SPAN: April 1964

SPAN OF EVENTS }1'ILE CO.L~¡ rlf'a~'O I

HE AZALEAS are bursting into flower on the lawn of the White House in Washington, left, their pink and white blossoms signalling the arrival of spring. And as the sure signs of spring move slowly north, bird watchers will dust off their binoculars and search the skies for the return of the purple martin from a winter in the warm southern regions of the country.

Snow-shovels will go into storage; spring house cleaning will begin.

Children, anxious for the freedom of warm weather, will prematurely loose their mittens and mothers will scold.

Spring rains will wash away the grime of winter, the brown grass will turn emerald, lawn mowers will be oiled.

On farms across the country cattle will be turned out to pasture and soon their milk will be creamier, richer after a winter in protective barns. Ploughs will slash deep furrows in the soil, soon to receive the seed for a season of growth. April has come and with it, spring, that gentlest of all seasons.

There will be April showers and nasty days, but April is both the end and the beginning. Overcoats go into storage and thoughts turn to the garden, outdoor sports and week-ends at the beach. Advertisements will herald new gadgets for the enjoyment of outdoor living but some Americans will find that gadgets are unnecessary: a stroll in the woods and parks, a drive in the country bring simple fulfilment.

Spring has arrived once again and nature offers the splendours of its beauty for all who care to see.

spring-on April 26, 1564. That date will be marked this year around the world, wherever the English language is used. For Shakespeare is probably the most universally loved and enjoyed of all writers in the English language.

And he achieved a universality that few other writers have enjoyed; his works please the eye as well as the ear and his observations cover the full range of human experience. On pages 27-28, we describe how the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth will be celebrated in the United States.

But first, we offer our favourite Shakespearean lines from Sonnet 98 to celebrate the arrival of spring:

SPRING REALLYbelongs to the poets.

No self-respecting poet has let an April go by without setting to metre his thoughts on a spring day.

The odes to spring would fill more than one volume but no one has said it quite as well as the immortal William Shakespeare.

And Shakespeare did many poets one better: he was born in

APRIL ALSO was a significant month for statesmen. James Monroe, whose Monroe Doctrine is still a force in world affairs, was born on April 28, 1758.

On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson asked the American Congress to declare war against Germany. Franklin

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One of the first signs of spring is the blossoming of pink and white azaleas on the lawn of the White House in Washington.

From you T have been absent in the spring.

When proud-pied April. dress' d in all his trim.

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

IT APPEARS APRIL is an especially good month for writers of all types. Among the American men of letters who were born in April are: Washington Irving, the first great prose stylist of American romanticism whose works are still a favourite (April 3, 1783); Henry James, great Anglo-American novelist and pioneer in utilizing psychological devices to communicate intense realization of character and situation (April 15, 1843); and Mark Twain, America's greatest humourist, whose humour served to point up the oddities of American life while expressing an unquenchable faith in the American dream (April 21, 1910).

C01Itinued on next page

D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, a month before Hitler's Germany surrendered to Allied forces. (For another contribution of FDR to the peoples of the world, see page 35.)

THEREWEREill winds too in April.

Civil War broke out between the northern and southern states of the United States on April 12, 1861, on the question of states' rights and the abolition of slavery. On April 9, four years later, the war ended and, with it, slavery in the U.S. Five days later, on April 14, fate struck a cruel blow: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a fanatical opponent of his creed.

ONE OF THE most significant things that happened to America in all its history occurred on April 30, 1789, just 175' years ago. On that day George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. In the next eight years this magnificent man created the office of the Presidency, charting a _ course for Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Johnson and all the others to follow.

Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth. 85, is a distinguished management engineer who has earned the title of First Lady of Engineering.

THERE IS ONE American we wish to pay tribute to this month, a lady engineer, Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth, for whom, so far as we know, April holds no special significance. Dr. Gilbreth is internationally renowned as a consultant and teacher of management engineering and a pioneer in the science of motion study. Often called the "First Lady of Engineering," she is still actively at work in the United States and abroad-at the age of eighty-five. That is an age when even the most active of men like to call it a day!

A CHAPTERWASadded to the history of mountaineering last May when a team of Americans, assisted by hardy Sherpas, conquered Mount Everest thrice in three weeks. Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the expedition had three incidental laurels to its credit. It was the first time three separate and successful attempts were made by the same expedition; the first time the peak was reached by the formidable West Ridge route; and the first time Himalayan climbers traversed the mountain to descend by the South Col route. Behind these achievements lay a saga of human endeavour and endurance, which forms the subject of V. S. Nanda's article "The Triple Conquest of Everest" (page 4).

A different kind of achievement, in a minor key and a continuing one, is that of most students in the United States. In addition to working hard at their studies they work hard during their leisure also, often doing fruitful, creative work. Ambassador Chester Bowles surveys this and other aspects of student life in "Mr. Ambassador, Can You TelJUs ... ?" (beginning on page 12). The article is a condensed transcript of an informal questionand-answer session the Ambassador had recently with university students at Chandigarh.

Yet another achievement dealt with in this issue is the presentation in Washington and New York of a classical Sanskrit play, some 2,000 years old. The play, Bhasa's SwapnaVasavadatta-"The Vision of Vasa vadatta"'-:"was produced by the Institute

for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts. The cast was entirely American.

The director is, however, an Indian: Mrinalini Sarabhai, noted Bharatanatyam dancer and founder of Darpana, the Ahmedabad Academy of Dance, Drama and Music. With over half-a-dozen dance-drama productions to her credit, Mrinalini holds a universally recognized position in the world of dance-drama today.

The Unisphere, symbol of New York World's Fair, which opens on April 22. is a steel structure 140feet tall dramatizing the interrelations of the peoples of the world,

THE NEW YORKWorld's Fair, which has the unique theme of 'Peace Through Understanding' and is due to open on April 22, promises to be another notable achievement. It will be the "most international" fair, says its Vice President Charles Poletti.

With extensive participation of foreign exhibitors, the Fair will be, he says, "a vast gathering where the peoples of the world will show the many millions of visitors who they are . how they live ... what they do . what new heights they hope to reach for the lasting betterment of mankind." The Fair's pavilions, American and foreign, are all geared to this objective: they "will serve to underscore the basic similarities between all peoples, despite differences in colour and languages and cultures. They will help us know each other better. They will help make it easier for us to live together in Peace Through Understanding." Lokenath Bhattacharya's article on the Fair commences on page 41.-THE EDITORS.

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George Washington became President 175 years ago in New York, above, a ceremony hailed from roojiops, below.

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B. Roy CHOUDHURY

THE TRIPLE CONQUEST OF EVEREST

by V. S. Nanda

MR. AMBASSADOR, CAN YOU TELL US ... ?

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SWAPNA-VASAVADATTA

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THE PEOPLE AGAINST POLIO 35

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ISAAC N. ISAAC at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Narandas Building, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-I. Pages 1, 2, 23-26, 47, 48 printed by offset at G. Claridge & Co., Bombay.

INDIA AT THE FAIR

by Lokenath Bhattacharya

THE COVER: Sherpa porters of American expedition cross stream on trek to Mt. Everest. Photograph copyrighted by the National Geographic Society.

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011 sftcond assauH Q >!it by South Col route, weary climber. jeff,

approaches summit marked by wind-whipped American Hag.

Two men reached the top through unconquered West Ridge and came down the other side.

HE HISTORY OF mountaineering is replete with deeds of courage and high adventure. One of the most significant chapters in this history was written last May when a team of Americans, assisted by hardy Sherpas, conquered the world's highest peak three times in three weeks.

Everest, which takes its name from an Englishman who was Chief of Survey of India in the mid-nineteenth century, has lured mountaineers from many nations for four decades or more.

Since the first attempt in 1922 led by C. G. Bruce, some twenty expeditions have planned and carried out assaults on the famous peak. Most climbers, however, had to admit defeat when they had reached a height of about 28,000 feet, and gradually the belief grew that the last thousand feet or so of the mountain were almost impossible to negotiate. It was not until 1953 that the peak was finally conquered. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, members of the British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt, reached the top on May 29. Their success was repeated by the Swiss in 1956 and by the Americans seven years later.

The American achievement was unique in many ways. It was the first time that three separate and successful attempts were made by the same expedition. A new path to the summit was blazed by two climbers, William Unsoeld and Thomas Hornbein, who reached the top by the formidable West Ridge route, hitherto considered impassable. The same climbers also accomplished the daring, unprecedented feat of traversing the mountain and descending by the South Col route. Finally it was the first time an Everest expedition was able to carry through a very ambitious and comprehensive scientific programme.

Writing in National Geographic a few months after the historic event, Norman Dyhrenfurth, leader of the expedition, narrated how his Everest dream was translated into reality. It was as far back as 1960, on his return from his fourth Himalayan trek, that he applied to the Nepalese Government for permission to climb the peak and there began what he described "the long, discouraging process of winning support." There was no dearth of volunteers and the final selection of nineteen Americans was made out of some 150 applicants. But getting money for the expedition proved difficult. In May 1962, however, the National

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Geographic Society, Washington, impressed with the scientific programme planned by the expedition, approved of grants totalling $175,000 and became its main sponsor. Several other American organizations were also interested in the expedition's projected scientific studies, especially those concerning man's physical and mental reactions under the severe stresses of the high mountains, and gave it financial support in varying degrees. Among these were the Office of Naval Research, the Atomic Energy Commission, the University of California, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation.

Eventually, on February 20, 1963, the nineteen American members of the expedition, with their baggage and an army of 909 porters and thirty-two Sherpas chosen for their aptitude in climbing and work at high altitudes, gathered at Kathmandu and began the 185-mile march to Everest. It was a month before they reached the site selected for their base camp on the Khumbu Glacier at a height of 17,800 feet, and the period was marked by accidents and illness. Early in the trek, when they were crossing a narrow chain bridge, a dozen porters with their baggage fell into the torrent below. Fortunately no one was seriously injured and Dyhrenfurth, who had been taking photographs under the bridge a few moments earlier, had moved to one sidea move which probably saved his life. Members of the party suffered from a variety of minor ailments-"an array of joint disorders, gastrointestinal disturbances and respiratory infections unknown to medical science and hence untreatable," to quote the graphic words of Dr. W. Siri, physiologist and deputy director of the expedition. At one stage an outbreak of smallpox threatened to incapacitate the porters but luckily the disease did not develop into an epidemic. Most of the porters were sent back after the base camp had been established, and the strength of the expedition was reduced to seventy-three, including Sherpas.

These minor mishaps were perhaps an inevitable part of any such venture but tragedy struck the expedition when they had proceeded a little beyond the base camp and were negotiating the most treacherous part of their climb over a huge icefall.

Text continued on page 10

Still exhausted, Barry Bishop and William Unsoeld, right, await evacuation by helicopter from Namche Bazar, after making the first historic ascent of the West Ridge.

One more group took the South Col route to summit pioneered by Hillary and Tenzing.

Setting out for the peak, Whittaker and partner Gombu of India, centre, say goodbye at Advance Base.

SPAN

April 1964 9

They made mountaineering history, despite treacherous weather, impossible route conditions and falling cornices.

