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UNESJune 1970 (23rd year)

U. K. : 2/-stg

Canada : 40 cents

France: 1.20 F

A window open on the world

ourier

TREASURES

OF

WORLD ART

©

'Choker' for a Celtic princess(Fed. Rep. of Germany)

Celtic culture flourished in Europe and attained the zenith of its artistic achievements

during the " La Tène " period (5th century B.C. to 50 B.C.). The " La Tène " culture takes its

name from the now famous archaeological site at the eastern end of Lake Neuchâtel, in

Switzerland. "La Tène" period sites have been excavated in many parts of Europe. From

one, a Celtic tomb discovered at Reinheim (Fed. Rep. of Germany) in 1954, came jewellery

of rare beauty dating from the 4th century B.C. One outstanding find was a torque, or

ornamental open collar, of solid gold (right) fashioned for a Celtic noblewoman, possibly

a princess. Above, greatly enlarged detail of one of the twin decorative motifs at the open

ends of the collar reveals the masterly handiwork of a Celtic craftsman.

CourierJUNE 1970

23RD YEAR

PUBLISHED IN 13 EDITIONS

English JapaneseFrench Italian

Spanish HindiRussian Tamil

German Hebrew

Arabic Persian

U.S.A.

Published monthly by UNESCO

The United Nations

Educational, Scientific

and Cultural Organization

Sales and Distribution Offices

Unesco, Place de Fontenoy, Paris-7e

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The UNESCO COURIER is published monthly, exceptin August and September when it is bi-monthly (11 issues ayear) in English, French, Spanish, Russian, German, Arabic,Japanese, Italian, Hindi, Tamil, Hebrew and Persian. In theUnited Kingdom it is distributed by H.M. Stationery Office,P.O. Box 569, London, S.E.I.

Individual articles and photographs not copyrighted maybe reprinted providing the credit line reads "Reprinted fromthe UNESCO COURIER", plus date of issue, and threevoucher copies are sent to the editor. Signed articles re¬printed must bear author's name. Non-copyright photoswill be supplied on request Unsolicited manuscripts cannotbe returned unless accompanied by an internationalreply coupon covering postage. Signed articles express theopinions of the authors and do not necessarily representthe opinions of UNESCO or those of the editors of theUNESCO COURIER.

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tents - Education, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

Editorial Office

Unesco, Place de Fontenoy Paris-7e, France

Editor-in-Chief

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Managing Editors

English Edition: Ronald Fenton (Paris)French Edition: Jane Albert Hesse (Paris)Spanish Edition : Francisco Fernández-Santos (Paris)Russian Edition : Georg i Stetsenko (Paris)German Edition: Hans Rieben (Berne)Arabic Edition: Abdel Moneim El Sawi (Cairo)Japanese Edition : Takao Uchida (Tokyo)Italian Edition: Maria Remiddi (Rome)Hindi Edition: Babu Ram Saksena (Delhi)Tamil Edition: T.P. Meenakshi Sundaran (Madras)Hebrew Edition: Alexander Peli (Jerusalem)Persian Edition: Fereydoun Ardalan (Teheran)Assistant Editors

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4

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8

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16

I. MAN'S PERPETUAL QUEST FOR WATER

II. A WORLD APPROACH

TO THE WATER CRISIS

By Raymond L. Nace

PANCAKE OASES IN THE DESERT

THE PANTANAL-400,000 SQ. KM.

OF SWAMPLAND IN THE MATO GROSSO

One of the world's largest hydrological projects

By Newton Velloso Cordeiro

ORIGINALITY AND TRADITION

IN AMERICAN CULTURE

By Charles C. Mark

23

28

33

34

THE EAGLE SPACECRAFT

OF THE PRE-SCIENTIFIC AGE

By J. Patrocinio de Souza

THE FIVE CRISES OF THE UNIVERSITY

By James A. Perkins

MODERN ART AT UNESCO'S NEW BUILDING

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

TREASURES OF WORLD ART

'Choker' for a Celtic princess (Fed. Rep. of Germany)

This issue of the UNESCO COURIER is publishedwith some delay because of a strike at our Paris printers.

Cover

The Touaregs, the "people of the veil"who roam the Sahara, depend for theirexistence upon oases and waterholesscattered across the desert. Yet

below the sandy wastes lies a vastunderground reservoir extending overa quarter of a million square miles.In co-operation with the governmentsof Algeria and Tunisia, Unesco issurveying the underground waterresources of the northern Sahara

(see pages 9 and 10). Water hasbecome a world problem of crucialimportance for everyone. Within theframework of the International

Hydrological Decade sponsored byUnesco, the community of nations Is nowfacing the water problem on a scalenever before attempted (see page 4).

Photo Unesco - Dominique Lajoux

by Raymond L. Nace

Man's

perpetual questfor water

o

S

4

INCE the dawn of civiliza¬

tion, population growth and the expan¬sion of human activities have depend¬ed on man's ability to surmount thenatural restrictions of his environment,

including the amount and distributionof water.

Water development and water poli¬cies always have been Important, asis evident from the many measurestaken to control its distribution and

use, beginning with the ancient Sum-erians of Mesopotamia and becom¬ing ever more complex with the pas¬sage of time.

Even so, water problems are becom¬ing Increasingly critical in many re¬gions, including areas In developedcountries where water is relativelyabundant. The reason is that in manyregions problems are less apt torelate to water quantity than to Itsquality.

Broadly stated, water problems arefew but basic: distribution in space

RAYMOND L. NACE, former chairman of theU.S. National Committee for the International

Hydrological Decade, has served as U.S.representative on the Co-ordinating Councilof the Decade. Dr Nace is research hydrolo-gist with the Water Resources Division of theU.S. Geological Survey, and in the U.S.A.has worked on problems of general hydro¬logy and on the disposal of radioactive waste.

We are now at mid-point in the International Hydrological Decade, spon¬

sored by Unesco. Since January 1, 1965 this vast programme has mobil¬ized hydrologists the world over for man's first concerted attempt totake stock of his diminishing fresh water resources and to co-ordinate

world-wide research on better ways of making use of them. Here,

Dr. Raymond L. Nace, the noted American hydrologist, examines the

historical and scientific background of the problem, and describes some

major areas where this international co-operation has been in action.

(too much or too little); distribution intime (too much in some seasons oryears and not enough in others); che¬mical quality (too highly mineralized;lacking in desirable minerals; contain¬ing deleterious minerals); and pollution.

Well-intentioned individuals speakconfidently of surmounting all prob¬lems by achieving mastery of theenvironment. This is an Illusory goal.Man first must master himself. The

plain fact is that he has not done so,and because of this he has so com¬

pletely upset the natural environmen¬tal system in which he evolved, thathe no longer knows what his place isin the system except as an elementof disorder.

We do know that water has a vital

role in every earth environment fromthe depths of the sea to the highestmountain; from the driest desert tothe wettest rain forest; and from the

tropics to the polar ice-caps. It alsohas a role in every activity of man andbeast.

Thus far, our attempts at "masteryof the environment" have been mere

short-sighted tinkerings with the land¬scape. Meanwhile, other human act¬ivity has brought on unwanted, unfore¬seen, and poorly understood sideeffects.

Human activity already has con¬taminated the entire world ocean, the

atmosphere, and even the remote icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica.

Most rivers are polluted to someextent and many are nauseous opensewers. Plant cover and soil fertilityof vast areas have been destroyed.

Parts of the story of human despo¬liation of the earth have been told

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

Even in countries where rainfall is

abundant there may be a lack of theright kind of water where it is mostneeded, especially in the large cities ofthe world. To overcome this problemriver water is re-cycled and re-usedmany times. Thus, before beingreturned to the rivers, water from thesewers of large towns goes through atreatment process. It passes throughaeration tanks which supply theoxygen needed by the micro-organismsthat break down and destroy harmfulorganic matter. Here, at a sewagetreatment plant in the Paris area, treatedwater is piped into the Seine. It willprobably be extracted, purified andused again several times before findingits way to the sea.

PERPETUAL QUEST FOR WATER (Continued)

Conflicting theorieson the last days of Mohenjo-Daro

6

many times. But the whole story can¬not be told because not all of it is

known and the story has not yet ended.

The problem Is not mastery of theenvironment. The problem is whethernature can be preserved in some sem¬blance of order and whether civiliza¬

tion can survive its own impact onnature.

The facts of history vis-à-vis theplight of most of mankind today aresufficient evidence that the problemsof man and his environment are not

problems of the men of individualnations. They are problems of all menand all nations.

This is especially true of water. Themobility of water is one of its mostuseful properties, but it also gives riseto serious problems, both practicaland scientific, international as well asnational.

IRRIGATION IN ANTIQUITY. Overthe past 7,000 years men at sometime and place have been trying toincrease the supply of fresh water,or at least to increase the share used

before its inevitable return to the sea.

Ancient man, like modern man,evidently loved sunshine and drywarm weather. But in order to prosperand multiply in dry areas, a changewas needed more profound than thetransition from nomadic hunting andherding to sedentary farming. Cropfarming without irrigation is precariousto impossible in dry areas.

Extensive irrigation, however, re¬quires community effort for waterdiversion, maintenance of works, andallocation of water, and these can beachieved only through effective socialand political organization. Civilizationmay have been a result of man'sunwillingness to accept the limitationsof geography and his search for meansto circumvent these limitations.

Following the ice age, climatic con¬ditions identical in all essential aspectswith those that prevail now were estab¬lished at least 5,000 years ago andperhaps 8,000. The Near East andMiddle East already were arid to semi-arid, and it was there that the earlycivilizations arose. This was no mere

coincidence, for the reason notedabove. Climate determined the locale

for the rise of civilization.

Looking at the long history of watermanagement, it is surprising that thewater cycle has been a mystery to manduring most of his history. Sumerianknowledge about hydrology is proble¬matical. Writers of their cuneiform

inscriptions were concerned with milit

ary exploits and practical matters,rather than with intellectual adventures.

The people, however must have hadextensive practical understanding ofrunning water, else they could not haveoperated a large and complicated irri¬gation system on the Mesopotamianplain. They had such a system at leastas early as 4 000 B.C., and perhapsmuch earlier. They and their succes¬sors held sway over a region ofabout 20,000 square kilometres, andmuch of this was irrigated, though notall at the same time. The Sumerian

irrigation system was a marvel, notonly because of its size but alsobecause of its long existence.

Salinity and siltatlon plagued theirrigated fields in varying degrees fromvery early times, but the Sumerianslearned to some extent to cope withthe problems. So did their Semiticsuccessors, and irrigation continueduntil the middle of the twelfth century.Hulagu Khan's invasion in the thir¬teenth century has been blamed fordevastating Mesopotamia, but the areahad been essentially abandoned ahundred years earlier.

Judging from experience with modernirrigation methods, it is doubtful thatany modern system will last for alength of time even approaching thatof Mesopotamia. In the vast and fer¬tile Indus Plain of West Pakistan live

more than 30 million people. An enor¬mous irrigation network supplies about9 million hectares of land (90,000 squarekilometres). More than 2 million hec¬tares already have been lost by salin¬ity and waterlogging, and currentannual losses are about 40,000 hec¬tares.

