, criticism recognizes the traits of a type of artist one might call "the dark outcast."

Michelangelo and Byron come to mind as examples. In such men the sense of isolation from others is in the emotions alone. The mind remains a clear and fine instrument of common senseMichelangelo built buildings, and Byron brilliantly organized the Greeks in their revolt against Turkey. In Lincoln there is no incompatibility between the lawyer-statesman, whom we all know, and the artist, whose physiognomy I have been trying to sketch.

Lincoln's detachment was what produced his mastery over men. Had he not, as President, towered in mind and will over his cabinet, they would have crushed or used him without remorse.

Chase, Seward, Stanton, the Blairs, McClellan had among them enough egotism and ability to wreck several administrations.

Each thought Lincoln would be an easy victim. It was not until he was removed from their midst that any of them conceived of him as an apparition greater than themselves. During his life their dominant feeling was exasperation with him for making them feel baffled. They could not bring him down to their reach. John Hay, who saw the long struggle, confirms Herndon's judgments: "It is absurd to call him a modest man. No great man was ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner could never forgive."

This is a different Lincoln from the clumsy country lawyer who makes no great pretensions, but has a trick or two up his sleeve and wins the day for righteousness because his heart is pure. Lincoln's purity was that of a supremely conscious genius, not of an innocent. And if we ask what kind of genius enables a man to master a new and sophisticated scene as Lincoln did, without the aid of what are called personal advantages, with little experience in affairs of state and no established following, the answer is: military genius or its close kin, artistic genius.

The artist contrives means and marshals forces that the beholder takes for granted and that the bungler never discovers for himself. The artist is always scheming to conquer his material and his audience. When we speak of his craft, we mean quite literally that he is crafty.

L

incolnacquired his power over words in the only two ways known to man-by reading and by writing. His reading was small in range and much of a kind: the Bible, Bunyan, Byron, Burns, Defoe, Shakespeare, and a then-current edition of Aesop's Fables. These are books from which a genius would extract the lesson of terseness and strength. The Bible and Shakespeare's poetry would be less influential than Shakespeare's prose, whose rapid twists and turns Lincoln often rivals, though without imagery. The four other British writers are all devotees of the telling phrase, rather than the suggestive. As for Aesop, the similarity of his stories with the anecdotes Lincoln liked to tell-always in the same words-is obvious. But another parallel occurs, that between the shortness of a fable and the mania Lincoln had for condensing any matter into the fewest words: "John Fitzgerald, 18 years of age, able-bodied, but without pecuniary means, came directly from Ireland to Springfield,

'The four main qualities of Lincoln's literary art-precision, vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity, and elegance-may at a century's remove seem alien to our tastes.' But Lincoln's example, says the author, 'helped to break the monopoly of the dealers in literary plush.'

Illinois, and there stopped, and sought employment, with no present intention of returning to Ireland or going elsewhere.

After remaining in the city some three weeks, part of the time employed, and part not, he fell sick, and became a public charge.

It has been submitted to me, whether the City of Springfield, or the County of Sangamon is, by law, to bear the charge."

As Lincoln himself wrote on another occasion, "This is not a long letter, but it contains the whole story." And the paragraph would prove, if it were necessary, that style is independent of attractive subject matter. The pleasure it gives is that of lucidity and motion, the motion of Lincoln's mind.

In his own day, Lincoln's prose was found flat, dull, lacking in taste. It differed radically in form and tone from the accepted models-Webster's or Channing's for speeches, Bryant's or Greeley's for journal\sm. Once or twice, Lincoln did imitate their genteel circumlocutions or resonant abstractions. But these were exercises he never repeated. His style, well in hand by his 30th year and richly developed by his 50th, has the eloquence which comes of the contrast between transparency of medium· and density of thought. Consider this episode from a lyceum lecture written when Lincoln was 29: "Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short; and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world."

Notice the contrasting rhythm of the two sentences: "A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short." The sentences are very short, too, but let anyone try imitating their continuous flow or subdued emotion on the characteristic Lincolnian theme of the swift passage from the business of life to death.

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i.ncoln's prose works faU into three categories: speeches, letters, and proclamations.

