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PAGE 6 FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1962.
Tragic Interlude
Just as the big city of New York was preparing to give a joyful wel- gome yesterday to the first Ameri-
_@an astronaut who had orbited the
eerth, a jet liner crashed after tak- ing off from Idlewild airport, kill- ing all 95 persons aboard. There is of course no logical connection be- tween these two events, but their juxtaposition is startling neverthe- less.
It has happened often in, the ‘past, this coupling of triumph and tragedy. The moralists have warn- ed us of it in the truism that in the midst of life we are in death. That this celebration for the hero of the greatest free world achievement in the space age should be accompanied by such a reminder of the uncer- tainties with which air conquest is beset is something which—in earlier times and in connection with dif- ferent achievements—would be at- tributed to the direct intervention of the gods, to remind vaunting man of his mortality.
The Greeks wrote plays about it; and the ancient Egyptians sought to appease the avenging deities on such occasions by bringing in a ekeleton at their feasts. We don’t know that this gesture ever proved effective in averting calamities, but it eased their conscience and brought the most’ vainglorious of their pha- raohs down momentarily to earth.
There is no need, of course, to embrace such superstitious fancies in this day and age. Yesterday's air tragedy was appalling enough without trying to read any grimmer meaning into it than the circum- stances warrant. Doubtless such ac- cidents will become fewer as avia- tion science advances; it has al- ready achieved remarkable pro- gress in safety devices as well as in speed and efficiency. But there is no armour against fate, and the old haunting fear of the incertitude of life will remain, whether we fly, walk, or creep on crutches—with daily examples to remind us, and to shock us into awareness when we become too busy to be reminded otherwise, that “the glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things.”
Presidential Problem
One of the drawbacks of the Un- fted States constitution is that it makes no provision for the transfer of presidential power. This has wor- ried the American Bar Association, which has raised the question on
several occasions and is again seek- ing to have a replacement procedure written into the law.
As of now, President Kennedy and Vice-President Johnson have a personal agreement on procedure, just as former President Tisen- hower and Vice-President, Nixon had. If the President feels that he ia unable to continue to carry out his duties he tells the Vice-Presi- dent, who then assumes them. If he fa so. disabled as to be unable to eommiinicate, the Vice-President will eonsult “appropriate” . people and, tipon their advice, take over. The President will decide when to re- gume his role.
This procedure has numerous flaws. Since there is no legal pro-
would a Vice-President’s
actions as acting President be legal?
Most experts think not. What if the President were mentally incapaci-
tated and demanded return of his of-
fice? Who are the “appropriate”
persons ‘“e Vice-President would
before taking over? Con-
i” had rever faced up to this _pro although it has been asx- | to many times. The reason prob-
i
ably is that the subject is se delicate and difficult.
The Bar Association proposes creation by law—and probably it would need constitutional amend- ment—of a presidential inability commission. This would be compos- ed of the Chief Justice of the Unit- ed States, the majority and minor- ity leaders of the houses of Congress and the United States surgeon gener- al. It would be empowered to start proceedings to transfer power tem- porarily when a president asked it or when it became apparen. that he was unable to continue to carry out his duties.
Some such plan has been favored by most students of the problem; and that it is needed, and needed soon, is evident. World conditions are too difficult to risk having a vacuum of presidential power. It is a problem in which United States’ allies also have a stake, though of course it does not lie with them to suggest any course of action so far as Washington is concerned.
Tobacco For Britain
The greatly expanded produc- tion of tobacco in this province, to which reference was made by Agri-
culture Minister MacRae in our Pro- -
gress Edition of Wednesday, offers hope that eventually we may get in on the profitable British market in this farm commodity. At any rate, according to Mr. W.M. Miner, Can- ada’s assistant agricultural secretary in London, writing in the current is- sue of Foreign Trade magazine, to- bacco consumption trends and the tobacco trade pattern in Britain both point to bright sales oppor- tunities for Canada.
The outcome of Britain’s ap- proach to the Common Market is, the writer concedes, an important but unknown factor. In addition, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasa- land will strive vigorously to retain its share of the market and to ex- pand it. In the past, slightly lower prices and improved quality and grading have aided its selling cam- paigns, supported by favorable leaf quality and price.
The Canadian industry, suggests Mr. Miner, should therefore give personal attention to the important British market to maintain its cur- rent exports and to capitalize on future expansion. At present, Bri- tain takes 75 per cent of Canadian tobacco exports—about 30 million pounds of dry leaf in 1960.
Despite Britain’s importance to Canada as a buyer of tobacco leaf, only 8 per cent of its 1960 require- ments were obtained from Canada, More important suppliers were the United States, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and India. Canadian tobaccos sold in Britain consist mainly of flue-cured bright leaf and burley leaf.