The Indus Plain is only one exampleof irrigation problems. Dry areasnaturally tend to have salty soil andground water because not enoughwater moves through the local watercycle to flush salts away. Successfulirrigation requires application of suffi¬cient water for flushing and sufficientmovement of ground water or drainagewater to actually remove the salts fromthe irrigated area. Where drainage isinadequate, waterlogging aggravatesthe problem. Many tens of thousandsof hectares annually are lost to pro¬duction by salinity and waterlogging,principally in Asia, Africa and NorthAmerica.

Organized large scale irrigation agri¬culture arose in the Nile Valley around3400 B.C., following an antecedentperiod of small scale local develop¬ments. For a variety of reasons, theproblem of irrigation there was farsimpler than in Mesopotamia. Simpleflood-basin irrigation practice wasfollowed, first on the left bank only.Later, when basining spread to theright bank also, constriction of the river

by both banks raised serious problemsduring high floods.

During the twelfth Dynasty a brilliantplan evolved to mitigate this problemthe Fayum project. This project usedthe Fayum depression as an off-streamreservoir into which excess waters

were diverted, forming Lake Moeris inthe desert 50 miles south-west of Cairo.

During years of deficient flood water,stored lake water was led back to the

valley.

The Egyptian irrigation system wasunique. The irrigation basins werelavishly flooded, but only once eachyear. Sand and gravel beneath thevalley soil provided good subsurfacedrainage. There was no need for irri¬gation canals or drainage ditches, andno general problem arose of salinityor waterlogging of soils. The annualdeposit of silt obviated the need forfertilizer. It will be interesting toobserve the future of the Nile Valleywith a modern irrigation system, includ¬ing a large up-stream reservoir wheremuch of the sediment will settle out of

the impounded water.

FLOOD PLAINS AND CITIES. Mod¬

ern peoples are not the first to buildcities on river flood plains. MohenjoDaro and Harappa, the archaeologicallyfamous cities of a civilization that

flourished on the Indus Plain during2500-1500 B.C., got into trouble be¬cause the people did not understandor could not cope with the interactionsof land, water, vegetation and man ina flood-plain environment.

The civilization deteriorated during along period before it finally dis¬appeared. A common supposition hasbeen that the Harappan culture wasbased on irrigation agriculture and thatit was defeated by soil salinization.However, some authorities say thatevidence is lacking of any irrigationstructures in Harappan times.

A recent theory is that the Harappantowns were destroyed by repeatedflooding. Massive masonry wallsaround Mahenjo-Daro failed to protectit and it was engulfed and filled withsilt. The nature of these floods wasunusual.

A flood plain is exactly what itsname implies a land form built by theriver during flood flows. A river is inflood when it overtops the banks of itschannel. Overtopping is a normalrecurrent event with most rivers, andminor flooding occurs every two orthree years. Higher floods are lessfrequent. Indus floods In Harappantimes, however, seem to have beendifferent in nature.

According to one Interpretation,some unidentified geological event

Right, not floatingpack-ice on a Canadianwaterway, but detergentfoam polluting a river inFrance. The productsthat make housewives'dishes sparkle are killing offinsect and plant life ofrivers in more and morecountries. Insecticidesand toxic chemical wastesfrom factories are

destroying fish life.

interposed an obstruction on the IndusRiver down stream from Mohenjo-Daro,impounding a lake which engulfed thetown with water and silt. After the

lake's outlet eroded the obstruction and

drained the lake, the people returnedand built anew on top of the oldmasonry. This happened at least fivetimes. A mound at the site contains

artifacts to a depth of 22.6 metres,7.3 of which are below the presentwater table and can be probed only bycore drilling.

The evidence proves that the townwas engulfed by silt and water, butwhether by a lake or by flood waterremains undetermined. The Indus Plain

Is very flat and a high flood wouldhave many of the characteristics of alake. At any rate, Mohenjo-Daro is anancient example of a problem that hasassumed major proportions in moderntimes.

Human encroachment on flood plainsleads to ever-increasing damage toproperty and, in some cases, to lossof life. Modern man has not solved this

problem either, because large floodscannot be controlled. They can onlybe combated.

Other ancient irrigation and publicwater works, as in Iran and China, areequally interesting, but the examplesdiscussed illustrate that during manycenturies before classical Grecian civi¬

lization arose, men had a great deal of.practical understanding of water andhow to manage it. They had inventedthe principal types of water controlstructures: diversion dams, storagedams, sluices, canals and drainageditches; they used canals for irriga¬tion, city water supply and navigation.

Their knowledge was largely orwholly empirical, but it was immenselyuseful. Ancient people learned also totap sources of ground water and topromote groundwater recharge, butthe degree of antiquity of this know¬ledge remains uncertain.

Ancient people also encountered thesame problems that beset us today:maintenance of canals and drainageditches; necessity for dredging anddisposition of the spoil; public watersupply; navigation; flood-fighting ; pol¬lution.

GREEK HYDROLOGY. Aside from

practical problems of water control, theearliest coherent thinking about wateras a substance and about the water

cycle as a whole seems to haveoccurred in classical Greece. The

Greek natural philosophers were intel¬lectually methodical. They soughtrational causes for effects, rather thaninvoking the caprices of gods as basiccauses.

Although mythology strongly in¬fluenced their thinking, in principle theyrejected myths, substituted rationaldeductions, and tried to reduce manyfacts to a few principles. Commonlythey were wrong but, right or wrong,they were generally logical.

The first of the natural philosopherswas Thaïes of Miletos (6407-546 B.C.).Knowing the ubiquity of water in thesea, on land, underground and in theair, Thaïes supposed that all substan¬ces originally came from water andeventually would revert to that form.

This may have been man's firstattempt to reduce the bewilderingdiversity of matter to a common deno¬minator. Thaïes believed that rivers are

fed by the sea and that wind forceswater into the earth. Once inside, theweight of overlying rocks forces thewater upward into the mountains, fromwhich it spills out to form rivers.

After Thaïes, the philosophers contri¬buted little to ideas about water until

the time of Anaxagoras of Clazomene(500-428 B.C.), a highly original thinkerwho rejected the Milesian Idea of aprimordial element. He believed thatno transformations of matter could

occur and that all substances had

existed from eternity.

Anaxagoras formed a basically cor¬rect concept of the gross hydrologicalcycle: the sun raises water from thesea into the atmosphere, from whichit falls as rain. Rain-water gathers inunderground reservoirs from which therivers flow. The earth generates nonew water, but the reservoirs fill duringthe rainy season. Perennial streamsflow from large reservoirs and ephe¬meral streams from small ones.

Democritus taught that the propertiesof substances depend on the shapesof their atoms. Water, for example,might be composed of smooth spheres,which would explain why it flows soreadily.

Plato (428 or 427-348 B.C.) led agreat advance in Greek thinking. Heassumed that the universe was created

by an organizing mind and that theuniverse, therefore, is understandable.The core of Plato's water cycle, how¬ever, was mythical Tartarus. He sup-

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

7

8

PERPETUAL QUEST FOR WATER

(Continued)

posed that a series of interconnectingsubterranean channels communicate

with their source, the vast reservoir ofTartarus. Perpetual surging to and froof waters in the subterranean reservoir

causes the flow of springs and rivers.All water of rivers and seas returns

eventually to Tartarus.

Aristotle of Stagira (384-322 B.C.),pupil of Plato and tutor to Alexander,the son of Philip of Macedonia, carriedhis thinking far beyond that of his men¬tor. His vast and omnivorous Intellect

ranged the entire scope of humanknowledge and philosophy and, inevi¬tably, included the water cycle.

Peremptorily, Aristotle rejected theideas of Anaxagoras about the watercycle and Plato's Tartarus. He recog¬nized that some springs are fed bymeteoric water, but he believed thatthe main flow of water originates ingreat underground caverns wherecoldness transforms air Into water. He

differed with Anaxagoras also on theexplanation of meteorological pheno¬mena, such as hail storms.

Aristotle could not conceive that rain

was any but a minor source of waterfor rivers and springs. He said thatsea water turned into air under the

heat of the sun, and that air turnedback into water (condensed) In cav¬erns under the Influence of cold.

It happens that Anaxagoras camecloser than Aristotle to explanationsthat are now generally accepted.Aristotle, however, marshalled moreobservational information than had

Anaxagoras and some of these factsconflicted with the latter's beliefs.

Aristotle's argument, therefore, wasthe more compelling and it was notsuccessfully challenged for nearly2,000 years.

**

FROM IMPERIAL ROME TO THERENAISSANCE. Before the Romanscame under the intellectual Influence of

Greece they had learned much fromthe Etruscans, who were masters inthe arts of irrigation and swamp drai¬nage. This heritage enabled Rome tohave a well-developed sewerage sys¬tem as early as the sixth century B.C.Romans, in general, accepted thescience of Greece and added little to

basic concepts. Their great forte wasengineering, as is evident from theaqueducts, bridges and other struc¬tures which still endure.

Roman engineers also inventeddelivery of domestic water throughpipes to households. Curiously, theywere quite unable to measure the flowof water in a conduit. They assumedthat flow from a conduit depends onlyon the size of the orifice, ignoring thefactor of hydraulic head.

During the Dark and Middle Agesmany fanciful notions were currentabout the water cycle. One of theseideas, an elaborated inheritance fromGreece, was that ocean water poursinto submarine caverns which conduct

it to the land areas, where it Is distilled

CONTINUED PAGE 10

Photo © Georg Gerster - Rapho, Paris

Pancake Oasesin the Desert

Each of the "pancakes" in this striking aerial photo is a victory of man over the Sahara desert.The pancakes are tiny "oases" of palm trees made to grow by tapping zones of underground water in the Soufregion of the northern Algerian Sahara. The village can be seen at centre right of photo. The palm saplingsare planted in man-made hollows 20 to 40 feet deep (see detail next page) with palisades built to protectthem from the driving sand. It is in this region of Algeria as well as in Tunisia that Unesco is now carryingout project "Regional 100" in co-operation with the governments of both countries and under the auspicesof the U.N. Development Programme. "Regional 100" is a survey of underground water resources in the northernSahara and a study of the best ways of exploiting such water for future farm development. Southof the Sahara another major hydrological study is under way in the Chad Basin which constitutesa vast reservoir of underground water. Four countries Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria have formeda commission to plan the development of the Basin, an area of 400,000 square kilometres. Under aU.N. Development Programme project, Unesco, co-operating with the Chad Basin Commission, is makinga general hydrological survey of the region, while FAO is studying problems of land reclamation.

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

9

10

mi iPhoto © Georg Gerster - Rapho, Paris

PANCAKE OASES (Continued). Photoleft, close-up view ofdeep-hollow date-palm groves. Sandterracing, which can be clearly seen,prevents the trees from beingengulfed by blowing sand. Photocentre, Lake Chad during the dryseason. The outer periphery, seenhere, has dwindled down intoa series of shallow lagoons.Photo right, like giant mole hillsrunning across the desert, theseholes are shafts that mark the pathsof foggaras, or underground tunnels,dug in ancient times for irrigation.This foggara, near In Salah,lies in the heart of Touareg countryin the Algerian Sahara.