The speeches range from legal briefs and arguments to political debates. The proclamations begin with his first offer of his services as a public servant and end with his Presidential statements of policy or calls to Thanksgiving between. 1861 and 1865. The letters naturally cover his life span and a great diversity of subjects. They are, I surmise, the crucible in which Lincoln cast his style. By the time he was in the White House, he could frame, impromptu, hundreds of message; such as this telegram to General McClellan: "I have just read your despatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?"

Something of Lincoln's tone obviously comes from the practice of legal thought. It would be surprising if the effort of mind that Lincoln put into his profession had not come out again in

his prose. After all, he made his name and rose to the Presidency over a question of constitutional law. Legal thought encourages precision through the imagining and the denial of alternatives.

The language of the law foresees doubt, ambiguity, confusion, stupid or fraudulent error, and one by one it excludes them. Most lawyers succeed at least in avoiding misunderstanding, and this obviously is the foundation of any prose that aims at clear expression.

As a lawyer Lincoln knew that the courtroom vocabulary would achieve this purpose if handled with a little care. But it would remain jargon, obscure to the common understanding.

As an artist, therefore, he undertook to frame his ideas invariably in one idiom, that of daily life. He had to use, of course, the technical names of the actions and documents he dealt with. But all the rest was in the vernacular. His first achievement, then. was to translate the minute accuracy of the advocate and the judge into the words of common men.

To say this is to suggest a measure of Lincoln's struggle as an artist. He started with very little confidence in his stock of knowledge, and having to face audiences far more demanding than ours, he toiled to improve his vocabulary, grammar, and logic.

In the first year of his term in Congress he labored through six books of Euclid in hopes of developing the coherence of thought he felt he needed in order to demonstrate his views. Demonstration was to him the one proper goal of argument; he never seems to have considered it within his power to convince by disturbing the judgment through the emotions. In the few passages where he resorts to platform tricks, he uses only irony or satire, never the rain-barrel booming of the Fourth-of-July orator.

One superior gift he possessed from the start and developed to a supreme degree, the gift of rhythm. Take this fragment, not from a finished speech, but from a jotting for a lecture on the law: "There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief-resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."

Observe the ease with which the theme is announced: "There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest." It is short without crackling like an epigram, the word "necessarily" retarding the rhythm just enough. The thought is picked up with hardly a pause: "I say vague, because, when we consider ... " and so on through the unfolding of reasons, which winds up in a kind of calm: "it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid." Now a change of pace to refresh interest: "Yet the impression is common, almost universal." And a second change, almost immediately, to usher in the second long sentence, which carries the conclusion: "Let no young man choosing the law ... "

The paragraph moves without a false step, neither hurried nor drowsy; and by its movement, like one who leads another in the dance, it catches up our thought and swings it into willing compliance. The ear notes at the same time that none of the sounds grate or clash: the piece is sayable like a speech in a great play; the music is manly, the alliterations are few and natural. Indeed, the paragraph seems to have come into being spontaneously as the readiest incarnation of Lincoln's thoughts.

metaphor about political plums by describing Douglas's face as round, jolly and fruitful is not a man to be thought merely lucky in the handling of words. The debates abound in happy turns, but read less well than Lincoln's more compact productions. Often, Douglas's words are more polished: "We have existed and prospered from that day to this thus divided and have increased with a rapidity never before equaled in wealth, the extension of territory, and all the elements of power and greatness, until we have become the first nation on the face of the globe. Why can we not thus continue to prosper?" rom hints here and there, one gathers that Lincoln wrote It is a mistake to underrate Douglas's skill, which was that of a slowly-meaning, by writing, the physical act of forming professional. Lincoln's genius needs no heightening through letters on paper. This would augment the desirability of being lowering others. Douglas was smooth and adroit, and his argubrief. Lincoln wrote before the typewriter and the dictating ments were effective, since Lincoln was defeated. But Douglasmachine, and wanting to put all his meaning into one or two lucid not so Lincoln-sounds like anybody else. sentences, he thought before he wrote. The great compression Lincoln's extraordinary power was to make his spirit felt, a came after he had, lawyerlike, excluded alternatives and hit upon power I attribute to his peculiar relation to himself. He regarded his face and physique with amusement and dismay, his mind and right order and emphasis.