We are only at the beginning of this phase of agriculture here, with an estimated 800-acre crop, repre- senting almost four times the pro- duction of a year ago when private growers produced the crop com- mercially in this province for the first time. It was from such small beginnings, it will be recalled, that our seed potato industry was built up in years gone by. Tobacco grow- ing presents different problems, but the industry now seems to be emerging from the experimental stage, with good prospecis of suc- cess in this new Island activity.
EDITORIAL NOTES After 15 years of tracking down flying saucer reports, the U.S. air force says that none of the more than 7,000 objects claimed to have been sighted were “extraterrestrial vehicles under intelligent controls.” In other words, so far as thorough checks can determine, our atmos- phere has not been invaded by men from Mars. * . A number of girl students from the United States stopped off at Halifax recently on their way to Evrope and were surprised to learn that Nova Scotia is a Province of Canada, rather than a separate country. They were disappointed not to see Eskimos, amazed that Hal- igonians possessed automobiles, and miffed hecause they could not pra ti-e speaking French. “Perhaps,” suggests a Toronto exchange, “the girls are not at fault. We are con- stantly being told that Canada has forgotten the Maritimes. Our best- known export is Eskimo art. We complain that we have no indigen- ous automobile. We are supposed to be a bilingual country. Can we blame the citizens of the United States for believing what they hear?” :
ON A BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
HISTORIC DOCUMENTS Britain’s Parliamentary Archives
The Victoria Tower of Brit- | ain’s Houses of Parliament in Westminister is undergoing ex- tensive reconstruction to provide | storage space tor some of the most valuable documents in the world and in a recent BBC broadcast Christupher Jones de- | scribed the work being done.
“The Victoria Tower which houses Parliamentary records is uearly four hundred feet nigh— from the great archway of the Sovereign’s entrance at street level to the top of the flag pole” he said, “‘and almost everything inside the Tower between thece two extremes is being ripped out to provide storage space for what must be some of the most
precious’ documents in the world. So far, the four top floors have heen demolished,
and seven new floors built in their place. This involved put ting in massive steel girders, and at one stage the roof — weighing nearly 280 tous— had to be lifted up and replaced on new supports.
“One of the most important innovations is the installation of lifts to replace the wrought-iron spiral staircase put in by Sir Charles Barry, when he 4uilt the Tower in the last century. It was originally intended to take all the staircase away,. but it was found to be so soiidly | made that it wou'd have had to | be destroyed in order to get it | out of the building, and so it is | one of the finest pieces of metal- work of its kind, it was decided to leave part of it where it stands.
AIR CONDITIONING
Perhaps the most important innovation is the installation of air conditioning to keep the precious documents at exactly the right humidity and temper- ature. There 1s also a fire alarm system waich is so sensi- tive that even the smoke of a cigarette would set it off.
“All this to preserve and pro- tect a million and a half docu-
BBC Weekly Summary
ments which contain between them an almost complete Par- liamentary history of this coun- try. The earliest douments date back to 1497, and the :atest are from 1961, They include copies of 80,000 Acts of Pariiament, many of them on rolls of parch- ment. Some of these ro'ls are a quarter of a mile long, and pret- ty well inevitably. I suppose, these are Acts of Parliament dealing with taxation
The shortest Jocuments are only three or four .nches long, and some of the par¢hment rolls have been amended by Parlia- mentary draftsmen by the simple process of stitching a new piece of vellum over the original text. Among these rolls are the original Bill of Rights and the Habeas Corpus Act, and here you can find a letter writ- ten from a Puritan soldier to his brother describing life in Crom- well’s army in 1643; documents dealing with canals and railways, going back to 1797; reports from Sauel Pepys
plans and |
and Christopher Wren; letters from Charles I to arrest the Five Members, and Cromwell's dismissal of the Rump Parlia- ment,
“IT was shown a journal of the House of Commons which had had half a page torn out of it, and by the tear a clerk had writ- ten: ‘King James in Council rent out with his own hand this prot- estation.’ Apparently James I had objected when Parliament had tried to discuss relations with Spain, And there's the ori- ginal Act of Attainder against Catharine Howard signed by Henry VIII himself.
“And so on through the cen- turies of British Parliamentary history, right down to the most recent Royal Commission read by the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords giving the Queen’s assent to a long list of
Acts of Parliament, a massive
document with a scarlet seal on it which is read with great cere- mony.”
U.S. Emotional Binge
By Joseph MacSween Canadian Press Staff Writer
It was not only the scientific success of John Glenn's orbital flight that sent the United States into an emotional binge. Glenn's attractive personality had something to do with it.