PERPETUAL QUEST FOR WATER (Continued)

and rises to the surface to feed springsand rivers. The medievalists were

correct in that the sea is the source

of water in the hydrological cycle, butthey had the cycle turning in the wrongdirection and they called upon thewrong distillation apparatus.

Such ideas persisted because menaccepted the Greeks, especially Aris¬totle, as final authorities, and because

of church dogma concerning a passagein Ecclesiastes which was interpretedto mean that continental waters origi¬nate by underground flow from thesea. To believe otherwise was heresy.Neither the natural philosophers northe churchmen could accept precipita¬tion as a sufficient source for water in

the land areas.

Hydrology, like other sciences and

the arts, was bound eventually to breakwith dogmatism and authoritarianism.The break came in a curious way. TheFrench Huguenot, Bernard Palissy(15147-1590), was a self-taught cera¬mist who created the naturalistic mas¬

terpieces of enamelled pottery whichhe called "rustiques figulines". Hisart saved his life. Arrested and

sent to Bordeaux for trial concerninghis activity in the new religion of theReformation, he seemed to be doomed.But the Queen Mother, Catherine deMedici, intervened by naming himinventeur des rustiques figulines du roi(that is, of Henri III). As a member ofthe king's household he became im¬mune to the parliament of Bordeaux.

Palissy boasted that he knew neitherLatin nor Greek. He knew only what

Photo © Leon Herschtritt - Rapho, Paris Photo © Georg Gerster - Rapho, Paris

he had seen during extensive travelsas a surveyor before he took up cera¬mics. His observations were acute

and, in the context of his times, he wasan accomplished geologist, mineralo¬gist and palaeontologist. AlthoughPalissy rejected theory and relied ondirect observation, he knew enoughabout authoritarian doctrine to be

aware that it denied the adequacy ofrain as a source for springs and rivers.

Nevertheless, what his geologicaleye saw convinced him otherwise. Ina book published in 1580 he declaredthat springs and rivers take their originin and are fed by rain and by rainalone. This may have been the firstsuch declaration ever published. Thiswas more important to mankind thanthe creation of his celebrated ena

melled pottery, but Palissy received noscientific recognition in his own life¬time. The world waited nearly a cen¬tury to awaken. Again, the catalystwas a Frenchman.

In 1668, the French amateur scien¬tist, Pierre Perrault, convinced of theadequacy of rain as a source for run¬off, set out to prove it. During threeyears he measured precipitation in theupper Seine basin, obtaining an aver¬age of about 49 centimetres annually.Calculation showed that this was about

six times the estimated discharge ofthe Seine. He published this and otherinformation in 1674.

Measurements and calculations such

as these could have been made at anytime during the previous 2,000 years,but science simply had not reached the

stage of testing hypotheses by measu¬rement and observation. Perrault it

was, therefore, who initiated modernscientific hydrology. Perrault correctlyaccounted for the remainder of preci¬pitation (the part that did not run offin the Seine), five-sixths of it beingdisposed of by groundwater recharge,evaporation, and transpiration byplants.

Perrault's findings were verified byothers within a few years and hydro¬logy was launched toward its moderncourse. The science is interdisciplin¬ary, however, and could make no greatprogress along quantitative lines untilthe basic sciences of physics, chemis¬try and biology were well advanced,and until basic principles of geologywere established.

11

MAN'S PERPETUAL QUEST FOR WATER (Continued)

o A world approachto the water crisis

12

D|%. 1VERS of the world

that reach the sea discharge about30,000 cubic kilometres of waterannually, and this is about 30 per centof precipitation on the continents.However, only about 50 per cent ofriver discharge has been actuallymeasured, the rest being estimated.

The Amazon, largest river in theworld, had never been measured until

1963-64, when a joint Brazilian-UnitedStates expedition aboard a Braziliannavy corvette measured it three times,once at high-water stage, once at low-water stage, and again at an inter¬mediate stage.

The average flow was found to beabout 175,000 cubic metres per second,or about 5,540 cubic kilometres peryear. This is roughly 18 per cent ofthe discharge of all rivers of the world.

According to these measurements,the Amazon is nearly twice as largeas had been estimated earlier. These

measurements alone upset earliercalculations of the world water budgetand illustrate why large-scale measure-mejnts are important.

Water science is handicapped byunsatisfactory techniques and instru¬ments for measuring many hydrologicalphenomena, especially on the verylarge and very small scales.

How, for example, does one measurethe rate of movement of ground waterthrough an aquifer underground? Howdoes one measure evaporation froma whole continent or from the worldocean? These cannot be measured

directly. They can only be estimatedby measuring related phenomena fromwhich computed values can be derived.

Evaporation and transpiration areimportant because they dissipate alarge share of precipitation on landareas. Because of evaporation, man-made lakes are not unmixed blessings.In arid areas lakes may evaporateannually a layer of water equal to their

surface area and up to three metresor more in thickness.

Evaporation plus transpiration areusually computed on the basis of solarradiation, wind speed, air humidity,temperature and other factors. Latein the seventeenth century, the Britishastronomer Edmund Halley, based ona brief experiment in his Londonquarters, estimated that annualevaporation from the warm Medi¬terranean sea was three feet (about90 centimetres). The estimate waslow and the modern estimate, averagedfor the world ocean as a whole, isabout 100 centimetres.

Measurement of precipitation hasbeen practised systematically over anincreasingly large part of the worldduring nearly two centuries. The firstEuropean meteorological network wasestablished in 1780, with its eastern¬most station in Hungary. Europe andpart of North America are nowreasonably well covered, but precipita¬tion on vast areas in Asia, Africa,

South America, polar regions and theseas is virtually unknown.

The last ice age ended some10,000 years ago, but much of theworld is still locked in deep ice.

The great ice-caps of Greenland andAntarctica contain nearly 80 per centof all water outside the oceans.

Alpine, piedmont and valley glaciersare widespread; shelf-ice and pack-icecover vast expanses of the polar seas;and permafrost (permanently frozenground) occupies vast areas of Siberia,northern Europe and northern NorthAmerica.

The total volume of ice-caps andglaciers in land areas is about26 million cubic kilometres, while allother water in the continents amounts

to only about eight million cubickilometres.

Evidently, much of the world is stillin an ice age, but relatively little isknown about the frozen areas.

The great ice-caps seem to be stable,but considerable difference of opinionprevails about whether the ice massesare growing, shrinking or merely beingmaintained. It is important that this bedetermined because the ice areas are

great weather factories and theirmelting would cause a rise of sea level.

The total land area of the world is

149 million square kilometres. About15 million square kilometres is underpermanent ice cover. Another 22 mil¬lion square kilometres is in permafrost,

comprising 22 per cent of all the landarea In the Northern Hemisphere.

Nearly 40 million square kilometresis extremely arid to arid. Considerableareas are high-altitude mountainmasses.

In all, more than half the world's

land area is basically inhospitable forhuman occupation. Despite man'sgreat adaptability, he has maderelatively little encroachment In theinhospitable areas.

Burgeoning population, however,inevitably will place Increasing pressureon parts of the world that are nowrelatively uninhabited but whichcontain a wealth of natural resources,

including water. These are the fron¬tiers of the future and their full use

will require pushing further thefrontiers of knowledge because thenew areas are poorly known andexperience in their occupation is small.

HBIVING standards in all

societies are closely related to wateruse. High living standards requirehigh rates of water use for agriculture,industry, public services and house¬holds. The extent to which develop¬ing countries can forge ahead is link¬ed to their ability to develop waterresources.

In some countries per capita use ofwater is only about 100 litres per day.In some industrialized countries water

use is sixty times greater. Thedisparity between living standards iseven larger.

Lessening of the disparity willrequire, not only more water use, butmore use per capita. In view ofprospective population growth indeveloping countries, the problem isformidable. The developed countriesthemselves have serious problems.Doubling of population may entaildoubling of water use merely tomaintain existing standards. Thesituation in the United States of

America is illustrative.

Per capita use of water for all pur¬poses other than hydroelectric powergeneration in the United States isabout 6,100 litres per day. This is avery high rate of use compared to thatof most other countries, even thosewhich are highly industrialized. How¬ever, it is only a small part of theaverage total national water supply.

In some areas water is re-used many

times. On the average, however,somewhat more than 90 per cent of thewater yield of the United States is notsubjected to withdrawal uses. It ser¬ves as a conveyor belt to sendwastes out to the sea. The cen¬

tral problem of water resources de¬velopment and management is, in fact,a problem of water quality, not waterquantity.

On a continental or regional scale,water shortage in one area may bealleviated by interbasin transfers ofwater. This will not necessarily alle¬viate pollution, however. In the basinfrom which water is exported, theamount remaining to dilute pollution isless. In the receiving basin it maypermit additional developments thatadd to the total pollution problem.

Evidently it is necessary to establishnational, and in some cases, inter¬national objectives and policies tocontrol and abate pollution, not merelyto control and distribute water itself.

The real measure of progress atmid-point in the International Hydro-logical Decade (IHD) is seen in theeffective international co-operationthat has developed and the importanceof the activities that have been launch¬

ed or planned. The following are afew examples.

One of the more remarkable areas

of South America is the upper basinof the Rio Paraguay, known as thePantanal, which extends along thefrontiers of Brazil, Bolivia and Para¬guay. In this vast flood plain whichextends over an area of some 400,000

square kilometres, Unesco and theBrazilian Government are making abroad survey on which to base a pro¬gramme of land reclamation and dev¬elopment (see article page 14).

When worked out, the methods ofland drainage and development willserve also for similar operations in theBolivian and Paraguayan areas of thebasin. The Pantanal study, In fact,is one of the greatest of the hydrolo¬gical surveys now taking place in theworld. It is part of a long-term inter¬national programme of studies for thebasins of the Rio Parana and the Rio

de la Plata.

Brazil has also set up, within herHydrological Decade programme, aCentre for Applied Hydrology at PortoAlegre. This has been done with finan¬cial help from the Government ofBrazil, the National Bank for EconomicDevelopment and the United NationsDevelopment Programme (UNDP).

PRE-POLLUTION ICE-CUBES

Since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, 80 per centof all water outside the oceans has been locked up in the great ice-capsof Greenland and Antarctica. In the far North, Eskimoes store theirdrinking water in the form of blocks of solid ice piled up in the open air,above. An enterprising Danish firm is now selling "Pre-pollution era"ice cubes taken from icebergs. Tiny bubbles of air, trapped inthe ice thousands of years ago give a sparkling effect to drinksin which the cubes are placed.

The Great Lakes of North America

contain one of the largest concentra¬tions of fresh surface water in the

world. Canada and the United States

have collaborated during many yearsin studies of many international waterproblems. Now, for the first time, thetwo countries are collaborating in anintensified study of the lakes whichwill have wide implications for navi¬gation, power generation, industrialand municipal development, fisheries,and recreation.

Another remarkable area is the

Chad Basin in Africa. The basin is

much larger than Lake Chad itself,covering 400,000 square kilometresand extending into the four States of

Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.Studies in this area relate to the

soil, surface-water and ground-waterresources.