As two parties of climbers were moving up, a big wall of ice crumbled and engulfed three of the five men. A Sherpa, Ang Pema, was badly hurt, his skull being fractured, while Richard Pownall, pinned against a large block of ice, was rescued with difficulty. Jake Brietenbach was killed and buried so far deep under the avalanche of ice that all efforts to recover his body proved futile. The tragedy cast a pall of gloom over the expedition and it was a saddened, sobered group of men that resumed the ascent to the summit.

It is a remarkable tribute to human endurance that, impelled by strong urges, men can withstand great physical ordeals and accomplish feats which later seem incredible even to themselves.

On May 1, 1963, when James Whittaker and Sherpa Nawang Gombu, a nephew of the famous Tenzing, fought their way up from Camp VI through the last 1,600 feet to the summit, the portents were hardly favourable for the final ascent. Sir Edmund Hillary, the first conqueror of Everest, who was at the time on another trek in the Nep~l foothills, had declared the weather impossible for such an attempt. Other members of the American expedition too, at the Advance Base Camp below, thought it

unlikely that the assault would be made that day. But these forecasts were belied and the two climbers, "a man of the East and a man of the West," as the expedition's historian James Ramsey Ullman called them, reached the summit after battling for seven hours in "that hell of snow and wind."

The six-foot-five-inch-tall American, known as Big Jim to his companions, and the foot shorter Sherpa Gombu hugged each other and stood on the summit. The temperature was about thirty degrees (Fahrenheit) below zero, but in their hearts was the warm glow of triumph. Big Jim pulled out the American flag from his pack and planted it firmly on the snow-covered top.

Gombu participated in the ritual of success and made his own offering to Everest-a white scarf given to him by Tenzing Norgay. Both climbers took pictures of the summit, of the panorama around them and of each other. Then, having stayed for twenty minutes on top of the world, they began their cautious descent, rendered the more hazardous by their having run out of oxygen. They narrowly escaped disaster when, at one point in their journey, a large section of the cornice of snow suddenly fell away and was hurled some 12,000 feet below. Another crisis was averted when Jim lost his footing and found himself upside down but was able to correct his position with a superhuman effort.

Owing to the extreme cold the canteens carried by the climbers had frozen so that, besides having no oxygen, they had also been without beverages throughout the day. After some three-and-a-half hours of tortuous descent they came to the

South Summit where they had left two cylinders of oxygen on their way up. The life-sustaining gas revived them somewhat and they continued the journey after a brief rest, finally reaching Camp VI at about 6 p.m. where Dyhrenfurth and Sherpa Ang Dawa hailed their arrival. Extremely weary in body and mind, the two men could barely summon up enough strength to make the victory sign.

It was three weeks before this achievement could be followed by further successes. Once again bad weather, illness and difficulties of supply affected the expedition's plans to put more men on the summit and forced them all the way down to the Base Camp. It had been agreed at the outset that an attempt would be made to reach Everest by the hitherto unexplored West Ridge route, and a team of experienced climbers had been selected for the pioneering venture. After the success of the first South Col assault, this team's resources in porterage and material were augmented and, when the weather improved, they resumed the ascent. At the same time another pair of climbers launched the second assault by the South Col route, and it was hoped that the two teams would meet on Everest for the world's most unique summit meeting.

This spectacular meeting, without precedent in world history, did take place late in the evening of May 22, but not exactly on the top of Everest. The two West Ridge climbers, William Unsoeld and Thomas Hornbein, had to take a longer route through untraversed ground and reached the summit about 6 p.m., two-and-a-half hours after Luther Jerstad and Barry Bishop had reached it via South Col. The earlier arrivals remained on the top for forty-five minutes, during which they took the first motion pictures ever taken on Everest, and then made their way downwards. It was about ten o'clock when Unsoeld and Hornbein, having traversed the summit and descended the Southeast Ridge, stumbled through the dark to join them at a point some 28,300 feet high and 850 feet above the expedition's nearest camp.

The story of this dual success largely repeats the mishaps, hazards, thrills and rituals of the May Day assault. For Unsoeld and Hornbein, the early part of the last day's climb from Camp V West to the summit was by far the most difficult. Their path lay

View from Makalu takes in features of jour countries, peaks of Tibet, Nepal and Sikkim at left, and India's plains at far right. through deep snow of poor consistency and rotten slab rock, and their progress was extremely slow. Normally climbers try to keep open an escape route behind them and use a rope for retreat if it should become necessary. In this case, however, there were no places where the rope could be fixed, and the two comrades were convinced that it would be too dangerous to return by the same route. They had reached the "point of no return" and there was no alternative to going onward and upward.

The South Col team too had had its moments of severe,

grim ordeal. Early on that fateful morning, one of the two gas stoves which the climbers were using to prepare some hot soup caught fire and within seconds flames had enveloped one end of the tent. Before the flaming stove could be thrown out and the fire exhausted itself, it had taken its toll in Jerstad's and Bishop's burnt beards and eyebrows.

The accident delayed their departure and seemed a serious setback at the time, especially as Bishop had been ill through the night. Their pace on this last 1,600 feet of the ascent was slow and painful. Short of oxygen and taking long breaths, they took almost half a minute for each pace. At one point in the arduous climb Bishop tripped over an empty gas bottle he had just discarded and was thrown off balance, hitting the slope face downwards. Jumping after him, Jerstad grabbed at his companion frantically and both managed to crawl back to the ledge, narrowly escaping a fall of several thousand feet all the way into Tibet!

This is how Bishop described their reactions when they had at last sighted the top and the American flag streaming in the wind: "Arm in arm we then begin to trudge the last hundred feet to the summit. We are bone weary; our lungs suck wildly for air; thinking is a torment. But, if necessary, we could crawl to that flag. What do we do when we finally reach the summit and flop down? We weep. All inhibitions stripped away, we cry like babies. With joy for having scaled the mightiest of mountains; with relief that the long torture of the climb has ended."

Perhaps the most harrowing experience of the two teams was the five-and-a-half hours which the four men spent in the open on the night of May 22 after their dramatic meeting on the way down from the summit. Out of oxygen and unable in the dark to descend more than about three hundred feet, they could not reach Camp VI and, shortly after midnight, decided to halt and lay down on a ledge of rock. Without any tent or sleeping bags, they huddled together in the intense cold-a temperature of about 18 degrees below zero F.-drawing from one another's tired bodies such warmth as they could, and anxiously awaiting the dawn, which at length brought them succour and relief. Fortunately, there was little wind, otherwise it might have been impossible even for these hardy mountaineers to survive the ordeal. As it was, Bishop and Unsoeld suffered acute frostbite, and had subsequently to be evacuated by helicopter from Namche Bazar to Kathmandu where they were hospitalized for several weeks.

The physical experiences of the expedition thus constitute an extraordinary record of human endurance and prowess.

Its scientific programme, while less spectacular, was unprecedented in scope and was carried out with equal efficiency and diligence. It embraced physiological and sociological studies of the members, as also extensive collection of data on the geophysical, geological, glacial and weather conditions experienced by the expedition. These data are still in the process of analysis and interpretation.

It was fitting that, on their return to the United States, the members of the expedition should receive public recognition of their achievements. The National Press Gub, Washington, welcomed them at a luncheon which was attended by the Indian and Nepalese Ambassadors to the United States.

They were also introduced to President Kennedy at a special ceremony held at the White House, where the President presented to them the National Geographic Society's gold Hubbard Medal.

He eulogized the accomplishments of the expedition and expressed his pleasure at the presence of Sherpa Nawang Gombu and four other Sherpas who had played key roles in the conquest of the peak.

In felicitating the climbers, the late President remarked that they had demonstrated that "the vigorous life still attracts Americans." But more important perhaps as an incentive to this memorable venture was the need for "satisfying the inner man," of which Norman Dhyrenfurth spoke at the Press Club reception. And similar sentiments were expressed by Big Jim who said: "Man is at his best when reaching for something beyond his grasp." •

I believe students in America use their leisure for a lot of creative work. Could you enlighten me as to what exactly they do in their spare time?

YOUR

EXCELLENCY,

I don't think the college lives of young people in the United States are too different from yours. They work very hard as you do. They have long hours of study, too.

What I think is different is that there are all kinds of employment opportunities there that allow them to make money outside their college work. Almost all of them, at least eighty per cent, work in the summer months-they take jobs.

My son, when he was in Yale, worked as a labourer on a big highway being constructed about thirty miles from our home. He was a member of a labour union and worked very hard with pick and shovel-hard manual labour. He made about ten rupees an hour. I know it sounds like a large sum of money.

And through this he saved five thousand rupees in that one summer. And with that five thousand rupees he made as a labourer, he went to Yugoslavia and spent three weeks. He went to Italy, spent two or three weeks, and then he travelled on through Europe.

Another summer he worked, too, and with that money he went to Russia for four weeks with the Yale University Russian Choir. They learned Russian operas to improve their Russian.

They visited Russian universities and sang on the campuses in Russian, and then stayed up late at night arguing and discussing with Soviet students on a wide

variety of subjects. And the money they used to pay for their travel was earned by them in summer work.

American students earn money in all kinds of ways. One of my daughters worked her way mostly through Oberlin College to become a trained nurse. She came back here to work as a nurse in Madras. But she earned money to pay her tuition in Oberlin College. She also took care of children whose parents were out for dinner or away while she was studying in the evenings-baby-sitting, as we call it.

American students have many employment opportunities open to them. But I don't think their actual student life is too different. They have dramatic societies, musical societies, and glee clubs and, of course, all kinds of sports.

A lot of them go through college studying hard but not thinking very much in a broad sense and others go through college thinking a great deal and having ideas and worrying about things and being anxious to try to express their views in some kind of creative work.

Mr. Ambassador, why have so many young Americansjoined the Peace Corps?

The Peace Corps has been one of the rather fascinating expressions of the efforts of many young Americans to . identify themselves with world affairs.

We have enormous problems in our country-the racial discrimination problem, for example. It is a struggle which has appealed not only to young Negroes but to hundreds of thousands of young non-Negroes.

A lot of young Americans want to relate themselves to what is going on in Africa and Latin America, India and all over the world. The Peace Corps has now about eight to nine thousand members.

Although the great majority are in their early or mid-'twenties-girls as well as boys-there is no limit on age.

Before being sent abroad they are given extremely hard training for two or three months. They learn the language of the place to which they are going.

And they learn it well enough to get along.

Here in India there are about two hundred Peace Corps volunteers, in Ethiopia there are three hundred, in Nigeria about four hundred, in Philippines about seven hundred.

They teach in schools, work in community development programmes. They work as nurses, etc. They work-in all kinds of different jobs-for two years.

They have done many constructive things. But I suspect that they have gained at least as much as they have given through their experience.

Mr. Ambassador, are the Peace Corps members paid?

Yes, but they are paid very little. They get just enough money to live as their co-worker who is, say, a school-teacher or a Village Level Worker, enough for a very modest living.

When they come home they have an amount of money in the bank waiting for them. It's about one-sixth of what they could earn if they had stayed at home. But it's something. It's enough to pay for a year in college, something of that kind.

Mr. Ambassador, is everyone who applies for the Peace Corps accepted and sent to a foreign country?

No, it is rather hard to get in. Again I would like to tell you of the experience of a member of my own family. My daughter, who is twenty-four and works for the Peace Corps, went to the University of California to recruit Peace Corps volunteers. And at the end of one week of recruitment in the University of California at Berkeley-which is a large university with thirty to forty thousand students-they recruited twelve hundred students, which must be about one-third of the senior class.