Obviously this style would make use of skips and connections destiny with wonder. Seeming clumsy and diffident, he also showunsuited to speechmaking. The member of the cabinet who ed a calm superiority which he expressed as if one half of a received a terse memorandum had it before him to make out at double man were talking about the other. leisure. But an audience requires a looser texture, just as it reIn conduct, this detachment was the source of his saintlike quires a more measured delivery. This difference between the forebearance; in his art, it yielded the rare quality of elegance. written and the spoken word lends color to the cliche that if Nowhere is this link between style and emotional distance clearer Lincoln had a style, he developed it in his Presidential years. than in the farewell Lincoln spoke to his friends in Springfield Actually, Lincoln, like an artist, adapted his means to the oc- before leaving for Washington. A single magical word, easy to casion. There was no pathos in him before pathos was due. When pass over carelessly, holds the clue: "My friends: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my he supposed his audience inteliectuallyalert-as was the famous gathering at Cooper Union in l860-he gave them his concen- feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness trated prose. We may take as a sample a part of the passage of these people, I owe everything .... " If we stop to think, we ask: "This placeT-yes. But why "these people?" Why not "you where he addresses the South: "Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prom- people," whom he was addressing from the train platform, or inent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more "this place and the kindness of its people?" It is not, certainly, prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but the mere parallel of this and these that commanded the choice. you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and "These" is a stroke of genius, which betrays Lincoln's isolation still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prom- from the action itself-Lincoln talking to himself about the place inence of the question. Would you have that question reduced and the people whom he was leaving, foreboding the possibility to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What 0'£ his never returning, and closing the 15 lines with one of the has been, will be again, under the same conditions. If you would greatest cadences in English speech: "To His care commending have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." of the old times."

The four main qualities of Lincoln's literary art-precision, This is wonderfully clear and precise and demonstrative, but two hours of equally succinct argument would tax any but the vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity, and elegance-may at a most athletic audience. Lincoln gambled on the New Yorkers' century's remove seem alien to our tastes. Yet it seems no less agility of mind, and won. But we should not be surprised that in odd to question their use and interest to the present when one the debates with Stephen A. Douglas, a year and a half before, considers one continuing strain in our literature. Lincoln's we find the manner different. Those wrangles lasted three hours, example, plainly, helped to break the monopoly of the dealers in and the necessity for each speaker to interweave prepared state- literary plush. After Lincoln comes Mark Twain:, and out of Mark Twain come contemporaries of ours as diverse as Sherwood ments of policy with improvised rebuttals of charges and "points" gives these productions a coarser grain. Yet on Lincoln's side, Anderson, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. Lincoln's use of his style for the intimate genre and for the sublime was the same artist mind is plainly at work: "Senator Douglas is of worldwide renown. All the anxious • his alone; but his workaday style is the American style par politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years excellence.

0 past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his About the Author: Jacques Barzun, Dean of the Faculty of Political round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships, Science at Columbia University, is one of America's most distinguished and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, intellectuals. He was Dean of Faculties and Provost of Columbia from bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be 1958 to 1967. He is the author of several books including Teacher in Amerlaid hold of by their greedy hands." ica, Pleasures of Music, God's Own Country and Mine, and On WritThe man who could lay the ground for a splendid yet catchy ing, Editing and Publishing, from which this article has been reprinted,

F

MEETING THE ENERGY CRISIS· The energy CrISISis grave but soluble, u.s. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a University of Chicago audience in a major policy speech last November. He proposed a fivepoint program of international co-operation to help world economies recover from the shattering impact of the four-fold rise in oil prices. Excerpts from the speech are reprinted on these pages.

A generation ago the Western world faced a historic crisis-the breakdown of international order in the wake of world war. Threatened by economic chaos and political upheaval, the nations of the West built a system of security relations and co-operative institutions that have nourished our safety, our prosperity and our freedom ever since. A moment of grave crisis. was transformed into an act of lasting creativity.

We face another such moment today.

The stakes are as high as they were 25 years ago. The challenge to our courage, our vision, and our will is as profound.

And our opportunity is as great. ...

I speak, of course, of our response to the energy crisis. Tonight I want to discuss how the [U.S.] Administration views this problem, what we have been doing about it and where we must go. I will stress two themes that this government has emphasized for a year and a half: First, the problem is grave but it is soluble.

Second, international collaboration, particularly among the industrial nations of North America, Western Europe and Japan, is an inescapable necessity.