Although many excellent studies hadbeen made long before the advent ofthe Hydrological Decade specificallyunder the Arid Zone Research Projectof Unesco the Decade has made it

possible to collate a wide variety ofdata.

Through Unesco and the Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO), aCommission formed by the four ripa¬rian States obtained assistance from

the UNDP. In consultation with the

Commission, FAO administers thereclamation studies and Unesco the

CONTINUED PAGE 32

13

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Photo © "Mánchete". Brazil

ONE

OF THE WORLD'S

LARGEST

HYDROLOGICAL

PROJECTS

The Pantanal

400,000 sq. km. of swampland

in the Mato Grosso

by Newton Velloso Cordeiro

M

TO the west of Brasilia,

stretching out over central Brazil andextending into parts of Bolivia andParaguay, the Mato Grosso swampsform a vast tableland, some 150 metres(500 ft.) above sea level, in the veryheart of South America.

Known as the "Pantanal", this hugeregion, covering about 400,000 sq. kms.(150,000 sq. miles) is dotted withlagoons and hillocks. Through it runsthe river Paraguay and its manytributaries totalling over 1,300 kms.(800 miles) in length. During the rainy

NEWTON VELLOSO CORDEIRO was formerlyPresident of the Brazilian National Committee

for the International Hydrological Decade andVice-Chairman of the Co-ordinating Council ofthe Decade and was until recently co-directorof the bold development project which hedescribes in this article. The project Is beingcarried out by the Brazilian Government andUnesco in co-operation with the United Na¬tions Development Programme.

season rivers and lagoons merge intoone sheet of water.

In this enormous area, four-fifthsthe size of France, the Braziliangovernment and Unesco are carryingout one of the world's greatesthydrological studies under the auspicesof the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme. Begun in 1966, thisproject will eventually lead to thebuilding of a new world capable ofproviding food for millions of peopleand will facilitate the migration intothe interior of the continent of a

proportion of the population nowconcentrated along the coastlands ofBrazil.

The first attempts to populate theregion were made by the Spaniards inthe 16th century when they set outfrom the La Plata estuary to reachthe rich mineral deposits of Peru.But discouraged by lack of economicresources, the vast distances and the

hostility of the local population, the

Spaniards fell an easy prey to othercolonists pushing westwards from SaoPaulo. Not until the discovery of goldin the 18th century was it thoughtworth while to explore and settle theregion.

The decline of the gold mines in the19th century brought the developmentof the area to a standstill. The risks

involved in exploiting the plant andmineral resources, the difficulty ofpenetrating the Amazonian forests andthe lack of markets eventually led toa sharp drop In population.

The Pantanal, however, offersexcellent conditions for cattle-breeding,with its vast areas of grazing land overwhich herds can wander unrestricted.

The exact number of cattle in the

region is not known, but is estimatedto be between 20 and 30 million head.

With its immense estates, orfazendas, its stock-raising, hunting andfishing, the Pantanal ¡s one of the

One of the world's biggesthydrological studies is beingmade in a swampland stretchingfrom central Brazil into Bolivia

and Paraguay. Covering400,000 sq. km. (see map far left),the Pantanal (as it is known,from the Portuguese for"marshland") is entirelyflooded for half the year.The hydrological survey,carried out by Brazil andUnesco in co-operation with theU.N. Development Programme,is part of a programmeaimed at reclaiming the Pantanaland developing its resources.A famous cattle-raising centre,the Pantanal has between

20 and 30 million head of cattle.

Left, herd crossing a Pantanalwater course recalls scenes found

in ancient Chinese paintings.Right, "home on the range"

triphibious style.

Photo © Paule Bernard, Pans

richest parts of Brazil. It could alsobecome an immensely productiveagricultural centre.

The region also possesses con¬siderable iron and manganese depositsin the Urucum mountains, south ofCorumba. The main obstacle to their

exploitation is their distance fromBrazil's markets and from portsequipped for handling minerals. Theuse of modern water transport couldhelp to overcome this problem.

Other than air lines, the only meansof communication linking the regionwith the Campo Grande and Sao Paulois the north-east Brazil railway line.Plans exist for the construction of a

huge road networkto serve this cattle-raising area, whose production is oneof the largest in the world, and alsoto ensure the distribution of surplusagricultural produce in the future.

The far-reaching hydrological studiesproject for the Upper Paraguay RiverBasin was adopted by the UnitedNations Development Programme inJanuary 1966 and was launched by theBrazilian Department of Land Re¬clamation in co-operation with Unescolater that year. It aims to reclaim anddevelop the region, and to serve as atesting ground for new techniqueswhich can subsequently be introducedin Amazonia, Bolivia and Paraguay aswell as in areas with similar conditions

in other continents.

The Pantanal survey is one of themost significant projects of its kindin the world, and should serve as amodel for other regions. Its scopeand the variety of activities it coversmake it an outstanding example of thetype of research project which theUnesco-sponsored International Hydro-logical Decade seeks to promote.

It also comes under Brazil's own

national programme for the Decade,which includes projects for developingthe resources of the southern region,expanding the Institute of Hydraulics

Research at the University of PortoAlegre and the setting up of a Centreof Research and Training in AppliedHydrology.

Until recently no basic informationwas available about the Pantanal.

There was no data relating to hydro¬logy, hydroclimatology or surfacehydrology and it was not until 1965that the first aerial photogrammetricsurveys were made.

To obtain the information needed as

a basis for the regional developmentplan, the current project includes theinstallation of a hydrometeorologicalnetwork in the Paraguay basin andresearch on the hydraulic systemgoverning the Mato Grosso depressionand the influence of this system onthe Paraguay river.

THE Pantanal project com¬

prises two phases. During the first,which is now under completion, dataobtained will be assembled for study,longitudinal profiles of the river Para¬guay and some of its main tributarieswill be drawn up and a preliminaryanalysis made of hydrological condi¬tions in the basins.

In addition, a number of automatic

recording stations will be set up tomeasure rainfall and other climatic

data, such as the level of surface and

ground water, and then radio this in¬formation daily to a central station.

Data collected will be used as a

basis for installing a permanent net¬work of automatic recording stationsduring the second phase. The workof Brazilian organizations dealingwith the Paraguay basin will be co¬ordinated, together with measurestaken by the Paraguayan, Bolivian andBrazilian national commissions for the

International Hydrological Decade.

During the second phase, due to

begin this year, the general surveywork begun In phase one will becompleted and studies of geomorpho-logical, hydrogeological and ecologicalconditions, including processes oferosion and sedimentation, will becarried out.

Hydrological data obtained will beanalysed and an experimental fore¬casting system based on a mathemati¬cal model will be set up. Maps willbe made of certain areas suitable for

hydraulics installations designed topromote immediate development.

The project is due to be completedin 1973 at a total cost of some

$2,400,000. The United Nations Devel¬opment Programme is contributing$1,534,500 of this sum, and Brazil willprovide the rest.

The scale of operations scheduledfor the second phase may be extendedif similar surveys are carried out in theBolivian and Paraguayan chacos. Inthat case events in the Pantanal and

the flood areas downstream could be

forecast several months in advance.

Once data on the regime of the RiverParaguay and its main tributaries isavailable, it will be possible to beginoperations to regulate their flow andlevels. A navigable waterway couldbe formed covering a distance ofnearly 3,000 kms. (2,000 miles) whichwould link up the centres of agri¬cultural production and mineraldeposits with the main industrialcentres in Sao Paulo and even with

towns in Argentina.

The improvement of communicationswill change today's population patternof small, scattered groups, and willstimulate economic development.Better financial prospects in agri¬culture and other activities will lead

to improved facilities for cultural and a rtechnical education. This in turn will I Qgive a great many more Brazilians achance to contribute directly to thedevelopment of their country.

Originalityand tradition

in American

culture

by Charles C. Mark

W_ _ HEN Ulysses S. Grant was

President of the United States he was

widely quoted as saying: 'I only knowtwo tunes. One is "Yankee Doodle"and the other one isn't." Any discus¬

sion of cultural policy In the UnitedStates must first come to grips with

the popularity of anti-intellectualismand anti-culture throughout its historythat is implied by that presidentialquote.

To be sure, theatres were built andused before the revolutionary war,

concerts were a monthly event in

many cities, travelling opera andtheatre companies found eager au¬diences all over the American conti¬

nent. However, these events andcircumstances were almost entirelyreflections of an American need to

become part of European civilization,to express inner appetites by feastingon the riches of an inherited culture.

It should also be pointed out that

pockets of real creativity were activefrom colonial times forward among

subculture groups. The Moraviansmaintained a rich musical tradition in

the forests of Pennsylvania and NorthCarolina, for instance. When events

in Europe forced political exile onspecial groups as did the French

16

CHARLES C. MARK is Director of the Office

of State and Community Operations at theNational Foundation for the Arts, In the United

States. The author presents a completesurvey of this subject in " A Study of Cultur¬al Policy in the United States '. publishedlast year by Unesco in the series: "Studiesand Documents on Cultural Policies'

Revolution and the German insurrection

of 1848, the United States received a

cultural injection as these peoplecarried on traditions of culture as partof their new life.

However, the main stream of Ameri¬can civilization before the twentieth

century did not value the arts, parti¬cularly American manifestations of thearts. Only a small percentage of thepopulation showed concern for artisticquality and permanence. The majoritymade new art as they pioneered a new

country and it was decades beforethese novel expressions were allowedstature.

Three points must be borne in mindin order to view American cultural

history properly. Most important isthe fact that the United States was

entirely a nation of immigrants im¬ported from other cultures. The onlyindigenous culture was that of theIndians who were driven from their

land and destroyed as a people. Amer¬ican folk culture as it developed with

time (and it did develop) is a synthesisof European, African, and to a muchlesser extent, Asian culture.

The second point relates to theimportation of other cultures and thepredominant motivation of the earlysettlers. Essentially, the United Stateswas a nation of farmers until the mid-

nineteenth century, a nation whichcolonized and exploited itself. Itscities were trading and supply centresfor the trek west to new lands. People

came from small, soil-poor farms ofEurope directly to the endless rich

prairies where they could own as muchland as they could cultivate andprotect.

These were hardy, frugal, hard¬working yeomen willing to struggleagainst man and nature, but cultivatedmusic, dance, or painting were not part

of their lives. They brought theirpeasant culture with them and practisedit in the settlements they built toresemble "home". Europeans are often

astounded today to find that there arewhole areas of some states where

English is not the common language,but rather German, Norwegian, Italianor Basque.

The third factor influencing culturalgrowth in the United States was theProtestant religions. Beginning withthe Puritans whose beliefs allowed for

only service to God and one's occupa¬tion, the other developing sectsadded fine variants aimed at repress¬

ing instincts toward the arts. All ofthe arts were expressly forbidden bythe Puritans, including bright coloursfor clothing. As late as the 1870s,the leaders of the Baptist, Methodist

and Presbyterian religions weredebating the appropriateness of familyrecreation, not to mention theatre,

dancing, or popular entertainments.In 1872, the Methodist Episcopal Con¬vention passed by majority vote alist of "amusements", including everyform of art, that were forbidden toall Methodists.