They, of course, won't all finally be accepted. Only about one-third of those who volunteer are finally accepted to go overseas, because the training and selection process is very demanding.

The concept of the Peace Corps reflects an idealism which is found among young people all over the world.

Chester Bowles, U.S. Ambassador to India.

A free relationship exists between faculty) students.

We figured before the Peace Corps started that about ten per cent of the volunteers abroad wouldn't adjust themselves well, would be failures. Actually, less than two per cent have gone home.

About half of this number have failed to adjust themselves and after six months or so have resigned or been dropped. And about one per cent more have gone home because of illness or death in the family.

But the total turn-over is less than two per cent. This is quite remarkable.

The whole concept .ofthe Peace Corps reflects, I think, a certain idealism, which you find among young people all over the world. Quite rightly they are not satisfied with the world their fathers left them and they would like a very different world. And they are prepared to work hard to get it.

Your Excellency, how much stress do you lay on cordial relations and familiarity between teachers and students in your country) and is it something which comes naturally or is it purposely created?

By and large in the United States it is a very free relationship between faculty and students. And I think it comes pretty naturally; it grows out of our whole system of education.

You cannot generalize because education is a big word, and there are all kinds of phases in it. But, by and large, even in our lower grades we try to encourage children to speak up, to speak out, to express their views. We try to get children

to study with classmates of roughly their own intellectual capacity, so that the less capable children would not feel that they are being outdone by others, children who can compete reasonably without feeling insecure and who can speak out and talk and agree and disagree and challenge and question and so on.

Thus, when you get to the university free discussion comes very naturally.

And some of the new and large universities are going in for seminars and the degree course where there are almost no lectures at all. It is almost all informal reading or discussion.

At several universities, including Yale, outstanding students in their last two years have no classes at all. Each one can call on a dozen or so professors who assign reading and guide his work through frequent discussion.

There is a lot of experimenting with this sort of very free-wheeling education.

The professor encourages the student to express his views, to uphold his views, to argue his case, to put up challenging and highly controversial questions, to see whether the class will challenge them or question their validity.

Would your Excellency enlighten us about the various extra-curricular activities in the university l([e?

In the universities in America there is a lot of athletics. Let me take the university where I went-Yale.

There are twelve colleges at Yale each with roughly three hundred undergraduates. And th05e three hundred students are selected not so much on the basis of tradition as on that of a cross section of the whole undergraduate body. About sixty per cent of the boys in the Yale University work their way through the university, earn their money to pay all or part of their tuition. Others come from families who have bigger incomes, and some come from different parts of the world.

Each one of these colleges has its own teams: a tennis team, a golf team, a swimming team, a baseball team, a basketball team, a hockey team, a football team.

They all compete in regular leagues so that there are continuing games going on between all these twelve colleges. Then every year the champion of the twelve colleges in each sport competes with the champion of the dozen or so colleges of Harvard University.

Athletics is for everyone, not just for a few really highly skilled, proficient people. The idea is to make it open to everybody who has any skill or desire.

Each college has a debating club, each has a dramatic club, each has a glee club as well as the central univer-

sity teams. And then they have all kinds of political clubs. This year in America there are elections coming up and there will be Democratic clubs and Republican clubs everywhere with many discussions and arguments.

Among our students, there are some who just are politically apathetic. They say: "Please don't ask me to think about my community or the world. I just want to be an engineer, doctor or whatever."

What often troubles me is that some very bright boys and girls are not very politically conscious or oriented towards social or economic problems. They are content to develop their special skills.

But most young people do feel strongly about ideas. For instance, when anyone arrives on a university campus with ideas to offer, students turn out in large numbers to hear him. I think they are more interested today in world affairs than they were five years ago.

There was a period when I was worried about our students becoming too conservative and out of touch with other less fortunate people. But I have stopped worrying about that.

When I went to school-the period just before Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal-most of our parents were very, very conservative. So we went off in liberal directions, because I think, a little bit psychologically, we wanted some basis for difference with our parents.

As a result my generation was basically a liberal generation. Some of the children of that generation, I think, reacted the other way against their more liberal parents and became conservative.

However, the general trend is realistic and enlightened. Each year there is a meeting of the National Students Association with student government representatives from most of the American universities. All kinds of issues involving economic, political and social problems are debated at length. And I am gratified to see that it is the boys and girls with liberal views who usually get the majorities on these issues. •

Part of Southern's bold expansion programme is its investment of nearly a million dollars in trailers like these waiting to be l(fted off flatcars at Atlanta, Georgia, yard.

Colour photographs courtesy FORTUNE magazine.

THE SOUTHERN BREAKS TRADITION BUT RUNS EFFICIENTLY IS supposed to be the watchword of modern business.

It is reflected in the quality and cost of the product or service which a commercial enterprise provides to its customers, and is the only sure foundation on which a successful business can be built. The term has wide implications and, as applied for instance to a modern railway system, it connotes such factors as punctuality and frequency of services, passenger comfort and safety, availability of suitable wagons for different kinds of freight, and adequate facilities for collection and delivery of goods. Apart

E

FFICIENCY

For this account of the Southern Railway System of America, the writer has drawn largely on Harold B. Meyer's article, "A Different Way to Run a Railroad," which appeared in the September 1963 issue of Fortune. It will be of special interest to Indian readers as an example of how a small private enterprise has grown into a vast, modernized industrial complex which operates efficiently within the limitations of government control.

from this aspect of service to the consumer or user, efficiency of course also implies that the undertaking should yield a reasonable margin of profit, that it should look for and be able to cope with development, and that it should have a progressive personnel policy.

An outstanding example of efficiency of management and operation in the domain of public transport is that of the Southern Railway System of the United States. In common with other American railways, the Southern is a privatelyowned company operating under comContinued on next page

A vast complex has grownfrom small beginnings. petitive conditions. But the competition is regulated in the public interest and the companies are subject to government control-exercised through the Interstate Commerce Commission-over fares, freight rates, number of train services and other important aspects of railway operation. Their staff patterns and policies are also affected by the attitudes and decisions of railway workers' unions. It is a tribute to the competence, drive and vision of the Southern that, within these limitations, it has been able to introduce many innovations and offers its customers a thoroughly modernized and efficient service at highly competitive rates.

The Southern has an old and chequered history. Its earliest predecessor was the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, which was the first American company to tryout the steam locomotive on its six miles of railway line. The locomotive, named "Best Friend" and costing .$4,000, made its first scheduled run on Christmas Day, 1830, hauling three open passenger cars, "annihilating time and space and leaving all the world behind," to quote one of the passengers.

It is an ironic commentary on the development of communications and our changing standards that the tremendous speed which so overawed this pioneer of railway travel was between fifteen and twenty-five miles per hour.

From that insignificant but historic beginning, the Southern has developed into a vast complex-a railway system which now has 10,400 miles of railroad spread over southeastern United States and connects Washington with Richmond, Norfolk, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans and hundreds of smaller urban and industrial centres in the region. In 1962 it had in operation 1,109 diesel locomotive units which travelled 28,800,000 miles and 851 passenger cars which travelled 77,200,000 miles, carrying 1,300,000 passengers. During the same year the System's 66,829 freight cars travelled a billion miles and transported 79 million tons of goods. The total gross revenue for the year amounted to $344,764,000 and, after paying expenses and taxes, the net income was $51,851,000, which was the fourth highest of all U.S. railway companies. All these figures relate to a period prior to purchase by the Southern in 1963 of controlling interest in the Central of Georgia Railway, which has led to further expansion As many as 3,300 freight cars are sorted out every day at the Southern's Atlanta yard.

and further anticipated increases in revenue and income.

An accepted and readily understandable yardstick of efficient railway operation is the average operating ratio or cost of operation compared to revenue. In the case of the Southern the 1962 ratio was 72 as compared with 78.6 for all class I U.S. railways and, with two exceptions, the lowest of all railway companies in the country. A low operating ratio of course means that a comparatively greater margin is left for meeting other charges and declaring profits and, on the basis of its 1962 results, the Southern was thus able to allocate 28 cents per dollar of revenue for fixed charges, taxes and profits.

This near-optimum efficiency of the Southern System has been steadily built up over the last twenty-five years or so.

The System has of course had its ups and downs and not always has it been in the position of strength and preeminence it commands at present. During the first thirty years after the introduction of steam traction in American railways, many adverse factors-exploit~tion by unscrupulous promoters, unhealthy competition leading to a mushroom growth of small companies and interstate rivalries-prevented orderly development.

The chaos was gradually resolved by mergers and operating agreements, and one of the southern companies which survived and grew rapidly was the Richmond and Danville. By 1890 this company had expanded to become the centre of an 8,000-mile railway network. But through mis-management the concern went into liquidation, and it was the well-known financier and business magnate, J. P. Morgan, who eventually rehabilitated and reorganized it in 1894 into the Southern Railway System.

The reorganization did not, however, bring any dividends to the shareholders and another thirty years were to elapse before the holders of common stock had their first return in 1924. The great depression of the 1930's again affected the company's operations and it was only saved from bankruptcy by large loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

In the recent history of the Southern's modernization and revitalization, two names stand out conspicuously. They are those of Ernest Eden Norris, who headed the System for some twenty years until his retirement in 1952, and Dennis William Brosnan who has been associated with the Southern in various capacities since 1926 and was appointed president

Carrying fifteen miles of welded rail, a Southern train snakes out of a tunnel. of the company in February 1962.

Norris was an able administrator who introduced many economies and improvements. Aided by the boom in railway traffic during the years of World War II, he managed the company's finances with such skill that the debt was substantially reduced while revenue increased threefold. Among the technological improvements he effected, the most important was the conversion from steam to diesel traction.

His zeal for economy, innovation and modernization has found even more vigorous expression in Brosnan. The sixty-year-old president spends twenty days a month touring and supervising the multi-phased activities of the Southern, looking constantly for opportunities of improving operation and increasing revenue. Even such a minor detail of the railway's working as late running of a train is not too small for his attention. Nor is any suggested innovation, however radical it may seem, given up without thorough investigation.

In his drive for efficiency Brosnan has largely resorted to centralization and automation. The advantages are reflected Continued on next page

Centralized control and automation contribute to efficient operation. in speedier and safer handling of traffic, substantial reductions in manpower and increase in workers' productivity.

Besides conversion to diesel traction, which was completed in 1953, the Southern's modernization process has included many improved practices resulting in economy of material and labour costs.

Welded rails, made of the finest quality steel in strands a quarter mile long, are manufactured at the company's Atlanta plant and welded by a special electricflash process. Used rails are reclaimed in the process, and the conveyors which carry them in the plant are made of steel salvaged from old box-cars. In another shop wheels and axles are repaired by automatic processes and old axles reo

novated wherever possible.

There is centralized traffic control and most of the locomotives are equipped with two-way radio sets. An unusual traffic safety device is the electronic "eye" with heat-sensitive cells. Fixed at suitable intervals on the track, the device records and reports to a central point the temperature of every passing vehicle, detecting hot journal boxes which might cause accidents.

Maintenance and repair control is also centralized and automated. Every diesel locomotive must be in the shops at least once a month according to a fixed schedule. A carefully planned routine, split into eleven distinct operations of inspection, lubrication and other types

of maintenance and repairs, ensures a thorough job, carried out in the minimum of time. As the locomotives move from one spot to another during this routine, a foreman keeps continuous watch on the operations from a control tower by means of closed-circuit television.