The economic facts are stark. By 1973, worldwide industrial expansion was outstripping the energy supply; the threat of shortages was already real. Then, without warning, we were faced first with a political embargo, then quickly by massive increases in the price of oil. In the course of a single year the price of the world's most strategic commodity was raised 400 per cent. The impact has been drastic and global:

• The industrialized nations now face a collective payments deficit of $40,000 million, the largest in history, and beyond the experience or capacity of our financial institutions. We suffer simultaneously a slowdown of production and a speed-up of an inflation that was already straining the ability of governments to control.

• The nations of the developing world face a collective yearly deficit of $20,000 million, over half of which is due to increases in oil prices. The rise in energy costs in fact roughly equals the total flow of external aid. In other words, the new oil bill threatens hopes for progress and advancement and renders problematical the ability to finance even basic human needs such as food.

• The oil producers now enjoy a surplus of $60,000 million, far beyond their payments or development needs and manifestly more than they can invest. Enormous unabsorbed surplus revenues now jeopardize the very functioning of the international monetary system.

Yet this is only the first year of inflated oil prices. The full brunt of the petrodollar flood is yet to come. If current economic trends continue, we face further and mounting ·worldwide shortages, unemployment, poverty and hunger. No nation, East or West, North or South, consumer or producer, will be spared ....

An economic crisis of such magnitude would inevitably produce dangerous political consequences. Mounting inflation and recession-brought on by remote decisions over which consumers have no influence---:.willfuel the frustra-

tion of all whose hopes for economic progress are suddenly and cruelly rebuffed. This is fertile ground for social conflict and political turmoil. Moderate governments and moderate solutions will be under severe attack. Democratic societies could become vulnerable to extremist pressures from right or left to a degree not experienced since the '20s and '30s.

The. great achievements of this generation in preserving our institutions and constructing an international order will be imperiled.

The destinies of consumers and producers are joined in the same global economic system, on which the progress of both depends. If either attempts to wield economic power aggressively, both run grave risks. Political co-operation, the prerequisite of a thriving international economy, is shattered. New tensions will _~ engulf the world just when the antagonisms of two decades of the cold war have begun to diminish ....

This need not be o.ur fate. On the contrary, the energy crisis should summon once again the co-operative effort which sustained the policies of North America, Western Europe and Japan for a quarter century. The Atlantic nations and Japan have the ability, if we have the will, not only to master the energy crisis but to shape from it a new era of creativity and common progress.

In fact we have no other alternative.

The energy crisis is not a problem of transitional adjustment. Our financial institutions and mechanisms of co-operation were never designed to handle so 0=: abrupt and artificially sustained a price

rise of so essential a commodity with such massive economic and political ramifications. We face a long-term drain which challenges us to common action or dooms us to perpetual crisis.

The problem will not go away by permitting inflation to proceed to redress the balance between oil producers and producers of other goods. Inflation is the most grotesque kind of adjustment, in which all elements in the domestic structure are upset in an attempt to balance the oil bill. In any event, the producers could and would respond by raising prices, thereby accelerating all the political and social dangers I have described.

Nor can consumers finance their oil bill by going into debt to the produc~rs without 'making their domestic structure hostage to the decisions of others. Already, producers have the power to cause major financial upheavals simply by shifting investment funds from one country to another or even from one institution to another. The political implications are ominous and unpredictable. Those who wield financial power would sooner or later seek to dictate the political terms of the new relationships.

Finally, price reductions will not be brought about by consumer/producer dialogue alone. The price of oil will come down only when objective conditions for a reduction are created, and not before. Today the producers are able to manipulate prices at will and with apparent impunity. They are not persuaded by our protestations of damage to our societies and economies, because we have taken scant action to defend them ourselves. They are not moved by our alarms about the health of the Western world which never included and some times exploited them. And, even if the producers iearn eventually that their longterm interest requires a co-operative adjustment of the price structure, it would be foolhardy to count on it or passively wait for it.

We agree that a consumer/producer dialogue is essential. But it must be accompanied by the elaboration of greater consumer solidarity. The heart of our approa~h must be collaboration among the consuming nations. No one else will do the job for us.

A STRATEGY FOR CONSUMER CO-OPERATION Consumer co-operation has been the central element of u.s. policy for the past year and a half ....