With these three conditions againstAmerican culture, how is it that the

arts managed to survive at all?CONTINUED PAGE 20

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CULTURE

IN THE ROUND

Open air concerts draw vast audiences to theparks and concert stadiums of the UnitedStates. Right, 70,000 New Yorkers listen to anevening symphony concert in Central Park.Below, part of the unusual continuous circulargallery of New York's Guggenheim Museumwhich houses an outstanding collection ofpaintings, sculpture and other works of art.Founded in 1937, the Museum was established

in its present ultra-modern home, designed bythe famous American architect, Frank LloydWright, in 1959. Below right, "Stonhenge inBrooklyn", a new playground sited in the heartof a low-income housing project in Brooklyn.Sponsored by the New York City Housing Autho¬rity, it has vaults, sliding towers and a maze tointrigue the youngsters. Its vertical concreteslabs recall the ancient "standing stones" atStonehenge, in England.

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19

AMERICAN CULTURE (Continued from page 16)

From the birth of a nation to the rhapsody in blue

20

Fortunately, the new continent pouredforth riches beyond anyone's dreamsand wealth meant travel. Sons were

sent back to England to be educated,wives went to France on shopping

trips. European merchants, craftsmen,and finally artists found opportunitiesby serving the wealthy. One Germanarchitect designed and built over fiftyof the most gracious plantation man¬sions in the south, training slaves ateach place to be carpenters, wood-carvers and joiners. And taste beganto breed taste.

H| | OWEVER, the Industrial

Revolution is responsible for the mostinfluential and most debatable cultural

movement. A period of 57 years, bet¬ween 1860 and 1917, saw the foundingof most of the United States qualityinstitutions of the arts. The Metropo¬

litan Opera, the Metropolitan Museum,the New York and St. Louis orchestras,

were among the earliest, but by thetime of the First World War most of

the famous schools and institutions

were established.

This was, however, imported culture.

It was an attempt to ape the capitals

of Europe, not to develop an Americancultural life. Considerable evidence

points to the fact that many of thewealthy who established, attended,and carefully guarded these institutionsfrom any infusion of the lower classesdid not really enjoy the experienceof art.

However, at the time when the

industrial barons were buying culturepackaged in Europe, other socialchanges were taking place. Thecountry was turning from an agricul¬tural society into an urban one. Newwaves of immigrants were arrivingfrom Europe, this time to stay in thecities and find places for their lives.Whole sections of large cities becameforeign to native Americans and someremain so today.

In addition, rural people joined theurban migration and began fighting forthe factory jobs. It was this phen¬omenon that struck at the villageand family-oriented Protestant reli¬gions. Thousands were attending thelow-priced and continuous vaudeville

shows and the leading clergy wereforced to choose between retractingtheir position on entertainment or

watching the American family dis¬integrate as the younger generation

preferred the orchestra seat to thechurch pew.

This was a major debate in thenation from 1880 until 1915, by whichtime entertainment was so widelyaccepted that the few remaining"village" preachers were ignored.

As one leading clergyman afteranother crossed over the box-office

threshold, the vaudeville entrepreneursmade every effort to hold their en¬dorsement by providing elevating andpolite acts in their theatres. It was

during this period that American tasteand humour was developed anddistilled. This was also the periodwhen the sexless, non-controversial

content of Hollywood films wasperfected. Vaudeville added films to

the acts presented in the early 1920s.Since the theatre-owners prided them¬selves on the "family entertainment"motif of their attractions, the Holly¬wood film-makers produced filmsaimed at these major markets.

Meanwhile, indigenous culture wasgrowing untended and unappreciated.Theatrical and musical performancesabounded from the early seventeenthcentury and were attended by reb¬ellious Protestants, European-orient¬ed Americans, and members of minor¬

ity religions, but native creative talentand ideas were not valued as compar¬able to any work or artist of Europeanorigin. Church opposition kept manytalented people from embracing theartist's life, although literature andpainting were not always included onlists of forbidden pastimes, and Amer¬ican authors and painters sometimesfound sympathetic acceptance at homeso long as they followed Europeantraditions. However, through thenineteenth century, from BenjaminWest to Mary Cassatt and HenryJames, Europe had the climate thatclaimed America's most original andtalented artists.

What are the uniquely Americancontributions to world culture ? Onlywhen the contributions had been

envied around the world did Americans

recognize them and begin to believethat this culture could produce its ownart. Three individual art forms became

labelled as distinctly American in theearly twentieth century: jazz, a uniqueform of dancing, and the musicalcomedy. All three came out of con¬ditions of suppression. All threeevolved from a folk subculture that

was expressed freely, but held un¬acceptable by the main stream ofAmerican society until after it wasapplauded wildly In other countries.

Jazz, as is widely known, was bornof a European mother and a African

father. Slaves and freed Negroespicked up European instruments andmelodies and added rhythms andmusical organization as they felt it.From the funeral processions andbrothels of the south, it spread northand east until the world danced to the

blues. It influenced European com¬posers and then serious American

composers began legitimizing itssounds.

A jazz dancer tapped his feet tocomplex rhythms and the enthusiasticapproval of audiences all over Europe,including Queen Victoria, about 1850.At that time no respectable American

gentleman would have admitted havingseen Juba (William Henry Lane) oranyone who danced in his style.Isadora Duncan, fifty years later, waspractically driven from the country forideas about free movement and

rhythm. These roots led to so-calledmodern dance which existed as an

underground culture until forty yearsago, and only recently attracted astable audience.

USICAL theatre began inAmerica before the revolutionary war,and evolved steadily from the first pro¬fessional all-American musical, The

Archers, first performed in 1796. Onereason for an almost tyrannicalpreoccupation with combining playswith music was the opposition of localgovernments (church inspired) to"straight" theatre. It was assumed thatmusic had a certain moral tone and

no play could be really bad if it hadsongs connected with it.

Minstrel shows, showboats, tra¬

velling troupes, and even circusesfound musical plays a popular part oftheir repertory with the rural andfrontiersmen audiences. Partly due tothe tradition established in the east in

the eighteenth century, but also prob¬ably because Americans have aninexplicable love for gay melodies, themusical grew and flourished andbecame the standard of the world.

By the second decade of the

twentieth century, when the UnitedStates came to realize its relative

strength among nations, its people atthe same time realized that a tra¬

ditional American culture did in fact

exist, or was rapidly developing. Theyears of the 1920s saw an enormousburst of artistic energy from American

artists. As evidence, Americans had

been winning Nobel Prizes in scienceand peace since the beginning of theaward in 1901 (Peace Prize, 1906;Physics, 1907; etc.); but not untilSinclair Lewis won the Literature Prize

in 1930 had an American artist receivedsuch world acclaim. Since then, fiveAmericans and one author who was

born and educated in the United States

(T. S. Eliot) have been honoured.

T| HE point of this capsulized

social history of the arts in America isthat to speak of cultural policy as anextension of traditional culture is a

difficult undertaking in the UnitedStates. Many countries have under¬gone periods of cultural encourage¬ment and discouragement in thecourse of their history. They haveseen their folk art evolve from the first

primitive tribes to settle in theirregions at the dawn of time. Othernations Jiave seen their cities becomeestablished as centres of culture and

commerce and remain such centres

century after century. And they haveproudly acclaimed their mature artistsas they emerged from mature artisticinstitutions and societies. All these

events and circumstances are not

applicable to the United States.

Its history began with the culturesof many countries severed from thetraditional roots. Art was officially

discouraged by the powerful andalmost universal fundamentalist reli¬

gions. The nation was scattered inthe wilderness for its first hundred

years. Cities of sophistication in theeighteenth century became ordinarytowns as the centre of national life

moved west. (Charleston, SouthCarolina, and Savannah, Georgia, wereonce extremely important national cul¬tural capitals.) New Orleans lost its exci¬tement to St. Louis; St. Louis lost its

place to Chicago as the railroadreplaced the riverboat. No repertorytheatre to date has managed to holdtogether for 25 years, only twoorchestras can boast of 100 years ofexistence.

Indigenous American culture did notclearly become definable until thetwentieth century when Americancomposers, playwrights and authorsbegan to find the unique American beatIn their work. It came from the Indian

ceremonies and the restlessness of

the pioneer families, but its expressionas an instinctively understood inter¬pretation had to wait until the land

was conquered.

All this not only affects the scopeof a cultural policy, but also affects

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

THE EXPANDING ARTS

IN THE U.S.A.

The United States boasts 1,200 community orchestras, 30,000 amateurtheatre groups and between 10 and 15 million amateur painters as wellas countless ceramists, weavers, lapidists, etc.

There is virtually no town in the U.S. of 5,000 population that does nothave an adequate general public library augmented by a state librarysystem. It is estimated that about 10 per cent (20 million) of thepopulation reads intensely while a larger proportion reads books onlyoccasionally. University publishing houses now make up an importantsegment of the American book world.

In addition to commercial television the U.S. has 140 public T.V.stations which broadcast only educational and cultural programmes.Recent legislation provides federal funds for a quasi-public organizationto weld these educational T.V. stations into a single network.

An American Film Institute was launched in 1967 with a $5.2 millionfund made up of contributions from federal funds, private foundationgrants and commercial film corporation gifts. The Institute trains youngpeople for the profession and works with colleges on film-study coursesand the promotion of the film arts. Funds are provided for unusualfeature films by young directors. 150 U.S. universities offer coursesin film study and appreciation.

Resident professional theatre groups are spreading across the U.S.By 1968, fifty cities had resident companies performing high calibreBroadway and standard classics. Some of these companies also tryout new or controversial plays. A new emerging theatre force is the"theatre-in-the-street" movement. The movement is concerned with

social aspects of theatre and the cultural development of lower incomegroups. Standard modern works and classics, original dramas andimprovisational works are performed from mobile truck theatres, on streetcorners, in churches, schools and open fields. Budgets are precariousand support comes largely from public and private grants.

There are now 28 major symphony orchestras in the U.S. These andan additional 40 smaller orchestras have received grants totalling$82 million for the establishment of endowment funds.

Some 200 cultural centres have been built in the U.S. since 1950, buta National Endowments for the Arts study estimates that $7,500 millionwould be required to equip the nation with all the facilities needed forthe arts. Such centres are usually financed by contributions from localprivate and public resources with occasional federal or state participation.Some more unusual methods have been adopted: the state of New Jerseyfinanced the Garden Arts Center from expressway tolls; Huntsville,Alabama is paying for its cultural centre by a municipal liquor tax; inTacoma, Washington, a city jail was given over for an arts centre.

About 85 per cent of all contributions to the arts in the U.S. come fromprivate individuals, foundations or other corporate sources. About 1,500foundations make grants to the arts totalling about $60 million annually.

There are 350 art museums in the U.S. and about half of them have

continuing programmes in one of the art forms in addition to thevisual arts.