Computers are in general use in the Southern, and the laborious and timeconsuming calculations of various receipts and payments which previously occupied hundreds of clerks are now handled speedily and reliably by these machines.

Imaginative use of computers has not only simplified the day-to-day accounting work but has facilitated availability of statistical and other data for current decisions and future planning. One elab-

orate and very costly machine, used for quality control, can instantly trace the last known location of any freight car on the system.

The Southern may thus well pride itself on its technological lead, but technology is of course only a means to an end. That end is to increase gross revenues and net income by attracting more and more customers, and Brosnan and his associates are doing everything possible to enhance the railway's attraction for existing and potential users. Although passenger traffic accounts for less than four per cent of the Southern's revenues and is actually operated at a loss, in common with most other American railways, the company recently introduced

a reserved-seat system guaranteeing a seat to every single passenger. But the company's major development effort is naturally concentrated on consignors of freight whose custom is the life-blood of the business.

A recent promotion booklet describes the wide range of wagons designed by the Southern to carry almost every conceivable kind of freight. There is the "Big Boy" box-car, claimed to be the biggest ever built for regular service on any railway in the world. It is ninety-two feet long, with an interior area of 10,000 cubic feet and fitted with special shockabsorbing devices to protect the freight against jolts. The car was originally built to fill a specific need, namely, transport

of tobacco in hogsheads, but is now also used for other merchandise. Then there are super-cushion box-cars specially suited to carry such freight as rolls of newsprint and electric equipment; insulated cars providing a constant temperature for food products; mechanical refrigerator cars; auto cars with two-level or threelevel racks to carry conveniently and safely eight to fifteen automobiles, lightweight aluminium-body gondola and covered hopper cars for bulk haulage of grain, cement and other commodities; and special cars to carry large forty-foot aluminium containers which can be moved as wheeled trailers by rail or by road and rented to consignors who wish Continued on next page

Emphasis is on development through improved service and lower rates.

to avail themselves of the company's combined rail-highway service.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and the Southern has many other types of wagons in use or in process of design and manufacture. In his foreword "To Our Customers" in the promotion booklet, Brosnan says: "We intend to have the right car for your freight and, with modern operating methods, use it to create a service at a price that will convince you that your transportation needs can be met more effectively on Southern Railway than anywhere else."

Brosnan's reference to price raises a point which has aroused considerable controversy and made the Southern unpopular with the American railway industry and other transporters. In 1957 it did not adopt a general rate increase approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and since then it has followed its own independent policy of reducing freight rates on hundreds of commodities wherever possible within the limits of the law. Brosnan's reasoning is that a railway company must get away from the idea of just being a middleman passing on costs to its customers: an increase in rates might well mean a decrease in earnings. His and the Southern's approach to the problem of improving income and profits, which have remained more or less stationary during the last decade under the dual handicap of government and union restrictions, is therefore different from that of the average railway company. This new approach is that gross revenue must be increased by obtaining greater freight tonnage, which can be handled with little increase in costs. And to attract more tonnage, rates should be cut and the service still further improved.

The same independent, non-conformist policy has marked the Southern's handling since 1959 of what has come to be known as the "featherbedding" problem or that of employing workers whose usefulness has ceased owing to changes in methods of operation. The largest category of such workers is that of firemen who are not needed on diesel locomotives but who, the trade unions insist, must be retained by the railways. Although the Southern endorses the industry's view that firemen should be dispensed with, it withdrew from the national negotiations at an early stage. The company announced that it WQuidretain the services of all firemen then on the payroll but that no new ones would be appointed.

Over a period this resulted in a dimunition

of the firemen's cadre and many diesel locomotives began to run without them.

When the Southern's interpretation of the rule was challenged by the union and the court issued an interim order that the company must keep firemen GU'all its engines, Brosnan came up with another characteristic solution. He began to employ untrained Negroes between the ages of sixty and eighty-five. This was a masterly stroke which achieved several objectives: it absolved the Southern of any charge of racial discrimination, em bar-

rassed the union which until recently had a colour bar, and was convincing proof that under today's conditions the fireman's job is no more than "chair service."

The Southern's individualistic, unorthodox policies and keenly competitive methods have often aroused criticism and bitter controversy. But even its severest critics must concede that these policies and practices have resulted in giving the (American) South a railway system which has few parallels in uptodate, efficient service. •

Amidst the modern devices of the Southern, one thing remains the same: the look of the railroad men. These workers, below, take a dinner break at the Chattanooga diesel shop.

s

ow ange ur Ives Human reactions to words) signs and symbols vary greatly. By emphasizing these variations) semantics helps the process of factual)

rational thinking.

HE END PRODUCT of education, yours and mine and everybody's, is the total pattern of reactions and possible reactions we have inside ourselves. If you did not have within you at this moment the pattern of reactions which we call "the ability to read English," you would see here only meaningless black marks on paper. Because of the trained patterns of response, you are (or are not) stirred to patriotism by martial music, your feelings of reverence are aroused by the symbols of your religion, you listen more respectfully to the health advice of someone who has "M.D." after his name than to that of someone who hasn't. What I call here a "pattern of reactions," then, is the sum total of the ways we act in response to events, to words and to symbols.

Our reaction patterns-our semantic habits, as we may call them-are the internal and most important residue of whatever

T

The article is reprinted with permission of The Saturday Evening Post, copyrighted 1958 by the Curtis Publishing Company.

years of education or miseducation we may have received from our parents' conduct towards us in childhood as well as their teachings, from the formal education we may have had, from all the sermons and lectures we have listened to, from the radio programmes and the movies and television shows we have experienced, from all the books and newspapers and comic strips we have read, from the conversations we have had with friends and associates, and from all our experiences. If, as the result of all these influences that make us what we are, our semantic habits are reasonably similar to those of most people around us, we are regarded as "well-adjusted," or "normal," and perhaps "dull." If our semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, we are regarded as "individualistic" or "original," or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with alarm. as "screwball" or "crazy."

Semantics is sometimes defined in dictionaries as "the science of the meaning of words" -which would not be a bad definition if people didn't assume that the search for the meanings of words begins and ends with looking them up in a dictionary.

If one stops to think for a moment, it is clear that to define a word, as a dictionary does, is simply to explain the word with more words. To be thorough about defining, we should next have to define the words used in the definition, then define the words used in defining the words used in the definition ... and so on. Defining words with more words, in short, gets us at once into what mathematicians call an "infinite regress." Alternatively, it can get us into the kind of run-around we sometimes Continued on next pace

We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard. encounter when we look up "impertinence" and find it defined as "impudence," so we look up "impudence" and find it defined as "impertinence." Yet-and here we come to another common reaction pattern-people often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a person who asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, "Man, when you got to ask what it is, you'll never get to know," proving himself to be an intuitive semanticist as well as a great trumpet player.

Semantics, then, does not deal with the "meaning of words" as that expression is commonly understood. P. W. Bridgman, the Nobel prize-winner and physicist, once wrote, "The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it." He made an enormous contribution to science by showing that the meaning of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that establish its validity, rather than in verbal definitions.

Here is a simple, everyday kind of example of "operational' criticism. If you say, "This table measures six feet in length," you could prove it by taking a foot rule, performing the operation of laying it end to end while counting, "One ... two ... three ... four .... " But if you say-and revolutionists have started uprisings with just this statement-"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains!"-what operations could you perform to demonl'trate its accuracy or inaccuracy?

But let us carry this suggestion of "operationalism" outside the physical sciences where Bridgman applied it, and observe what "operations" people perform as the result of both the language they use and the language other people use in communicating to them. Here is a personnel manager studying an application blank. He comes to the words "Education: Harvard University," and drops the application blank in the wastebasket (that's the- "operation") because, as he would say if you asked him, "I don't like Harvard men." This is an instance of "meaning" at work-but it is not a meaning that can be found in dictionaries.

I

FI SEEM to be taking a long time to explain what semantics is about, it is because I am trying, in the course of explanation, to introduce the reader to a certain way of looking at human behaviour. Semantics-especially the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), Polish-American scientist and educator -pays particular attention not to words in themselves, but to semantic reactions-that is, human responses to symbols, signs and symbol-systems, including language.

I say human responses because, so far as we know, human

beings are the only creatures that have, over and above that biological equipment which we have in common with other creatures, the additional capacity for manufacturing symbols and systems of symbols. When we react to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece of cloth, but to the meaning with which it has been symbolically endowed. When we react to a word, we are not reacting to a set of sounds, but to the meaning with which that set of sounds has been symbolically endowed. .A basic idea in general semantics, therefore, is that the meaning of words (or other symbols) is not in the words, but in our own semantic reactions. If I were to tell a shockingly obscene story in Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that understood only English, no one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither shocking nor obscene-indeed, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a dollar bill is not in the bill, but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value. If that agreement were to break down through the collapse of our Government, the dollar bill would become only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard. We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. We understand it by understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it meaningful. Semantics is therefore a social study, basic to all other social studies.

It is often remarked that words are tricky-and that we are all prone to be deceived by "fast talkers," such as high-pressure salesmen, skilful propagandists, politicians or lawyers. Since few of us are aware of the degree to which we use words to deceive ourselves, the sin of "using words in a tricky way" is one that is always attributed to the other fellow. When the Russians use the word "democracy" to mean something quite different from what we mean by it, we at once accuse them of "propaganda," of "corrupting the meanings of words." But when we use the word "democracy" in the United States to mean something quite different from what the Russians mean by it, they are equally quick to accuse us of "hypocrisy." We all tend to believe that the way we use words is the correct way, and that people who use the same words in other ways are either ignorant or dishonest.

Leaving aside for a moment such abstract and difficult terms as "democracy," let us examine a common, everyday word like "frog." Surely there is no problem about what "frog" means! Here are some sample sentences: "If we're going fishing, we'll have to catch some frogs first.:' (This is easy.)

"I have a frog in my throat." (You can hear it croaking.)

"She wore a loose, silk jacket fastened with braided frogs."

Continued on next page

Samuellchiye Hayakawa, 57, was born in Vancouver and was graduated from the University of Manitoba, McGill University and the University of Wisconsin. Specially interested in the study of semantics, he has taught and lectured at a number of American universities and since 1955 has been Professor of Language Arts at San Francisco State College. His Language In Action, described as "a masterpiece of exposition," was written as a textbook and chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1941.

Among his other publications are Language, Meaning and Maturity (1954) and Our Language and Our World (1959). He is the founder and editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

Dr. Hayakawa was a columnist for the Chicago Defender for several years, and frequently contributes articles, reviews and poems to literary magazines. He is married to the former Margedant Peters and they have three children. Among his extracurricular interests are art, fishing and jazz.

Correct interpretation cannot be predicted be/ore word is encountered.

"The blacksmith pared down the frog and the hoof before shoeing the horse."

"In Hamilton, Ohio, there is a firm by the name of American Frog and Switch Company."

In addition to these "frogs," there is the frog in which a sword is carried, the frog at the bottom of a bowl or vase that is used in flower arrangement, and the frog which is part of a violin bow. The reader can no doubt think of other "frogs."