Americans would have been wildly delighted in any case with Glenn’s pioneering space flight. But they were given a bonus—they got not just a hero, but the image of a hero.
Not only did Glenn come through his space ordeal with cool courage, He then met the highest dignitaries of the coun- try with poise, cracked jokes with President Kennedy, spoke of his wife as the “rock” of his family and—above all — spoke with obvious sincerity of his
Hungry Manatees Na Geographic Society
A rare aquatic mammal with a gargantuan appetite is literal- ly eating away the problem of weed-choked waterways in South America’s British Guiana.
Some 70 manatees, each of | which can devour 100 pounds of | underwater plants daily, have | proved ideal seagoing lawn | mowers in canals where they were placed. The grazing vege- tarians save the Guiana Gov- ernment thousands of dollars in costly hand labor and chemical | herbicides. They are rigidly pro- | tected.
For years, scientists in many | parts of the world have been fighting an expensive and losing battle against water weeds. Fast-growing plants such as the water hyacinth choke rivers and canals, impede shipping, disrupt irrigation, pollute drinking wa- ter, and kill fish by robbing the water of oxygen.
CANALS CLOGGED
Louisiana’s tangled canals Must be cleared by underwater reapers bef the mail boats can get through. Africa’s Upper Nile is so badly clogged with the lavender water hyacinth that, natives can \.alk on top of the river.
The hungry manatee may be the answer.
The manatee is believed to have inspired ancient sailors te spin the first mermaid yarns— surely no compliment to the ladies. Tt is a massive, sack- shaped creature with sunken eyes, bristly mustache, biub-
tail. It grows 15 feet weighs a ton, and measures a more than matronly 7 feet
about the middie. | legist
Science placed the animal and | its African and Australian cous- | in, the dugong, im the order Sir- enia, and the , cumbersome beasts are quite! iadylike in |
| the Florida
everything but their table man- ners. ey stay modestly in back waters and shallow bays to avoid killer whales and sharks, being almost totally de- fenseless. They tread water with their broad tails and use th-'r paddlelike flippers to stuff themselves,
Popularly called sea cows, manatees range from the West Indies to Mexico and Central America. Like Flor- ida visitors, the animal has lit- tle affection for cold weather. A similar species occurs in rivers of northeastern South America. CRADLED IN WATER for air, a manatee sometimes confronts a boat- man with a living nigh' e: an earless, massive gray head often barnacle-encrusted, big wet nostrils exhaling mightily, and solemn, heavy-lidded eyes.
The female gives birth under- water to a yard-long infant, us- ually in springtime. The baby is pushed to the surface to start its breathing. At intervals,
it is |
deep patriotism.
Newspaper writers have been digging all the way back to 1927 for a parallel in the wild ac- claim that greeted Charles Lind- bergh’s epic solo flight across the Atlantic.
FELL SHORT
The propaganda potential ot Glenn is a prime topic of the day but Kennedy and other high government officials are re ported cautious about sending him abroad. Perhaps they feel that, after all, his exploit fell short of those of the Soviet Un- ion’s spacemen Gagarin and Ti- tov.
Observers feel that even if Glenn does not leave his own country he is doing a needed job of morale - building at home. The frenzied reaction to his flight was itself a measure of how much Americans were hurt by Russia's earlier advan- ces in space exploration.
This was sometimes demon- strated in an odd, inverted kind of way.
In New York, for instance, it was easily possible to come across people — and not just simple people — who refused to believe Russia had conducted orbital flights. It was all a prop- aganda stunt, they declared stoutly in the face of all evi- dence.
After the Russians released Pictures, the question was “why didn’t they show these at the time, as we will do?” ‘Kennedy's
ss tins 7,3
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I have confidence we can lick this problem but we are not sure what might happen to children who drink milk conta- minated with extremely large amounts of radioactive faliout. They may become more suscep- tible to leukemia or certain cancers but it is doubtful whe- ther the threat to life and the potential disability are as great as that posed by the modern automobile.
Sr 90 remains active 30 to 40 years and tay affect the bones because of its electron radia- tion. This is the reason it can cause bone cancer or leukemia. It does not emit gamma radia- tion and is not a genetic hazard since bone structures are not near the reproductive organs. Fallout contains iodine 131 which is absorbed and becomes concentrated in the body. This element in much higher con- centrations also could increase the incidence of thyroid cancer and leukemia.
There is considerable natural background radiation in the United States from rocks and soil, radioactive ch Is in the body, and cosmic rays from’ outer space. These give higher levels than does the maximum radiation from fallout. All rad- iation contaminates the air. This
in becoming panicky. (Dr, Van Dellen will answer questions on medical topics if stamped, self-addressed enve- lope accompanies request.) PEACHES AND CREAM? B. C. writes: What foods are good, for the complexion and what foods are bad for the com- plexion?