*

A survey of 221 U.S. cities conducted in 1967 concluded that more newbuildings for the arts have been completed in the past five years than inany other period in U.S. history. Seventy-one cities have buildings forthe arts under way; 36 museums, 34 theatres, 23 arts centres and7 concert halls have been built for 70 American cities in recent years. 21

^- ... ^ ~ .^ *i*nymefi*T)

Jazz is one of the uniquely Americancontributions to world culture. The

driving force that was to give jazz itsimpact came from the Black street musiciansof the big cities. One of the best knownof these early groups was Joe "King"Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, pictured leftin San Francisco in 1921. Below, listeningthrough earphones, a fan enjoys a modernstereophonic jazz recording.

-i

Pnoto USlS

22

AMERICAN CULTURE (Continued)

the ability to evaluate and effectivelyplan long-term programmes even if adefined political philosophy made suchplanning possible. Instead, as statedat Unesco's 1968 Round Table Meetingon Cultural Policies, in Monaco,

"Cultural needs are evolving more

quickly; new needs are appearing, andpublic taste changes. .. One must,therefore, avoid choosing a frameworkwhich may become too narrow andpreserve the possibility of a flexibleadaptation of resources to the require¬ments of a rapidly evolving culturalscene." This must be the American

position.

The events sketched lightly here aregenerally the cultural heritage forwhich contemporary cultural leaders ofthe United States must account as

policies and programmes progress.By all signs, the United States is wellinto a most Incredible artistic naissan¬

ce. The historical maturity has caughtup with the experiences of the worldsituation. The economic strength ofthe nation is capable of sustaining anyartistic effort, and its international

commitments demand an ever deeperinvolvement with other countries in all

enterprises, including intellectual andartistic. In addition, far in advance ofother nations, the United States has

encountered the extreme effects of the

Industrial Revolution, the imminent

realization that man Is or may bemechanically obsolete. It is alreadyglaringly evident that America cannotcontrol some of the situations into

which its technology has placed it.This is a time in American history thatcries for the humanistic influence in

life. The United States seems to be

moving toward a full realization of theimportance of culture as a counter¬weight to technocracy.

>

Emblem of the lunar module

"Eagle" in which U.S. AstronautsNeil Armstrong and EdwinAldrin made the first moon

landing in July 1969, duringthe Apollo 11 space mission.

Photo US IS

THE EAGLE'spacecraft' of thepre-scientific age

by JoséPatrocinio de Souza

JOSE PATROCINIO DE SOUZA, Indianhistorian and writer, is head of the Depart¬ment of History at Elphinstone College,Bombay, the oldest university college inwestern India. Professor de Souza has made

a special study of the origins, migrationand meaning of symbols, particularly the uni¬versal symbols of the eagle and the serpent.He is preparing two books in this field: "TheSymbol of the Double-Headed Eagle: ItsOrigin, Diffusion and Significance" and "TheEagle and the Serpent: A Study in Sym¬bolism. "

wHOEVER conceived the

idea of naming the Lunar Module whichlanded the first men on the moon, the

"Eagle", displayed, consciously or un¬consciously, a remarkable sense ofhistory. For, man being carried intoouter space by an eagle, or manascending to the astral regions in theform of an eagle, was a widespreadhuman fancy in the pre-scientific age.

It is true that the Athenian comic

dramatist, Aristophanes, caricaturedthe belief in his play Peace, by send¬ing his hero up on the back of a dung-beetle. Aristophanes notwithstanding,the eagle fancy persisted, givingrise to a succession of myths and toworks of art illustrating them.

This flight of early man into spacewas, of course, a flight of his imagina¬tion. But the spacecraft "Eagle" hastransformed myth into reality and madethe ancient dream come true, thus

linking two principal epochs in thehistory of man the Age of Faith andthe Age of Science. And, whetherreal or imaginary, the object of man'sflight into space has been funda¬mentally the same throughout history."Man was voyaging to the planets,"says Norman Mailer in his forthcomingbook A Fire on the Moon, "in order tolook for God. Or was it to destroyHim?"

But why did the ancients imaginethat the eagle would be able to carryman into outer space? To the people,who lived, worked and had their beingin and through symbols, the eagle wasthe sky-bird par excellence. Dwellingat inaccessible heights and soaringhigher, perhaps, than any other bird,the eagle was flying, so it seemedto their lively imagination, towards thesun and merging itself with the sky.It thus became to them a fit attribute

and vehicle of their sky and solar

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

23

Soaring through

ancient mythology

and legend

Right, carved silver plate dating from the Sassanianepoch in Persia (3rd to 7th century A.D.). A sky-eagleholds Anahit, ancient Persian goddess of fertility whoalso personifies the planet Venus.

Left, designs carved on a gold bowlfound at Hasanlu, in Iranian Azerbaijan,represent episodes from the lives ofthe gods and battlefield scenes. Atcentre, an eagle carries off a man onits' back.

Illustrations by courtesy of the author

Right, a two-headed eagle carrying aprince into space decorates thisIranian silk cloth (11th-12th centuriesA.D.). The double-headed eagle has along and ancient history in theheraldry of many countries of Asia,Africa and Europe.

24

THE EAGLE (Continued)

deities, such as Zeus of the Greeks,Jupiter of the Romans and Vishnu ofthe Hindus.

The eagle as the symbol of the skyis graphically represented on a Sas¬sanian carved silver plate now pre¬served In the Hermitage Museum,Leningrad. A spread eagle is depictedas holding by the hips a nude womanwith pomegranate breasts. In herright hand she holds aloft a plateof fruit, apparently pomegranates.Scholars have identified this figurewith the old Iranian fertility goddess,Anahit.

But Anahit also had a specific astralsignificance: she was the personi¬fication of the planet Venus, themorning star. The motif may thus betaken to represent the sky in the formof an eagle "presenting its loveliestplanet." Although the design belongsto Sassanian times, the conception ofthe sky-bird synthetized with ananthropomorphic astral deity datesback to the second, or more probably,the third millennium B.C.

Moving, as it seemed to the ancients,

between earth and heaven, the mostmajestic of birds was conceived bythem as carrying kings and heroesfrom earth to heaven, or as being sentdown to earth by the gods to take uptheir favourites thither. The mytholo¬gies of many nations are rich instories of high-ranking personagesbeing transported to the astral regionsby the eagle.

The oldest, perhaps, of these mythsis the ' much-travelled tale of the

Mesopotamian hero, Etana who wasthe first man to go "where eaglesdare." According to the earlySumerian chronology, this prototypeof the modern astronauts was the

thirteenth king of the First Dynasty ofKish after the Great Flood.

Etana's flight into outer space,clinging to the pinions of an eagle, isthe theme of the Legend of Etana, afascinating poem in cuneiform, whichhas survived in a later copy, fragmentsof which were recovered on some claytablets from the library of the Assyrianmonarch, Assurbanipal. They werefirst published by George Smith inhis remarkable book, The Chaldean

Genesis, and added to later by otherscholars.

The occasion for Etana's flight intospace was his quest for "the plant ofchildbirth," which would cure his wifeof her barrenness. Etana had been

looking high and low for thismiraculous herb, but in vain, so heappealed to Shamash, the Sun-god, tohelp him find It.

The god directed him to a certaineagle, which Etana found lying in a pitbadly bruised in a fight with a serpent,its traditional cosmic antagonist.Etana tended the wounded bird withall the care he could bestow on it.

Thanks to his ministrations, the bird'swounds were healed and it regainedits strength. Out of gratitude to theking, the eagle undertook to carry himto the courts of Ishtar (Venus), thegoddess of childbirth, and thusaddressed him:

My friend, lift up thy countenance,Come and let me carry thee to the

heaven of Anu.

On my breast place thy breast,On my pinions place thy palms.

At the eagle's bidding, Etana, oldthough he was, taking courage intohis hands, "set his breast against thebreast of the eagle, and laid his handson the feathers of its wings." Thenthe eagle took off without makingmuch noise unlike Apollo-11 withthe old man clinging to it for dear life,and soared higher and higher, pointingout on the way "the vast dwindlingpanorama of earth and sea."

At last they reached heaven, andpassed through the courts of Anu,Enlil and Ea, but the throne of Ishtarwas still higher up. It was now sixhours that they had been going upwithout a stop, and Etana, eitherbecause his courage failed him orbecause he felt giddy, ordered theeagle to halt and take him back toearth. Unfortunately, the text is badlydefaced here, and the poem ends withthe sad account of the "spacecraft's"crash landing.

On numerous cylinder seals datingback to the Dynasty of Akkad, thirdmillennium B.C., Is depicted a strangescene which many scholars haveinterpreted as illustrating the flight of

Etana Into space, though on theseseals a bearded man is seen ridingon the back of a bird, whereasaccording to the Legend of Etana, thepatriarch was carried up clinging tothe pinions of an eagle.

The bird on these seals is probablyan eagle, taking off with a beardedman, possibly Etana, on its back.Immediately below the eagle is a dog,or, more commonly, two dogs seatedor standing face-to-face on either sideof a bag or vessel, evidently belongingto the patriarch. They are frequentlydepicted looking up in surprise at theirmaster. Another interesting featureof these representations is the flockof sheep.

These details

that the man on

is a shepherd,prising, for inbears the name

shepherds, too,expressing theiran arm in the

leave us in no doubt

the back of the eagleThis Is hardly sur-

the King-lists Etanaof Shepherd. Other

are often shown

amazement by liftingattitude of wonder.

This ancient Mesopotamian tale andits illustrations in Sumerian art tra

velled widely, for Mesopotamia lay atthe cross-roads of the ancient cultural

world. The motif first migrated toIran. On an Iranian shell cylinder,contemporaneous with the Akkadianseals, a mythological scene is depicted.Above a seated female figure, withsnakes emanating from her shoulders,appears an eagle over one of whosewings a human head is seen. Thisdesign has been taken by somescholars to be a rendering of the mythof Etana in an abbreviated form.

There Is yet another, and better,Illustration of the legend in Iranian art.It is carved on a magnificent gold bowldating back to the second millenniumB.C. This rare object was discoveredby Robert Dyson in 1958 at Hasanlu,in Iranian Azerbaijan in the course of anarchaeological expedition led by JohnDyson. In the elaborate scene de¬picted on the bowl we see an eaglein full flight carrying off a humanbeing, recalling the Mesopotamianmyth.

The tradition of Etana's flight sur¬vived in later tales, notably in thestory of Alexander's flight into space.Among the many wonderful exploitsattributed to Alexander the Great is

the one of his making himself smalland flying through the air perched onthe back of an eagle till he reachedthe "heights of the heavens," which heexplored. From that altitude Alexanderwas able to acquire a knowledge ofthe dimensions of the earth, and ofthe seas and mountains that he wouldhave to cross in his march of worid

conquest.

The Koran relates that a Babylonianking held a disputation with theHebrew patriarch Abraham concerning"Abraham's Lord". Commentators on

the Koranic text have identified the

monarch with Nimrod, who afterwardscaused Abraham to be cast into

a fire, from which, however, he wasmiraculously delivered. Thereupon,Nimrod built a tower so as to ascend

to heaven to see "Abraham's Lord"

and make war on him, but the towerwas mysteriously overthrown.

But Nimrod did not give up hisattempt and had himself carried up ina chest drawn by four monstrous,eagle-like birds, then after wanderingfor some time in space, he fell downon a mountain with such great forcethat he made it shake.