Or take another common word such as "order." There is the order that the salesman tries to get, which is quite different from the order which a captain gives to his crew. Some people enter holy orders. There is the order in the house when mother has finished tidying up; there is the batting order of the home team; there is an order of ham and eggs. It is surprising that with so many meanings to the word, people don't misunderstand one another oftener than they do.

The foregoing are only striking examples of a principle to which we are all so well accustomed that we rarely think of it; namely, that most words have more meanings than dictionaries can keep track of. And when we consider further that each of us has different experiences, different memories, ditlerent likes and dislikes, it is clear that all words evoke different responses in all of us. We may agree as to what the term "Mississippi River" stands for, but you and I recall different parts of the river; you and I have had different experiences with it; one of us has read more about it than the other; one of us may have happy memories of it, while the other may recall chiefly tragic events connected with it. Hence your. "Mississippi River" can never be identical with my "Mississippi River." The fact that we can communicate with each other about the "Mississippi River" often conceals the fact that we are talking about two different sets of memories and experiences.

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as varied in their meanings as they are, no one can tell us what the correct interpretation of a word should be in advance of our next encounter with that word. The reader may have been taught always to revere the word "mother," But what is he going to do the next time he encounters this word, when it occurs in the sentence "Mother began to form in the bottle"? If it is impossible to determine what a single word will mean on next encounter, is it possible to say in advance what is the correct evaluation of such events as these: (I) next summer, an individual who calls himself a socialist will announce his candidacy for the office of registrar of deeds in your city; (2) next autumn, there will be a strike at one of your local department stores; (3) next week, your wife will announce that she is going to change her style of hairdo; (4) tomorrow, your little boy will come home with a bleeding nose?

A reasonably sane individual will react to each of these events in his own way, according to time, place and the entire surrounding set of circumstances; and included among those circumstances will be his own stock of experiences, wishes, hopes and fears. But there are people whose pattern of reactions is such that some of them can be completely predicted in advance, Mr. A will never vote for anyone called "socialist," no matter how incompetent or crooked the alternative candidates may be.

Me. B-1 always disapproves of strikes and strikers, without bothering to enquire whether or not this strike has its justifications; Mr. B-2 always sympathizes with the strikers because he hates all bosses. Mr. C belongs to the "stay sweet as you are" ORDS BEING

school of thought, so that his wife hasn't been able to change her hairdo since she left high school. Mr. D always faints at the sight of blood.

Such fixed and unalterable patterns of reaction-in their more obvious forms we call them prejudices-are almost inevitably organized around words. Mr. E distrusts and fears all people to whom the term "Catholic" is applicable, while Mr. F, who is Catholic, distrusts and fears all non-Catholics. Mr. G is so rabid a Republican that he reacts with equal dislike to all Democrats, all Democratic proposals, all opposite proposals if they are also made by Democrats. Back in the days when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President, Mr. G disliked not only the Democratic President but also his wife, children and dog.

His office was on Roosevelt Road in Chicago (it had been named after Theodore Roosevelt), but he had his address changed to his back door on 11th Street, so that he would not have to print the hated name on his stationery. Mr. H, on the other hand, is an equally rabid Democra't, who hates, himself for continuing to play golf, since golf is Mr. Eisenhower's favourite game.

People suffering from such prejudices seem to have in their brains an uninsulated spot which, when touched by such words as "capitalist," "boss," "striker," "scab," "Democrat," "Republican:' "socialized medicine," and other such loaded terms, results in an immediate short circuit, often with a blowing of fuses.

Alfred Korzybski, the founder of general semantics, called such short-circuited responses "identification reactions." He used the word "identification" in a special sense; he meant that persons given to such fixed patterns of response identify (that is, treat as identical) all occurrences of a given word or symbol; they identify. all the different cases that fall under the same name.

Thus, if one has hostile identification reactions to "women drivers," then all women who drive cars are "identical" in their incompetence.

Korzybski believed that the term "identification reaction" could be generally used to describe the majority of cases of semantic malfunctioning. Identification is something that goes on in the human nervous system. "Out there" there are no absolute identities. No two Harvard men, no two Ford cars, no two mothers-in-law, no two politicians, no two leaves from \he same tree, are identical with each other in all respects. If, however, we treat all cases that fall under the same class label as one at times when the differences are important, then there is something wrong with our semantic habits.

We are now ready, then, for another definition of general semantics. It is a comparative study of the kinds of responses people make to the symbols and signs around them; we may compare the semantic habits common among the prejudiced, the foolish and the mentally ill with those found among people who are able to solve their problems successfully. so that, if we care to, we may revise our own semantic habits for the better, In other words, general semantics is, if we wish to make it so', the study of how not to be a da!l1n fool.

DENTIFICATION REACTIONS run all the way through nature.

The capacity for seeing similarities is necessary to the survival of all animals. The pickerel, I suppose, identifies all shiny, fluttery things going through the water as minnows, and goes after them all in pretty much the same way. Under natural conditions, life is made possible for the pickerel by this capacity. Once in Text continued on page 47

I

AMERICA HONOURS THE BARD

April 23 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare.

Throughout

the

English-speaking world the event will be commemorated by productzons of his plays and exhibitions of the Elizabethan period.

For a preview of functions in. the United States) turn the page.

Stage performances) films) exhibits will present Shakespeare)s

MORE AND MORE communities take note of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth on April 23, one is tempted to compare the United States to a vast Shakespearean stage.

From city to hamlet, colleges, schools, museums, libraries and theatre companies-professional and amateur-are paying their homage to this most durable of playwrights. Some will offer modest exhibits and lectures, others ambitious festivals that attract audiences from far and near.

The esteem reflected in these events is by no means limited to this anniversary year. Shakespeare has been enjoying exceptional popularity for more than a decade. Not since the mid-19th century, when touring actors presented his plays even in gold-rush camps, has Shakespeare's poetry reached so many Americans.

Each year millions of theatre-goers are learning for themselves that his plays are as vital and.,meaningful today as they were in the days of Elizabeth 1. ..

Radio and television were among the first to take cognizance of the anniversary. Radio stations began scheduling programmes of Shakespeare's recorded plays and Elizabethan music. A nation-wide television programme early in January took viewers on a tour of "The World of Shakespeare," an exhibition of rare Elizabethan art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Perhaps the most accurate barometer of the anniversary's impact on the U.S. cultural scene is the flood of requests that has deluged the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

Small-town public libraries, secondary schools and community theatres in particular have turned to this research institution which has the largest collection of Shakespeareana in the world.

Among the most ambitious programmes undertaken by a small college is the festival at the Mississippi State College for Women. This modest institution, with less than 2,000 students, launched its observance in December with the presentation of Sir Laurence Olivier's film, "Henry V," continued in February with performances of "The Taming of the Shrew" by the touring National Players, and has scheduled a lecture in this month by Dr. James G. McManaway of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

April 23 will be observed with a programme titled, "Shine Forth, Thou Star of Poets!" It will consist of favourite scenes from the greatest of Shakespeare's comedies, presented by the College's Speech Department. Other events will follow during the year, among them a display of Elizabethan stage costumes, specimens of Elizabethan music and replicas of original instruments, an exhibition of rare books, and public lectures on Shakespearean topics.

One of the major observances of the Shakespeare quadricentennial is that under way on the main campus of the University of California in Berkeley. Beginning last autumn with a production of "Antony and Cleopatra" directed by the noted Shakespearean interpreter, Margaret Webster, it has continued with four other Shakespeare plays, a group of films, a series of lectures, a concert of Elizabethan music, and more films.

Apart from colleges and universities, other organizations are holding festivals in honour of the bard. The popular and critically applauded New York Shakespeare Festival will launch its eighth season of free performances in Central Park this summer with "Hamlet" and conclude it three months later with a new operatic version of "Twelfth Night."

At Stratford, Connecticut, the internationally known American Shakespeare Festival will continue the policy of stressing the ensemble and eschewing of guest stars.

Throughout the United States still other Shakespeare observances are taking place, some modest, others impressive in size. Whatever their form or scope, they confirm not only the timelessness of the playwright, but the Americans' profound interest in his works. •

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Folger Shakespeare Library, above, has world's largest collection of Shakespeareana. Scene from "The Merchant of Venice," below, starring Morris Carnovsky and Katherine Hepburn, is a production of American Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Conn.

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art to large audiences.

American production honours age-old Indian legend, as re-told by Bhasa.

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A PROMINENT Sanskrit playwright and poet who lived some 2,000 years ago, recorded an ancient Indian legend in his most poetic play, The Vision of Vasavadatta.

As a play, it represents him at his creative best.

The play, as presented in Washington and New York, tells the tender story of a queen's devotion and self-sacrifice and a king's love for his queen. It begins with Yaugandharayana, chief minister to Udayana, king of the Vatsas, and Vasavadatta, Udayana's queen, travelling, one disguised as a holy mendicant and the other as a lady of Avanti, towards Magadha. They meet Padmavati, princess of Magadha, who, little knowing the identity of Vasavadatta, agrees to keep her in her care.

Behind Vasavadatta's journey to Magadha: lies an ingenious plot to save from imminent ruin the kingdom of Udayana who, due to his passionate attachment to Vasavadatta, had begun to neglect the affairs of state. A large part of the kingdom was already in the hands of Aruni, an enemy. An alliance by marriage with the powerful kingdom of Magadha, Udayana's counsellors thought, offered the only solution. Such a marriage could be easily accomplished since astrologers had predicted that Padmavati, the beautiful sister of Darsaka, Magadha's king, was destined to marry Udayana.

But Udayana would not marry again, even for political HASA,

reasons. So the counsellors had to conceive a plot, with the co-operation of Vasavadatta, which finally led Udayana to believe that his beloved queen had perished in a fire. He also agreed, though reluctantly, to marry Padmavati.

In Magadha, Padmavati and Vasavadatta soon become devoted to each other. Vasavadatta's gentle dignity and sad beauty endear her to all. Padmavati, now married to Udayana, becomes the new queen and continues to keep Vasavadatta with her. But the king is still deeply in love with his first wife, whose memory does not leave him for a moment. He, however, has some good news. Rumanvan, his commander in chief, has brought a large army to attack the enemy Aruni.

The Vatsa kingdom is regained. But the news that Vasavadatta's veena has been found on the banks of the Naramada River makes Udayana inconsolable. At that moment, messengers from Vasavadatta's parents bring portraits of Udayana and Vasavadatta. Padmavati immediately notices the resemblance and recognizes her. All is revealed and forgiven, and the happy king with his two queens sets out to visit Ujjain.

The love story of Udayana, a historical figure, and Vasa vadatta has been a popular Indian legend for many generations. Bhasa's play deals with the same story in human and psychological terms.

Introducing Queen Vasavadatta as his sister, Yaugandharayana, disguised as mendicant, seeks to leave her with Padmavati.

A theology student, second from right, tells mendicants assembled at Princess Padmavati's hermitage the story of Vasavadatta's "death" and Udayana's profound grief

Padmavati's nurse tells the princess that her betrothal to King Udayana has been arranged.

Story of love and self-sacrifice) the play is a moving human document.

For Mrinalini dancing is a part of being and a means of realizing God.

RlNALlNISARABHAl is a dancer who derives inspiration from divinity. For her dancing is not only a profession; it is a mission, a dedication and a process of elevation.

"Dancing," she once said, "is a means of realizing God, not merely for the dancer, but for the audience also."