In our view, a concerted consumer str~tegy has.two basic elements:

First, we must create the objective conditions necessary to bring 'about lower oil prices. Since the industrialized nations are the principal consumers, their actions can have a decisive impact. Determined national action, reinforced by collective efforts, can transform the market, by reducing our consumption of oil and accelerating development of new sources of energy. Over time this will create a powerful pressure on prices.

Second, in the interim we must protect the vitality of our economies. Effective action on conservation will require months: Development of alternative sources will take years. In the meantime, we will face two great dangers. One is the threat of a new embargo. The other is that our financial system may be unable to manage chronic deficits and to recycle the huge flows of oil dollars that producers will invest each year in our economies. A financial collapse-or the threat of it-somewhere in the system could result in restrictive monetary, fiscal and tariff measures, and a downward spiral of income and jobs.

The consumers have taken two major steps to safeguard themselves against these dangers by collaborative action.

One of the results of the Washington Energy Conference [of February 1974] was a new permanent institution for consumer energy co-operation-the International Energy Agency [lEA]. This agency will oversee a comprehensive common effort-in conservation, co-operative research and development, broad new action in nuclear enrichment, investment in new energy supplies, and the elaboration of consumer positions for the consumer/producer dialogue.

Equally significant is the unprecedented agreement to share oil supplies among principal consumers in the event of another crisis. The International Energy Program that grew out of the Washington Energy Conference and that we shall formally adopt next week is a historic step toward consumer solidarity. It provides a detailed blueprint for common action, should either a general or selective embargo occur. It is a defensive arrangement, not a challenge to producers. But producing countries must know that it expresses the determination of the consumers not to remain vulnerable to outside pressures and to shape their own future.

The International Energy Agency and the International Energy Program are the first fruits of our efforts.

But they are only foundations. We must now bring our blueprint to life.

To carry through the over-all design, the consuming countries must act in five interrelated areas.

First, we must accelerate our national programs of energy conservation and we must co-ordinate them to ensure their effectiveness.

Second, we must press on with the development of new supplies of oil and alternative sources of energy. . Third, we must strengthen economic security-to protect against oil emergencies and to safeguard the international financial system.

Fourth, we must assist the poor nations whose hopes and efforts for progress have been cruelly blunted by the oil price rises of the past year.

Fifth, on the basis of consumer solidarity we should enter into a dialogue with the producers to establish a fair and durable long-term relationship.

Let me deal with each of these points in turn.

CONSERVATION ... The industrialized countries as a whole now import nearly two-thirds of their oil and over one-third of their total energy. Over the next decade, we must cons.erve enough oil and develop sufficient alternative supplies to reduce these imports to no more than one-fifth of the total energy consumption ....

The United States proposes an international agreement' to set consumption goals. The United States is prepared to join an international conservation agreement that would lead to systematic and long-term savings on an equitable basis.

As part of such a program, we propose that by the end of 1975 the industrialized countries reduce their consumption of oil by three million barrels a day over what it would be otherwise-a reduction of approximately 10 per cent of the total imports of the group. This reduction can be carried out without prejudice to economic growth and jobs, by cutting back on wasteful and inefficient uses of energy both in personal consumption and in industry. The United States is prepared to assume a fair s.hare of the total reduction ....

NEW SUPPLIES Conservation measures will be effective to the extent that they are part of a dynamic program for the development of alternative energy sources. All countries must make a major shift toward nuclear power, coal, gas and other sources. If we are to assure substantial amounts of new energy in the 1980s we must start now. If

the industrialized nations take the steps which are within their power they will be able to transform energy shortages into energy surpluses by the 1980s....

We shall recommend to the lEA that it create a common fund to finance or guarantee investment in promising energy projects, in participating countries and in those ready to co-operate with the lEA on a long-term basis.

FINANCIAL SOLIDARITY The most serious immediate problem facing the consuming countries is the economic and financial strain resulting from high oil prices. Producer revenues will inevitably be reinvested in the industrialized world: There is no other outlet. But they will not necessarily flow back to the countries whose balance-ofpayments problems are most acute. Thus many countries will remain unable to finance their deficits and all will be vulnerable to massive sudden withdrawals.