A similar story is told in the greatIranian epic, the Shah-nama, aboutKing Kay Kaus who was lifted up intospace in a car to which were harnessedfour eagles, one at each corner, whichflew upwards in their efforts to reachthe lumps of flesh attached to theupper parts of the car. There areseveral examples of the illustration ofthis legend which may be referred toa Sassanian original, the best knownof which is the marble slab insertedin the northern wall of San Marco inVenice.

Echoes of the Etana myth are alsoto be heard in the Arabian Nights

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

25

THE EAGLE (Continued)

The griffin through the Great Golden Gate

King Etana, a Mesopotamianhero of the Kish dynasty, iscarried by an eagle up toheaven in search of the plantof fertility. Detail from aSumerian seal from the third

millenium B.C.

26

Entertainments. During his SecondVoyage, Sinbad the Sailor tied himselfwith his turban to the legs of thefabulous Rukh or Roc, an eagle-likebird, which flew up into the air carryingSinbad with it. It soared so high intospace that poor Sinbad lost sight ofthe earth and it seemed to him as if

he had reached the very limit of thesky. The bird, however, descended,till it alighted on the top of a hill.

Great adventurer that he was,Sinbad had yet another opportunity tofly into space. In the course of hisSeventh Voyage, he found that in acertain town at the beginning of eachmonth the townsmen were transformed

into birds and flew. Sinbad induced

one of them to carry him on his back,but the man, or rather the bird, flewso high that Sinbad could hear "theangels glorifying God in the heavenlydome."

In Tibet there is the story of aGriffin a fabulous animal with lion's

body and eagle's beak and wings,which rewarded the hero by taking himupon its back and flying straightthrough the "Great Golden Gate",where it deposited the youth in thecentre of a vast courtyard round whichsat numerous gods, fairies and "otherdenizens of the sky." Similarly, inSwedish folklore the Phoenix, the

fabulous eagle-like Sun-bird, oncecarried a youth on its back to "thebeautiful Palace East of the Sun and

North of the Earth."

The Etana myth found a spiritual ex¬pression at Rome in the apotheosisof the Emperor. We get a detailedaccount of the ceremonies connected

with the deification of the Roman

Emperor from Herodian's descriptionof the obsequies of Severus, whichHerodian apparently witnessed. Themost significant of the funerary riteswas "the liberation, at the moment of

kindling the funeral pyre, of an eaglewhich was supposed to bear theEmperor's soul to heaven."

Apotheoses of emperors and mem

bers of the Imperial family wererecurring motifs in Roman art. Theeagle is an indispensable part of theserepresentations. Among the betterknown examples are the apotheosis ofTitus sculpted on the Arch of Titus andthat of Augustus on a grand cameoin the Louvre. Bronze medallions of

Antoninus Pius have "Consecratio"

inscribed on their reverse, and the

emperor with a himation (draped gar¬ment) wrapped about his legs and asceptre in his right hand is shownbeing carried aloft on the back of aneagle. On some Roman coins the apo¬theosis of Faustina is represented.

There is a story in the

Mahabharata which is reminiscent of

the apotheosis of the Roman Emperor.After a brave warrior named Bhu-

rishtrava died on the field of battle

his soul was carried to heaven, on the

order of Krishna, by Garuda, the gianteagle of Hindu mythology and themount of Vishnu, as of Krishna, hisincarnation. Similarly, the soul of theCeltic hero Lugh-Llew Llaw in theMabinogion, flew up to heaven as aneagle when Lugh-Llew was killed bythe tanist (his heir), at midsummer.

The archetypal myth of the eaglecarrying kings and heroes up to heavenhas its reverse version in Iranian

mythology. Rustam, a sky hero, wasbrought by the Simurgh, a fabulousbird of the eagle species, in theopposite direction from heaven toearth to be one of the first monarchs

of Iran.

In Greek mythology also there isthe story of the Sky-god Zeus comingdown from heaven in the form of an

eagle and abducting Thaleia, a nymphof Mount Aitne in Sicily. This legendis illustrated on a red-figured vase-painting from Nola, Italy, which showsZeus as a mighty eagle in a blaze ofcelestial splendour carrying Thaleiafrom earth to heaven.

But the myth of the eagle of Zeuscoming down to earth and carrying offa mortal, which gained immense popu¬larity in Greece and later in Rome,is that of Ganymede the son of Tros,who gave his name to Troy. Becauseof his dazzling beauty, this youth wascarried off from earth to heaven to

replace Hebe as cup-bearer to Zeus.There, are several versions of this

myth, variously describing the mannerin which Ganymede was kidnapped.But the most popular version has itthat he was carried off by the eagleof Zeus.

The rape of Ganymede was a favou¬rite motif in Greek art. The most cele¬

brated and, by all accounts, the mosttypical representation of the myth isthe Ganymede group in bronze byLeochares, an accomplished Attic

A bronze medallion of the

First-Second century A.D.showing Jupiter's Eagle bearingoff to heaven the Roman

Emperor Antoninus Pius(86-161 A.D.) while the peopleof Rome (symbolized) lookon in wonder.

Illustrations by courtesy of the author

sculptor of the fourth century B.C.Although the original, praised by Pliny,has been lost, several copies of thiswork have survived the ravages oftime. The best of them is the marble

copy in the Museo Pio Clementino atthe Vatican.

The presence of the dog in the Leo-chares sculpture reminds us of theEtana scenes on the Sumerian cylinderseals. So does Virgil's description inthe Aeneid, Book V, of the designembroidered on the robe awarded to

Cloanthus, the winning captain in theboat race. In Dryden's translation thepassage reads:

There Ganymede Is wrought withliving art,

Chasing through Ida's groves thetrembling hart,

Breathless he seems, yet eager topursue,

When from aloft descends, in openview,

The bird of Jove, and sousing on hisprey,

With crooked talons bears the boyaway.

In vain, with lifted hands and gazingeyes,

His guards behold him soaringthrough the skies,

And dogs pursue his flight withimitated cries.

There are several adaptations of theGanymede group by Leochares in theGraeco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. In

these specimens, Garuda is shownseizing a Nagini after the manner ofthe eagle in the Vatican copy of theLeochares masterpiece.

IN the Iranian art of the early

Islamic Period, representations of ayouth being carried up by an eagleseem to have been influenced, by theGanymede sculpture of Leochares. Butthey are also in line with the primitiveIranian tradition of the sky-eagle beingsynthetized with the sky-deity.

Two examples deserve particularnotice. One is on a tenth-centurybowl in the Keleklan Collection at the

Victoria and Albert Museum, London.A spread eagle is depicted on theinside of the bowl, carrying off a herowho is extended over the body ofthe bird and is clinging to it. A strik¬ing feature of this design is the dogshown within the double border round

the eagle.

The other example is even moreremarkable. It occurs as a decoration

on a twelfth-century white silk com¬pound cloth in the A.D. Bliss Collec¬tion. Here the eagle is double-headedand carries off a prince, who claspswith both his hands a circlet passinground the neck of the bird.

Indian mythology Is not lacking instories of the eagle being sent downfrom on high to carry mortals to hea¬ven. There is, for instance, the storyrelated in the Mahabharata of a kingcalled Vasu Uparichara, who was

deeply devoted to Narayana (Vishnu).When his time was up, "renouncinghis body", Uparichara ascended toheaven. After having had a taste ofheavenly bliss, however, the poor mantumbled down from paradise and"went down a hole in the earth."

This came about through the curseof the Brahamanas, whose wrath Upa¬richara had aroused when he acted as

an arbitrator in a dispute betweenthem and the gods regarding the pro¬per method of offering religious sacri¬fices, and had the temerity to give hisaward in favour of the gods.

Although, like Lucifer, Vasu had fal¬len so low, he did not, unlike Lucifer,give up his faith in God (Vishnu) butcontinued to worship him as fer¬vently as before. Being highly pleas¬ed with Uparichara who thus showedhimself to be entirely devoted to himand dependent on him as his solerefuge in distress, Vishnu orderedhis mount, the swift Garuda, to rescuethe fallen king.

In an unparalleled diving operation,Garuda swooped down into the pit inwhich Vasu was lying and, lifting himup, it soared into the sky and therereleased him from its beak. In this

way, thanks to the eagle of Vishnu,Vasu Uparichara re-entered heavenand regained his divine form.

By a strange coincidence, there isalso an intimate connexion between

the eagle and the moon in Indianmythology. According to the Rigveda,it was Suparna, "the fair-wing'd one",which is but another name for Garuda,that brought Soma to man. Now, inthe Veda, Soma means the exhilarat¬ing celestial drink. But it also meansthe moon, which was supposed tohold the life-giving, wisdom-impartingnectar.

Sad to relate, the moon which the"Eagle", unlike the bird of legend,has brought within human reach is adry and dusty planet without so muchas a drop of water, let alone nectar, inits so-called "seas". And to think that

there was a time when man imaginedthe moon to be a bowl of liquid, sothat Shakespeare could fancy "youngCupid's fiery shaft" being "quench'din the chaste beams of the wat'rymoon I"

Verily, the "Eagle", while it hasenabled man to realize one dream,has shattered another. It has com¬

pleted the process of stripping themoon of all the romance with which,from times immemorial, man haddraped it, and has exposed it forwhat it really is an ugly, pock¬marked planet, devoid of vegeta¬tion, unfit for normal human habita¬tion, without the faintest resem¬

blance to its personification as thebeautiful Selene by the ancient Greeks.Aptly did Thomas Campbell versify:

"Tis distance lends enchantment to

the view,And robes the mountain in its azure

hue."

Garuda, a fabulous bird, carrier ofthe Hindu god Vishnu and mortalenemy of the genii of land and sea,carries of a Nagini, a femalesprite. This Gandhara bas-reliefprobably dates from the 4thcentury A.D.

27

The five crises

of the university

by James A. Perkins

T

28

HERE is not just a singlecrisis of the university, there areseveral crises. What we must recog¬nize is that any one of them by itselfwould be enough to cause serioustrouble. The second point is that thesecrises are closely related to one ano¬ther. Thirdly, their solution will prob¬ably require a major change in theorganization, structure and mission ofthe university.

The first crisis is of course the crisis

of numbers. Throughout the world thelargest numerical increase in educa¬tional growth is at the primary andsecondary level, but by all odds thehighest percentage increase in educa¬tional growth is at the level of highereducation.

While experiences differ from coun¬try to country it is safe to say that onthe average the number of studentsentering higher education has doubledin the decade from 1960 to 1970.

Even this swollen number will at

least double in the next decade. If

there were no other problems, thisastonishing growth would, by itself,result in almost intolerable strains on

most institutions of higher education inmost countries.

The root causes of this increase are

JAMES A. PERKINS of the United States isChairman and Director of the Center for Edu¬

cational Enquiry, In New York. He was aparticipant at Unesco's International sympo¬sium on "Education and the Developmentof Man", held in Paris in February of thisyear, and presented a major study on "TheCrises of the University", on which thepresent article is based.

to be found in the requirements ofmodern technological society. Theneed for trained or even semi-trained

manpower is unending. No countryand no people have a chance ofentering the modern world with only asmall fraction of the population attain¬ing the equivalent of a secondaryschool degree. And no country andno people can hope to provide theleadership necessary for a modernsociety if only a very small fractionacquire the equivalent of a college oruniversity degree.