This "diminutive queen of Indian classical dance drama," as an American critic described her, has carried the message of Indian dance to far comers of the world. Last year she went to the United States at the invitation of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts, New York, as a visiting dancer of the year. There she directed production of the Indian classical play Swapna- Vasavadatta. which was staged with an entirely American cast before select audiences in Washington and New York.

After seeing one of the performances a well-known stage director wrote to her: "As an unofficial spokesman for my people, I want you to know that we were grateful for all you did in your all-too-brief stay with us. You proved yourself under the pressure of the biggest and toughest urban society in the West."

Every dance that Mrinalini Performs has artistic unity.

The gestures made by her fingers, the movements of her hands and feet, the expressions on the face and in the eyes, the animation in her figure, all are parts of a design created on the spur of the moment as the mood dictates. Although the dances are based on rigid rules framed by ancient masters of the art, there is nothing stereotyped about them. Each dance is as old as Indian art and as fresh as dawn. If Mrinalini were to render a dance number in the morning and repeat it in the evening, the two

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performances would be strikingly alike but the subtle shades and delicate nuances would vary, which only connoisseurs would be able to detect.

Mrinalini's mastery of the classical dance form comes from long and intensive training. When barely six, she was already dancing. Eminent Bharatanatyam teachers trained her in the early stages. Later, she went to Rabindranath Tagore's university at Santiniketan and played leading roles in the poet's dance dramas. For a time she partnered Ram Gopal, another Indian dancer of international repute. At Ahmedabad she now runs a dance academy called Darpana, where along with other experts she trains children in dance and drama.

Wife of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, Chairman of.Space Research in India, Mrinalini comes from a distinguished family. Her father was a successful lawyer and her mother is a well-known social worker. Her father-in-law, Ambalal Sarabhai, is a leading industrialist of Ahmedabad. She has two children, a son and a daughter.

Walter Terry, a reputed dance critic, was greatly impressed

by Mrinalini's performances in the United States. He said that Mrinalini would seem "ideally suited to the task of spreading knowledge of and interest in the classical Indian theatre to Americans. She is further equipped to bring together an ancient Oriental art with modem Western performers, for she herself has not only been thoroughly schooled in the classical dance and drama of India but has also studied acting and stage technique at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts." •

THE PEOPLE AGAINST POLIO Once a crippler and killer of millions around the world-many of them children-polio is no longer a dreaded disease. Development of the Salk vaccine) first tested on American children ten years ago this month) marked one of the brightest chapters in medical science history.

YEARS AGO the people of the United States began a vast medical experiment. They called it the Polio Vaccine Field Trial. The world eagerly awaited the outcome. The trial would show whether a way had been found to end the crippling each year of hundreds of thousands of children and young people by paralytic poliomyelitis; and to do it, not in the course of decades or generations, but quickly-more quickly than any major health problem had ever been solved before.

A young American scientist, Dr. Jonas Salk, had just produced a vaccine against polio. He had tested it, first on monkeys, then on 635 human beings, later on 5,000.

It triggered antibodies. It was safe. Now the much larger trial would demonstrate whether his vaccine, in mass production, could protect great masses of people.

No experiment on such a scale had ever been attempted in the history of medicine.

To describe it as an undertaking by "the people of the United States" is not an overstatement.

"The people" were scientists, physicians, public health officers, nurses, school-teachers, and other citizens from many walks of life who helped in the logistics of the trial.

"The people" were 1,830,000 brave little boys and girls in the first three grades of school all over America, and their families.

T

EN

Basil O'Connor is a distinguished American lawyer who practised in partnership with Franklin D. Roosevelt for about eight years before the latter became President in 1933.

Mr. O'Connor has sponsored and guided several social and humanitarian movements, and his role in organizing the battle against polio is only one of his many activities. His public services have been recognized by a number of awards from official and non-official organizations in the United States and other countries. He is the only American recipient of the Royal Medal of Swedish Red Cross in Gold.

In this article Mr. O'Connor gives a graphic account of how a partnership between scientists and laymen in a free society led to discoveries which are today benefiting the whole world. The polio vaccines, he says, were created not only in the test tubes of the laboratory but also in the hearts of a people.

Roosevelt's dream of conquering polio brought protection to millions.

"The people" were 3,000,000 unpaid workers for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, an American voluntary health organization which had sponsored and financed years of scientific research to develop a preventive of polio.

Finally, "the people" were those who paid for it. The cost of that research, and of the field trial, was $25,000,000. This money came from millions of Americans -not paid under compulsion as taxes, but given, each of his own free will.

They had started this giving in the 1930's, when their then President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself crippled by polio, resolved to help other victims of the disease. He asked his fellow-Americans to contribute dimes, small American coins worth ten cents each, every year on January 30, his birthday. Dimes for the care of the sick and disabled would be their present to him.

Americans liked the idea. On ensuing anniversaries, great avalanches of dimes, far beyond his expectations, poured in on the President. With these funds, in 1938 he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Its purposes were to help polio patients get the care they needed, to train experts in giving and improving that care, and to support a concerted programme of scientific research aimed at finding a preventive.

Thus Franklin D. Roosevelt's dream of conquering a dread disease-too late for himself but never too late to protect untold numbers in generations to come -was started towards realization in an organized, unified effort. Funds for the Foundation were to come through an annual, nation-wide campaign. Eddie Cantor, the noted American entertainer, gave the campaign its name-the March of Dimes. It was to continue as an expression of free will in the American tradition. Anyone could contribute who wanted to. No one had to.

Americans also liked this idea. They gave generously to the March of Dimestens of millions of dollars each year-and work went forward in all phases of the Foundation's programme.

To the scientist of twenty-five years ago, polio was a comp'lex of baffling secrets. It was known to be caused by a virus, but virology was a relatively young discipline. Nobody knew how the polio virus spread the disease, how it entered the body, how it progressed through the system.

Vaccines work by stimulating the body to raise its own barricades in the presence of infecting agents. These defences are called antibodies. A polio vaccine must somehow employ the polio virus to trigger this defensive process against itself.

But could a live polio virus be introduced into the human body in any form without risk of bringing on disease instead of immunity? Or did nature believe in ghosts, and could the body be alarmed or deluded into producing antibodies by the mere presence of a killed polio virus?

In other words, would a presumably effective vaccine be safe, or a presumably safe one have the desired effect?

Granting that immunity was theoretically possible, might it not actually be too difficult? How much vaccine would be required for protection? Might not the necessary dosage be so large or so frequent as to make the whole idea impractical? Also, if there were more than one type of polio virus, a vaccine would not be fully protective unless it could trigger antibodies for each type. How many types of polio virus were there?

These were some of the threshold questions. And science had neither rules nor tools for proceeding. Laboratory workers knew of no way to study the polio virus except as it could be observed in infected monkeys-a technique of limited scope.

Spinal cord tissue from these animals, the only source material available for a vaccine, had to be ruled out because of the hazard of inducing allergic encephalomyelitis, a disorder resulting in serious brain damage.

A formidable assortment of barriers indeed !-enough to tax the optimism of well-informed and well-wishing friends of this boldly conceived health organization. Was it to be expected that the American people would be willing to give the millions of dollars this project was sure to cost? And if there were unforeseeable obstacles, to go on with the gamble, throwing in more and more millions?

It was implicit in the very nature of a voluntary health agency to put a people's well-being ahead of a people's dollars, even to gamble with those dollars against formidable odds where the usefulness of future citizens was at stake. Public support of the fight against polio was steadily increasing. The National Foundation was convinced that in risking a large part of these funds to realize the hope of preventing polio, it was responding to the will of the people.

With many of America's most brilliant medical scientists joining the intensified attack, the odds soon began to shift.

Within a few years these investigators had not only created important new techniques in the science of virology; they had surmounted every major problem preliminary to the actual formulation of a safe and effective polio vaccine.

Between 1946 and 1953, scientists had: Succeeded in immunizing monkeys against polio by vaccination with live virus, thus finally demonstrating the protective role of antibody and the validity of vaccination as a principle of polio prevention; Discovered a way to grow the virus in test tube "cultures" of non-nervous tissue-a technique that cleared one of the main blocks to the making of a safe vaccine and greatly advanced the science of virology by opening many new lines of inquiry; and ascertained that there were three types of polio virus-information acquired after laborious examination of a hundred strains in four leading American laboratories; Demonstrated that the polio virus moved through the bloodstream, and that if antibody were present in the blood, the virus would be intercepted before it could reach the nerve cells where paralysis would otherwise take place.

Dr. Salk was one of the scientists who worked on the virus-typing programme.

When it was completed, he and his collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh began studies on the development of a vaccine. Cultures using non-nervous tissue in test tubes provided virus for making the vaccine and also served in tests for antibody response. Using formalinkilled virus, Salk developed a trivalent vaccine encompassing the three types.

In 1953 he published the results of his Laboratory technicians, right, prepare Salk vaccine for use in the 1954 tests.

We wanted to spare thousands the terrible blow of paralytic polio ...

first vaccination of human beings. He showed that the vaccine could induce a substantial antibody response, equal in some instances to the antibody levels observed after natural infection.

In May 1953 the National Foundation formed a Vaccine Advisory Committee, made up of leaders in medical science and public health under the chairmanship of the late Dr. Thomas M. Rivers, then interim director of the Rockefeller Institute and one of the world's great virologists. This committee was to decide whether a mass field trial would be held.

Even before Dr. Salk had made public his first formal report on the vaccine, the Foundation had been considering the idea of such a trial and, far in advance of its Advisory Committee's decision, was making every possible preparation for it "if and when." In 1952, for example, realizing such a trial would require much greater quantities of vaccine than Salk was equipped to make, the Foundation made a grant to a laboratory experienced in the production of biologicals, to develop methods of producing, on a large scale, virus fluids ready for processing

into vaccine. This was accomplished, and when the time came to go ahead, the fluids were shipped without delay to commercial laboratories which had undertaken to process them.

The Foundation wanted the big trial.

The Advisory Committee would withhold its decision until Dr. Salk had the results of his final series of tests in which 5,000 subjects were being vaccinated. This information would come late in 1953.

If the findings were satisfactory, both as to effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, there would be justification for going ahead.

Why did the Foundation want the big trial? Dr. Salk's tests were very thorough.

Why should anything more be regardedand that word "more" was really the essential difference-as necessary? There were two reasons, both valid in the opinion of expert advisers. First, to know that the formalin-treated vaccine against polio would raise antibody levels was not enough. The Foundation wanted firm evidence of the degree of its effectiveness.

And second, it wanted to spare untold thousands of young Americans the shattering blow of paralytic polio. Every summer the disease had been taking a heavy toll. There was no reason to suppose it would not be repeated, year after year-unless and until there was a vaccine. Nor was it enough to have the vaccine. The history of medicine was a story of magnificent achievement and enormous waste-the tragic, avoidable waste of human life and health that too often came between great medical discoveries and the use of them. The Foundation hoped to eliminate this lag by rallying public opinion to polio prevention, the need of it, the rightness of it. And it chose the best way to convince the American people of anything-letting them prove it to themselves.

The Vaccine Advisory Committee, in April, 1954, after the most careful searching and weighing of every foreseeable possibility, voted unanimously in favour of the field trial. These men met with officials of the United States Govern-' ment's National Institutes of Health.

There were long discussions-not without the raising of many questions, but in the end resulting in enthusiastic approval.

Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., noted immunologist and epidemiologist of the University

¡ .. Every summer zt had taken a heavy toll.

of Michigan, agreed to undertake general supervision of the trial and to assume the arduous task of evaluating the results.

No medical event had ever been heralded by such widespread public notice, nor attended by such a general feeling that history was in the making, as that which preceded the trial of the Salk vaccine.

Months in advance, the newspapers were full of it. Public understanding of the scientific plan was essential. To achieve it, the National Foundation set up a special information programme through its, 3,100 chapters, one in each county

of the United States. The chapters worked with local health, medical and school authorities. They distributed informational materials prepared in the national office, and in cities and towns all over America, meetings were held to discuss them. The nation had become a proving ground for a flash course in public education. Consent forms, which had to be signed by the parents of children taking part in the trial, were sent to state health offices, along with registration schedules and vaccination entry blanks.

Meanwhile the National Foundation's

Vaccine Advisory Committee was working on arrangements for production of the vaccine. Pharmaceutical firms agreed to manufacture enough for the trial at cost. Ground rules were laid down and tests devised to ensure that the product would meet the rigid specifications of Dr. Salk's formula. Each batch of vaccine was tested by the manufacturer, by the Laboratory of Biologics Control of the National Institutes of Health, and by the Virus Research Laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh.

Thus it was that on Monday, April 26, 1954, in forty-four states of the United States, schoolrooms became clinics, where the task was begun of inoculating 440,000 children against polio. "Shots" of placebo -neutral control fluid-were given to 210,000 others. And more than 1,000,000 children were to serve as uninjected "observed controls." Blood samples were taken from 40,000 children.

Two inoculation patterns were followed. In thirty-three states, only the second graders received the vaccine, those in the first and third grades serving as controls. In eleven states, all in the three grades received injections, half of them with vaccine, half with a placebo. All injections were recorded with code numbers. Nobody knew which children had received the vaccine. This information would not come out until after the code was broken and the evaluation completed the following spring.

All children participating in the trial, and the adults working with them-20,000 doctors, 40,000 nurses, 65,000 teachers, 200,000 lay volunteers-had been thoroughly briefed. When the youngsters lined up to hold out their arms for the doctors' needles, they were proudly aware of their own importance. They also knew they would get a lollipop for bravery after each shot-one immediately, the second a week later, the third at least four weeks after the second-and after all three injections, they would be awarded buttons designating them as "Polio Pioneers."

Trial inoculations ended July 10. Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Dr. Francis set up his "evaluation centre." Operating on a grant of $890,000 from the National Foundation, this unit, with a staff of 120 technicians and statisticians, was to check Continued on next page

After successful test of vaccine, President Eisenhower honoured Dr. Salk in 1955. Mrs. Salk and sons, right, observed ceremony with O'Connor, left, and government officials.

Conquest of polio is a triumph of .science-and a triumph of society. and analyse 144,000,000 separate items of information obtained in the trial.

Other funds of the National Foundation, totalling $638,000, went to twenty-seven laboratories to pay for analyses and reports on blood samples which showed antibody levels in the bloodstreams of the children at three stages-before vaccination, seven weeks after, and at the end of the summer.

Mining the essential facts out of this paper mountain took many months of work, even with the aid of punch-card machines. On April 12, 1955, to a large gathering of scientists in Ann Arbor, and to news media that relayed it round the world, Dr. Francis gave his evaluation of the polio vaccine. The gist of it was that the vaccine was 80 to 90 per cent effective.

Within a matter of hours, the United States Government licensed manufacture of the vaccine for general use.

In the year following, the total of reported cases of poliomyelitis in the United States was down to less than half of the annual average for the five years preceding use of the Salk vaccine.

Through the decade, it continued a precipitous decline. Today, epidemic polio

. is no longer a problem in the United States, nor in several other countries of the world. In 1953 Dr. Albert Sabin, eminent virologist, also supported by grants from the National Foundation, began work on the development of a livevirus polio vaccine. It, too, has proved safe and potent against the disease. It is now being used along with the Salk vaccine in the United States, and by itself in many countries.

The conquest of polio is a triumph of science and a triumph of society. The polio vaccines were created not only in the utensils of the laboratory, but also in the hearts of a people. They were the results of a partnership-on the one hand, the scientist in a democratic society who knows what "free inquiry" means and what can be achieved in the exhilarating climate created by it; and on the other, the layman who contributes to the advancement of science, not because he must, but because he chooses. This partnership is the creature and function of the voluntary health movement in America. Of what it can achieve, of the benefits it can bring to the whole 'world, the victory over polio is a classic example. •

INDIA AT THE FAIR India's pavilion will give 70 million visitors a first-hand glimpse of the world's largest democracy.

Pavilion exhibits art of yesterday, skills of today) hopes for tomorrow.

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MINIATURE INDIA,representing the country's best in past traditions and present achievements, will be on view, during the next six months, to some thirty-five million persons, mostly Americans. These people will be introduced to India on a planned scale. They will sample Tandoori chicken and fish, Pullau and Indian curries, Kulfi and Chapati. They will see ancient examples of Indian art and purchase Indiancrafted brassware. There will be multi-coloured toys and masks, of wood and papier-mache, for children. And then there will be that enchanting world of many-hued splendours: a dazzling exhibition of Indian handloom fabrics and handicrafts.

This is the Indian pavilion at New York World's Fair, scheduled to open on April 22. The pavilion building, designed by architect Mansinh Rana of New Delhi, is divided into two main sections. The first section portrays the country's rapidly changing image. The second section, the restaurant, has the objective of popularizing Indian dishes in America. Between these two sections, separated by a distance of few yards, there is an interconnecting corridor with glass walls.

The inaugural ceremony will be attended by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, India's special envoy to the Fair. Robert Moses, the Fair president, has invited her to speak on behalf of all foreign exhibitors. And she will share the speaker's rostrum with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, New York State Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, and Fair president Moses.

At the Indian restaurant, where catering arrangements are made by a New Delhi restaurant, Fair visitors will have a chance to acquaint themselves with Indian food. Though forks and knives are provided, the menu includes some items for which the use of the hand might be necessary and more adventurous Americans will be encouraged to enjoy Indian food-Indian style.

The larger section of the pavilion, the impressive two-storey structure adjacent to the restaurant portrays India and its inhabitants as they were centuries ago and as they are today.

It shows how Indians lived and live today and, in the words of Fair vice president Charles Poletti who was in India recently, "what new heights they hope to reach for the lasting betterment of mankind." This building, according to Indian officials, is a living geography of India, far more educative and interesting than any book or film. In addition to specimens of ancient Indian art and sculpture, the objects on public display include models, charts, books and photographs showing India's recent economic and industrial progress, An artistic attempt to capture this living moment of India is found in murals painted by three well-known Indian artists, Amina Kar, K. K. Hebbar and Sat ish Gujral.

The ground floor of the building houses the heritage and culture of India in all its fascinating diversities. Arrangement of exhibits on this floor reveals India's democratic way of living and its attempt to integrate her age-old popular art and crafts into the present life of the nation. The first floor is devoted exc:lusively to India's Five-Year Plans and the material progress of the country in recent years.

Perhaps the most colourful feature of>the pavilion is a collection of handloom and handicrafts from all parts of the country. As a New Delhi news reporter has observed, this is "a world of Indian folklore travelling to New York."Describing some handloom fabrics to be displayed at New York Fair an Indian correspondent says, "Motifs from ages gone by or symbolic abstract figures are enriched by the tribal people in muga

or tUSSOLThe Dupion raw silks would delight the heart of Balenciaga and turn Christian Dior's Marc Bohan into a creative mood. There are eighty different colours to choose from in this variety."

A glimpse of Orissa's contribution to the New York Fair was provided by a colour exhibition of handicrafts held recently in New Delhi. The exhibition included wooden toys and papiermache masks, stone carvings, traditional bridal gifts, and a wide variety of handloom fabrics for which Orissa is famous.

Most of the exhibits were sold out locally in the first few days of the exhibition. "Fortunately, we separated and despatched the items for New York Fair before the exhibition here," Mr. Suhas Dey, Special Officer of Orissa Handicrafts, reported.

"Otherwise, all that we brought to Delhi this time would have vanished in thin air."

Apart from Orissa handloom and handicrafts, other Indian wares to be displayed at the Fair include the richly embroidered gold and silver brocades from Banaras, the muga from Assam, the Patola from Gujarat, the Chanderi from Rajasthan, and the Kanchipuram silk saris. There will be bronze from South India. brass from the North and ivory from Mysore.

In addition to objects intended solely for display, a large sales section is also operating, which expects to sell goods worth rupees seventeen lakh.s. A dozen sales girls have been especially selected for this purpose and flown from India.

India's past and present, art and culture, science and industry are parading at her pavilion in what promises to be the most international fair in the long history of expositions.

Text continued on page 46

At ground breaking ceremony for Indian pavilion, Mrs. Indira Gandhi receives a medal from the Fair president Robert Moses.

The circular restaurant, right, connected with two-storey main building by glass-walled corridor, offers varied Indian food.

SPAN

April 1964 45

This year's biggest show) the Fair glorifies past) present) and future.

NDIAIS ONE of some seventy foreign nations which are participating in the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the largest of its kind to be held in the United States. The Fair, opening on April 22, will operate on an area of 646 acres, at Flushing Meadow Park near New York City. In terms of area, international participation, the variety of exhibits and its objectives, it promises to be a unique fair as well.

Flushing Meadow Park was the site also of the first New York World's Fair, held in the hectic years of 1939 and 1940.

That first fair drew millions of spectators, but the crowd expected in the corning one will be far greater. A rough estimate indicates that during the time the Fair is on-from April 22 to October 18 this

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year and April 21 to October 17 in 1965some seventy million visitors will enter the fair grounds.

Dedicated to the theme of "Peace Through Understanding," the Fair plans to highlight, through its 200 pavilions clustered around a metal globe the height of a thirty-two-storey building, the essential interdependence of nations which only can ensure a lasting peace (see "Span of Events"). In vivid, colourful form the Fair proposes to depict man's achievements in an increasingly expanding universe, his inventions and discoveries in the fields of science and industry, his arts, skills and aspirations.

This will also be a fitting occasion to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of New York City. The Lincoln

Centre for the Performing Arts, an important cultural venture of modern times, will work jointly with the Fair.

The main emphasis will be on American achievements in science, industry and technology. A focal point will be the $50 million General Motors Futurama-a ten-storey building rising above Flushing Meadows and offering a preview of the world of tomorrow. Several European countries are also participating. For patrons of the arts, some of these pavilions will have paintings by European masters on loan from private collections, including Michelangelo's famous masterpiece ,"The Pieta," in the Vatican's pavilion.

In the words of its publicity department, the 1964 NYWF will be "the greatest show of the century." •

The language of our everyday life has developed in a haphazard way. a while, however, the shiny, fluttery thing in the water may happen to be not a minnow but an artificial lure on the end 'Of a line. In such a case, one would say that the identification response, so useful for survival, under somewhat more complex conditions that require differentiation between two sorts of shiny and fluttery objects, proves to be fatal.