The industrialized nations, acting together, can correct this imbalance and reduce their vulnerability. Just as producers are free to choose where they place their funds, so the consumers must be free to redistribute these funds to meet their own needs, and those of the developing countries ....

Therefore, the governments of Western Europe, North America and Japan should move now to put in place a system of mutual support that will augment and buttress private channels whenever necessary. The United States proposes that a common loan and guarantee facility be created to provide for redistributing up to $25,000 million in 1975, and as much again the next year if necessary. The facility will not be a new aid institution to be funded by additional taxes. It will be a mechanism for recycling, at commercial interest rates, funds flowing back to the industrial world from the oil producers. Support from the facility would not be automatic, but contingent on full resort to private financing and on reasonable self-help measures. No country should expect financial assistance that is not moving effectively to lessen its dependence on imported oil.

Such a facility will help assure the stability of the entire financial system and the creditworthiness of participating governments: In the long run it would reduce the need for official financing. If implemented rapidly it would: -Protect financial institutions from the excessive risks posed by an enormous

volume of funds beyond their control or capacity; -Ensure that no nation is forced to pursue disruptive and restrictive policies for lack of adequate financing; -Assure that no consuming country will be compelled to accept financing on intolerable political or eqmomic terms; arid

,.....Enableeach participating country to demonstrate to people that efforts and sacrifices are being shared equitablythat the national survival is buttressed by consumer solidarity ....

THE DEVELOPING WORLD The strategy I have outlined here is also essential to ease the serious plight of many developing countries. All consuming nations are in need of relief from excessive oil prices, but the developing world cannot wait for the process to unfold. For them, the oil crisis has afready produced an emergency. The oil bill has wiped out the external assistance of the poorer developing countries, halted agricultural and industrial development and inflated the prices for their most fundamental needs, including food. Unlike the industrial nations, developing countries do not have many options of self-help; their margin for reducing energy consumption is limited; they have little capacity to develop alternative sources....

A major responsibility must rest with those oil producers whose actions aggravated the problems of the developing countries and who because of their newfound wealth now have greatly increased resources for assistance.

But even after all presently available resources have been drawn upon, an unfinanced payment of deficit of between $1,000 and 52,000 million will remain for the 25 or 30 countries most seriously affected by high oil prices ....

We need new international mech~nisms to meet this deficit. One possibility would be to supplement regular International Monetary Fund facilities by the creation of a separate trust fund managed by the IMF, to lend at interest rates recipient countries could 'afford. Funds would be provided by national contribution from interested countries, including especially oil producers. The IMF itself could contribute the profits from IMF gold sales undertaken for this purpose. We urge the Interim Committee of the IMF and the joint IMF/IBRD Development Committee to examine this proposal on an ,urgent basis.

RELATIONS WITH PRODUCERS ... We do not see consumer co-operation as antagonistic to consumer/producer co-operation; but as a necessary prerequisite to a constructive dialogue as do many of the producers themselves, who have urged the consumers to curb inflation, conserve energy, and preserve international financial stability ....

When consumer solidarity has been. developed and there are realistic prospects for significant progress, the United States is prepared to participate in a consumer/producer meeting.

The main subject of such a dialogue must inevitably be price. Clearly the stability of the system on which the economic health of even. the producers depends requires a price reduction. But an equitable solution must also take account of the producers' need for longterm income security. and economic growth. This we are prepared to discuss sympathetically.

In the meantime the producers must recognize that further increases in the prices, while this dialogue is being prepared and when the system has not even absorbed the previous price rises, would be disruptive and dangerous ....

CONCLUSION Let there be no doubt, the energy problem is soluble. It will overwhelm us only if we retreat from its reality. But there can be no solution without the collective efforts of the nations of North America, Western Europe, and Japanthe very nations whose co-operation· over the course of more than two decades has brought prosperity and peace to the postwar world. Nor in the last analysis can there be a solution without a dialogue with the prod ucers....

Woodrow Wilson once remarked that "wrap'ped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous perfection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized peoples." That, in the last analysis, is what the energy crisis is all about. For it is our liberty that in the end is at stake and it is only through the concerted action of the industrial democracies that it will be maintained ....

Our challenge is to maintain the cooperative spirit among like-minded nations that has served us so well for a generation, and to prove, as Woodrow Wilson said, in another time and place, that "the highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous co-operation of a free people."

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