REPLY One man’s meat is another man’s poison. This is an indi- vidual problem because certain foods cause blemishes in some but not others, Outside of a bal- anced diet, no particular tood will improve the complexion. The condition of the skin de- pends upon many factors, in- cluding exposure to the sun and wind, cleanliness, and heredity.
REJECTS SOLIDS J. E. V. writes: My 17 month old son has 16 teeth, which he refuses to use. When I try to get him off baby food, he either gags or spits out the solid food. My doctor says the child Is lazy which doesn’t help sélve this problem that has me at my wits’ end. Have you any help-
ful hints?
REPLY Hunger is the best appetiz- ed. Offer this boy solid foods and nothing else when he spits it out or gags. He'll get hun- ary.
EFFECT OF HEPATITIS R. G. writes: Could the ef- fects of an attack of hepatitis last 1% years? I haven't felt well since I had the disease.
REPLY This is unlikely, especially if the liver tests are normal.
OUR YESTERDAYS
From the Guardian Files
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO (Mar. 2, 1937)
James H. McKenna was re
elected president of the Bene
volent Irish Society at the 112th
annual meeting of the Order
last night, Edward Smith was
Herman G. Bryan, Lot 11, is at present visiting his nephew,
F. Bryan, Canadian Trade Com: at Ottawa.
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altogether in Canada there are 1,180 provincial, municinal and association libraries circulating 50,000,000 books and periodicals. This is something less than three books a year to every adult in the population. — Peterbor- ough Examiner.
The steps that governments take to make taxation as pain- less as possible defeat, in some
eracy. If the people are to know what they want, they ought also to be aware of what it is cost- ing them, ‘ One employer in the United States gave his employees their full earnings one Week, with a note attached that they were to give him back, before the end of \the week, the amount that should have been deduced at source. It was an admirable attempt to make people tax-con- scious, but it may be doubted whether it was quite legal.
Hitler's Germany was geared, as Susanne Charlotte Englemann wrote some years ago, to a “Nazi indoctrination (that) cov- ered the entire life of the Ger- man individual from the cradle to the grave."
When the Nazi power was de- | stroyed and the armies of o¢- | cupation came in there was no longer any Nazi indictrination in the schools. But this did not mean that German education | automatically assumed demo- cratic traditions, which were shaky even before Hitler.
The two Germanys, East and West, differ in their interpreta- tions of the Hitler regime—and both interpretations are defic- fent.
East Germany, as is indicated in a report just published by Prof. Mark M. Krug, has to swallow the Communist view-of life and history. Its high school history textbooks lie about the pre-war treaty between Stalin and Hitler, mention the infam- ous scoundrels who were tried and convicted at Nuremberg as though they were yictims of cruel injustice, and belittle Rus- sia’s partners in the second World War.
TEXTBOOKS FAIL $ The West German history textbooks also fail to give the
ways, the meaning of demo- |
carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise, are so powerful they could hurl a Cadillac sedan 9,000 feet into the
air. However, they are not Heved capable of throwing *
Taxation Too Painless
Montreal Gazette
|
_ History In Germany
New York Times
| lied bombers
whole history or even a true his-
ye Ha
ACADIAN
GENERAL MOTORS
new family-size car
‘WILLIS MOTORS LIMITED
Phone 892-1243 TT TTT j
compact car into orbit, — rq. monton lemon ”
Another way of achieving something of the same result, and within the law, has been suggested by Mr. Arthur G. sul. livan, president of the Canadian Construction Association.
“It might be well for indus. try,” he suggests, “‘to label this deduction on the employee's voucher ‘Your Cost of Govern. ment,’ with the hope that people would learn that government has only one source of revenue to meet the demands from its citi. zens for increased benefits, that is, taxes, . .””
This might well be a very use ful idea.
tory. They underplay Hitler's massacre of the Jewish popula- tion. They make the highly questionable point that the great majority of the German peopie knew little or nothing about these crimes,
They minimize the fact that German fliers killed thousands of civilians in Rotterdam, Cov- entry and London before the Al- began to come over Germany. Some of ‘nem even blame Churchill for pro- longing the war by refusing “to make peace.”
AFTER THE WAR
Many West Germans have shown since the war that they have repudiated Hitler not be cause he failed but because he was a vile criminal. But some- body has dangerously blundered when the distortions Professor Krug describes are allowed to remain in the supposedly demo- cratic schools of West Germany.
We can expect little, of course, from the Communist-dominated schools of East Germany. [hey dance to the tunes played by Communist propaganda every- where. But we should expect something better from the tea ching of history in West ‘ier- many. In fact, we have been ex- pecting it, with increasing impa- tience, for a long time.