To go back to our discussion of human behaviour, we see at once that the problem of adequate differentiation is immeasurably more complex for men than it is for pickerel. The signs we respond to, and the symbols we create and train ourselves to respond to, are infinitely greater in number and immeasurably more abstract than the signs in a pickerel's environment. Lower animals have to deal only with certain brute facts in their physical environment. But think, only for a moment, of what constitutes a human environment. Think of the items that call for adequate responses that no animal ever has to think about: our days are named and numbered, so that we have birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, centennials, and so on, all calling for specifically human responses; we have history, which no animal has to worry about; we have verbally codified patterns of behaviour which we call law, religion and ethics. We have to respond not only to events in our immediate environment, but to reported events in Washington, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Beirut. We have literature, comic strips, confession magazines, market quotations, detective stories, journals of abnormal psychology, bookkeeping systems to interpret. We have money, credit, banking, stocks, bonds, cheques, bills. We have the complex symbolisms of moving pictures, paintings, drama, music, architecture and dress. In short, we live in a vast human dimension of which the lower animals have no inkling, and we have to have a capacity for differentiation adequate to the complexity of our extra environment.

The next question, then, is why human beings do not always have an adequate capacity for differentiation. Why are we not constantly on the lookout for differences as well as similarities instead of feeling, as so many do, that the Chinese (or Mexicans, or ballplayers, or women drivers) are "all alike"? Why do some people react to words as if they were the things they stand for?

Why do certain patterns of reaction, both in individuals and in larger groups such as nations, persist long after the usefulness has expired?

Part of our identification reactions are simply protective mechanisms inherited from the necessities of survival under earlier and more primitive conditions of life. I was once beaten up and robbed by two men on a dark street. Months later, I was again on a dark street with two men, good friends of mine, but involuntarily I found myself in a panic and insisted on our hurrying to a well-lighted drugstore to have a soda so that I would stop being jittery. In other words, my whole body reacted with an identification reaction of fear of these two men, in spite of the fact that "J knew" that I was in no danger. Fortunately, with the passage of time, this reaction has died away. But the hurtful experiences of early childhood do not fade so readily.

There is no doubt that many identification reactions are, traceable to childhood traumas, as psychiatrists have shown.

Further identification reactions are caused by communal patterns of behaviour which were necessary or thought necessary at one stage or another in the development of a tribe or nation.

General directives such as "Kill all snakes," "Shoot all strangers on sight," "Fall down flat on your face before all members of the aristocracy," or, to come to more modern instances, "Never vote for a Republican," "Oppose all government regulation of

business," "Never associate with Negroes on terms of equality," are an enormous factor in the creation of identification reactions.

Some human beings-possibly in their private feelings a majority-can accept these directives in a human way: that is, it will not be impossible for them under a sufficiently changed set of circumstances not to bow down before an aristocrat, to vote for a Republican, or to accept a Negro as a classmate.

Others, however, get these directives so deeply ground into their nervous systems that they become incapable of changing their responses no matter how greatly the circumstances may have changed. Still others, although capable of changing their responses, dare not do so for fear of public opinion. Social progress usually requires the breaking up of these absolute identifications, which often make necessary changes impossible. Society must obviously have patterns of behaviour; human beings must obviously have habits. But when those patterns become inflexible, so that a tribe has only one way to meet a famine, namely, to throw more infants as sacrifices to the crocodiles, or a nation has only one way to meet a threat to its security, namely, to increase its armaments, then such a tribe or such a nation is headed for trouble. There is insufficient capacity for differentiated behaviour.

F

URTHERMORE-andhere one must touch upon the role of newspapers, radio and television-if agencies of mass communication hammer away incessantly at the production of, let us say, a hostile set of reactions at such words as "Communists," "bureaucrats," "Wall Street," "international bankers," "labour leaders," and so on, no matter how useful an immediate job they may perform in correcting a given abuse at a given time and place, they can in the long run produce in thousands of readers and listeners identification reactions to the wordsreactions that will make intelligent public discussion impossible.

Modern means of mass communication and propaganda certainly have an important part to play in the creation of identification reactions.

In addition to the foregoing, there is still another source of identification reactions; namely, the language we use in our daily thought and speech. Unlike the languages of the sciences, which are carefully constructed, tailor-made, special-purpose languages, the language of everyday life is one directly inherited and haphazardly developed from those of our prescientific ancestors: Anglo-Saxons, primitive Germanic tribes, primitive IndoEuropeans. With their scant knowledge of the world, they formulated descriptions of the world before them in statements such as "The sun rises." We do not today believe that the sun "rises." Nevertheless, we still continue to use the expression, without believing what we say.

But there are other expressions, quite as primitive as the idea of "sunrise," which we use uncritically, fully believing in the implications of our terms. Having observed (or heard) that some Negroes are lazy, an individual may say, making a huge jump beyond the known facts, "Negroes are lazy." Without arguing for the moment the truth or falsity of this statement, let us examine the implications of the statement as it is ordinarily constructed: "Negroes are lazy." The statement implies, as common sense or any textbook on traditional logic will tell us, that "laziness" is a "quality" that is "inherent" in Negroes.

What are the facts? Under conditions of slavery, under Continued on next page

We call a spade a "spade" because we are English-speaking people. which Negroes were not paid for working, there wasn't any point in being an industrious and responsible worker. The distinguished French abstract artist Jean Helion once told the story of his life as a prisoner of war in a German camp, where, during the Second World War, he was compelled to do forced labour.

He told how he loafed on the job, how he thought of device after device for avoiding work and producing as little as possible -and, since his prison camp was a farm, how he stole chickens at every opportunity. He also described how he put on an expression of good-natured imbecility whenever approached by his Nazi overseers. Without intending to do so, in describing his own actions, he gave an almost perfect picture of the literary type of the Southern Negro of slavery days. Jean Helion, confronted with the fact of forced labour, reacted as intelligently as Southern Negro slaves, and the slaves reacted as intelligently as Jean Helion. "Laziness," then, is not an "inherent quality" of Negroes or of any other group of people. It is a response to a work situation in which there are no rewards for working, and in which one hates his taskmasters.

Statements implying inherent qualities, such as "Negroes are lazy" or "There's something terribly wrong with young people today," are therefore the crudest kind of unscientific observation, based on an out-of-date way of saying things, like "The sun rises." The tragedy is not .simply the fact that people make such statements; the graver fact is that they believe themselves.

Some individuals are admired for their "realism" because, as the saying goes, they "call a spade a spade." Suppose we were to raise the question "Why should anyone call it a spade?"

The reply would obviously be, "Because that's what it is!"

This reply appeals so strongly to the common sense of most people that they feel that at this point discussion can be closed.

I should like to ask the reader, however, to consider a point which may appear at first to him a mere quibble.

Here, let us say, is an implement for digging made of steel, with a wooden handle. Here, on the other hand, is a succession of sounds made with the tongue, lips and vocal cords: "spade." If you want a digging implement of the kind we are talking about, you would ask for it by making the succession of sounds "spade" if you are addressing an English-speaking person. But suppose you were addressing a speaker of Dutch, French, Hungarian, Hindi, Tagalog? Would you not have to make completely different sounds? It is apparent, then, that the common-sense opinion of most people, "We call a spade a spade because that's what it is," is completely and utterly wrong. We call it a "spade" because we are English-speaking people, conforming, in this instance, to majority usage in naming this particular object.

The steel-and-iron digging implement is simply an object standing there against the garage door; "spade" is what we call it-"spade" is a name.

And here we come to another source of identification reactions-an unconscious assumption about language epitomized in the expression "a spade is a spade," or even more elegantly in the famous remark "Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals." The assumption is that everything has a "right name" and that the "right name'" names the "essence" of that which is named.

If this assumption is at work in our reaction patterns, we are likely to be given to premature and often extremely inappropriate responses. We are likely to react to names as if they gave complete insight into the persons, things or situations named.

If we are told that a given individual is a "Jew," some of us are

likely to respond, "That's all I need to know." For, if names give the essence of that which is named, obviously, every "Jew" has the essential attribute of "Jewishness." Or, to put it the other way around, it is because he possesses "Jewishness" that we call him a "Jew"! A further example of the operation of this assumption is that, in spite of the fact that my entire education has been in Canada and the United States and I am unable to read and write Japanese, I am sometimes credited, or accused, of having an "Oriental mind." Now, since Buddha, Confucius, General Tojo, Mao Tse-tung, Syngman Rhee, and the proprietor of the Golden Pheasant Chop Suey House all have "Oriental minds," it is hard to imagine what is meant. The "Oriental mind," like the attribute of "Jewishness," is purely and simply a fiction. Nevertheless, I used to note with alarm that newspaper columnists got paid for articles that purported to account for Stalin's behaviour by pointing out that since he came from Georgia, which is next to Turkey and Azerbaijan and therefore "more a part of Asia than of Europe," he too had an "Oriental mind."

Our everyday habits of speech and our unconscious assumptions about the relations between words and things lead, then, to an identification reaction in which it is felt that all things that have the same name are entitled to the same response.

From this point of view, all "insurance men," or "college boys," or "politicians," or "lawyers," or "Texans" are alike. Once we recognize the absurdity of these identification reactions based on identities of name, we can begin to think more clearly and more adequately. No "Texan" is exactly like any other "Texan."

No "college boy" is exactly like any other "college boy." Most of the time "Texans" or "college boys" may be what you think they are: but often they are not. To realize fully the difference between words and what they stand for is to be ready for differences as well as similarities in the world. This readiness is mandatory to scientific thinking, as well as to sane thinking.

K

SIMPLE but powerful suggestion to those wishing to improve their semantic habits is to add "index numbers" to all terms, according to the formula: Al is not Az. Translated into everyday language we can state the formula in such terms as these: Cow I is not cowz: cowz is not COW3: Texan I is not Texanz: politicianl is not politicianz: ham and eggs (Plaza Hotel) are not ham and eggs (Smitty's Cafe); socialism (Russia) is not socialism (England); private enterprise (Joe's Shoe Repair Shop) is not private enterprise (General Motors). The formula means that instead of simply thinking about "cows" or "politicians" or "private enterprise," we should think as factually as possible about the differences between one cow and another, one politician and another, one privately owned enterprise and another.

This device of "indexing" will not automatically make us wiser and better, but it's a start. When we talk or write, the habit of indexing our general terms will reduce our tendency to wild and woolly generalization. It will compel us to think before we speak-think in terms of concrete objects and events and situations, rather than in terms of verbal associations. When we read or listen, the habit of indexing will help us visualize more concretely, and therefore understand better, what is being said. And if nothing is being said except deceptive windbaggery, the habit of indexing may-at least part of the time-save us from snapping, like the pickerel, at phoney minnows. Another way of summing up is to remember, as Wendell Johnson said, that "To a mouse, cheese is cheese-that's why mousetraps work." • ORZYBSKI'S

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING. JR.

MRS. BLANCHE MCSMITH

THURGOOD MARSHALL

Roy

Civil Rights Leader

State Representative

Jurist

Civil Rights Leader

v~

TWELVE

DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS

WILKINS

The American nation has come to grips with the civil rights problem. Many Americans in every level of society regard the current decade as years of decision in the struggle to find a solution to age-old. world-wide prejudices regarding colour, race and religion.

Although the sensational aspects of the civil rights struggle receive world-wide publicity, little attention is given to the fact that many Negroes-a few shown on this page--have reached positions of eminence in the American society. The next issue of SPAN will be devoted to discussions of the problem and the steps being taken by Negroes and whites to achieve economic, social and political equality for all Americans. The issue will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's school segregation decision.