It is of course unwise to be too

specific about what the thresholdfigures for advanced education shouldbe for any particular country. But forthis writer 30 per cent of the relevantage group going through secondaryschool and 5 per cent of the relevantage group going through the universityare the threshold figures for a modernsociety.

This does not mean that with 30 percent acquiring secondary school de¬grees and 5 per cent acquiring univer¬sity degrees the country has adequatemanpower for the modern world. Itmeans simply that until these figuresare reached a society has today littlechance of entering on the current worldstage. Furthermore, larger percentagesthan these will be necessary for thosecountries who would lead.

It is a sombre note that progresstoward even those limited objectiveshas not been uniformly steady. Largeparts of the world are nowhere nearthese threshold figures, and in manycountries, expanded higher and sec¬ondary education must be viewedagainst the backdrop of the battleagainst illiteracy, which is not beingwon. This year there are almost800 million adult illiterates in the world

a heavy anchor that the developingcountries must drag with them as theystruggle towards modernization.

Nevertheless, most countries havedemocratized their secondary educa¬tion. Heretofore, in many places,secondary education was the selectiveand narrow route through whichentrance to college and university wasdetermined. Admission to the univer¬

sity was really controlled by carefulselection for secondary school throughexaminations taken at the ages of 11or 12. Under these arrangements, itwas quite possible for countries tofollow a principle of permitting allsecondary school graduates to enterthe university.

With the widening of admissions tosecondary education, however, tradi¬tional policies of automatic entry intouniversity have led to enrolments that,in many cases, are almost grotesque.Over 100,000 students are enrolled inthe Universities of Paris and Mexico

apiece.

Those countries that have tried to

regulate this tide by turning aside largefractions of the new graduates fromsecondary school have run into muchsocial opposition, which has been mat¬ched only by the reaction of studentswho have been admitted to find no pla¬ces prepared for them.

The central fact about numbers is

that we have opened wide the gates tosecondary education but have plannedhigher education on the traditionalbases of professional standards andhigh selectivity. It is this mismatch ofnumbers and of social doctrine that

is at the core of the crisis of numbers.

We are trying to pour the ocean intoour wine glasses and we are gettingwet.

The second crisis of the universities

is that of finance, which stems directlybut not exclusively from the crisis ofnumbers. Because we were preparedneither in doctrine nor in administration

for the doubling of our student en¬trance during the decade of the Six¬ties, we are suddenly faced with largedemands for funds, for which neither

fiscal policy nor tax structures wereadequately prepared. The result hasbeen shortages in every part of thesystem, including both manpower andmoney.

The budgets of the universities havegone up not only to accomodate adoubled enrolment within a decade but

also to deal with the improvidence thatcomes from continuing old patternswhich are unnecessarily expensive.The shocking fact is that the produc¬tivity of higher education has notimproved during this decade, the percapita cost of student education hasincreased, and the effect of these mul¬tiplying factors and soaring budgetshas fallen largely on the public trea¬suries indeed, in most countries,

exclusively on the public treasuries.

As a result of these twin crises of

numbers and costs, there is hardly auniversity in the world that is not infinancial difficulty that runs all the wayfrom serious to catastrophic.

CONTINUED PAGE 30

Photo O Paul Almasy. París

CRISES OF THE UNIVERSITY (Continued)

The paradox of too much success

30

The consequences are not difficultto discover. The first is an enormous

increase in the use of public funds.Tuition rates have steadily increased.Yet, in those countries that havefinanced a substantial part of highereducation from student tuition, the per¬centage of the total cost it is able tosupport has steadily declined. Publicmoney has become an increasinglyimportant element in every budget.

Another consequence of the univer¬sity crises has, of course, been anincrease in public surveillance of aca¬demic expenditures which has in turnraised deep problems about the futureautonomy of individual institutions andof the whole educational system. Ittakes no crystal-ball gazer to anticipatethat, as educational budgets increaseas a fraction of total government bud¬gets, the public demand for surveil¬lance will increase. Thus, a wholenew set of relationships between theuniversity and the central governmentsstands high on the agenda of univer¬sity managers.

For many countries, if not most,higher education has been supportedalmost exclusively by public funds asa matter of tradition. For them the

development of new relationshipsbetween university and state will notbe so difficult but they are alreadyexperiencing the effects of the pub¬lic demand that their governmentsexercise tighter control over academicexpenditures.

For those countries where a largepart of higher education has beenprivately financed, as in the case ofthe United States, Japan and India, anincreased dependence on public fundscreates a brand of academic trauma.

To surrender independence becauseof financial need is rarely a gracefulexercise.

The third crisis is that of relevance.

Several points are important here.The first is that traditional educationoffers little nourishment for the most

crucial needs of new countries, or forthe needs of some older countries

now in the process of modernization.

The Latin American universities, for

example, with their heavy emphasison law, medicine and letters, have notseemed completely relevant to the newthrust of student demands for appro¬priate preparation for the managing ofsocieties that are both democratic and

technologically sophisticated.In the U.S. as well as other countries,

it is the students who have presentedthe university with the third crisis ofthe relevance of its curriculum. The

problem of relevant curricula comesunder two headings. First is the rele¬vance of general subject matter: thatis, a better balance of humanities,social sciences, and sciences thatmost universities have provided or are

even now prepared to provide. Asecond problem is the applicability ofthe education received. An educa¬

tional system may offer a balanceddiet of the three large disciplinaryareas but still all of them at such an

abstract level that students would find

their needs not met.

So in addition to a balanced curri¬

culum among the three great fieldsof knowledge, universities are alsounder pressure to provide a balancebetween basic and applied studies.Obviously the newer the country themore pressing are the demands forapplicable knowledge, while for themature countries a more balanced diet

between basic and applied work isdesirable.

But the problem of applied versusbasic, or relevant versus traditionalstudies in the newer countries is not

an easy one to resolve. Appliedstudies do not flourish very long unlessthey are attached, in fairly closeproximity, to more abstract matters.Most scholars realize that to do this

they must have connexions withscholars in more mature countries.

There is, in this arrangement, agreat danger of a brand of intellectualcolonialism which will keep the neweruniversities from ever rising to thesame level of sophistication and in¬fluence as those in established

countries with which they havedeveloped connexions.

Finally, universities in developingcountries need such contacts almost

more than established universities,

but if they are to tilt their interesttoo heavily toward the applied scien¬ces they will cut themselves off fromsome of the most vigorous intellectualgrowth going on in other parts of theworld. The pressure for attention toapplied work remains and will probablyhave to dominate the academic scene

in developing countries, but not at thecomplete expense of attention totraditional matters.

One other point needs to be madeabout the matter of relevance. As the

numbers of students have Increased,

larger and wider cross sections of oursocieties have been admitted to the

universities and many of today'sstudents are first-generation entrantswithout any family tradition to preparethem for the rigour of their studies.

In addition, many are from minoritygroups or heretofore deprived groupsof their societies, and the immediateutility of their university experiencehas to be demonstrated not only tothem but to the families who can

ill spare them. The result has beenan insistence on the part of these newclasses of students at the universitythat there be a direct and visible

demonstration that what they werebeing taught had a direct connexionwith the agonies of the environmentsfrom which they came.

In the United States this has been

most vividly witnessed by the demandsof many Black students for coursesthat would help them improve the cityghettos from which many had come.In Latin America, the Indian from Bol¬ivia, Colombia and Peru was demand¬ing an education that would helprescue him and his family from thegrinding poverty of his culture. Inless harsh tones, perhaps, this caseis being stated with greater andgreater emphasis by students comingfrom the industrial cities of Englandas well as the southern parts of Italy.

Even a casual observer will see the

connexion between numbers, costs

and relevance. To provide educationthat is relevant to a variety of demandsis a costly business, while higher costsrequire demonstrably higher relevance.And as the university meets thesedemands for relevance and offers

differentiated programmes, one canexpect an increased interest in univer¬sity attendance, which will feed thecycle of numbers, costs, and relevance.

This brings up one of the ironicfeatures of the current scene, namely,that these crises are in large part theresult of the university's successfuladaptation to the needs of its variouspublics. As the university succeeds,its problems increase rather thandecrease.

BUT even these three inter¬

related crises of costs, numbers andrelevance do not, by themselves,determine the atmosphere in whichthe university is struggling to per¬form its mission today. By them¬selves they would have producedconvulsions of major proportions andthe problems of adjustment wouldhave been severe. But there are

deeper matters at work that haveenormously complicated the busi¬ness of university management whichbrings us to the fourth crisis: thecrisis of the new priorities.

Somewhere in the beginning of theSixties, at least in the more develop¬ed countries, the leading edge of thesesocieties shifted its social prioritiesaway from attention to affluence, fullemployment, and peace-keeping bymilitary power, and toward more pre¬occupation with justice for the minor¬ities and the poor, the quality ofthe environment, and peace-keepingthrough the subordination of nationalambitions to the idea of the inter¬

national community. Not every countryhas felt this shift in priorities in eitherthe same manner or the same degree.But that some glacial change beganto take place during this past decadeis hard to deny.

One feature of this shift was the

adoption of the new priorities by the

young, while the adult world, withvivid recollection of the Depressionand the two world wars, was not aboutto abandon its deep concern for arising GNP and world peace bymilitary means if necessary.

Much has been made of the genera¬tion gap, and while there has alwaysbeen such a gap, something new hasbeen added. As societies modernize,the individual becomes free of both

restraints and duties imposed by tribeand family. Modern society requiresmobility and encourages it. The youngare sent to school while the adults are

drawn into the whirlpool of profes¬sional life. Thus the young are leftto create their own culture and theirown societies.

This disjunction of the generationswould have produced a whole varietyof complicated social problems evenif the pressing concerns for justiceand peace had not been adopted bythis new generation. But independencefuelled by zeal, alienation fed bydistrust, separatism exaggerated byfundamental difference in philosophy

all have served to present the uni¬versities with problems that are notjust complex, but explosive. They areexplosive because the generationscoming to the university saw theirdissatisfactions, caused by numbers,costs and relevance, through the redglare of anger at the society of whichthe university was an Increasinglyimportant part.

In these circumstances it was in¬

evitable that the university while try¬ing to deal with its internal priorities

would find the new social concerns

of its students almost impossible toresolve. They might be resolved ifthe students were content to have the

university function as a neutral forumin which these serious external prob¬lems could be debated.

But having become so closelyidentified with the society that support¬ed it, the university, clearly, was notonly an instrument for Investigation,but a target for opposition. This fourthcrisis of the university stems from aschizophrenia not yet resolvednamely, whether the university is morevaluable as a neutral arena for inquiryand debate, or more valuable as alever for social reform.

In general, when societies are divi¬ded, universities have had difficulty inestablishing their neutrality, or at leastmaintaining it, whereas when a societyhas a substantial consensus on its

main priorities, university neutralitybecomes the more possible.

It is not surprising, therefore, thatthe countries that have had the most

difficulty with their universities havebeen those with the deepest divisionsin their social philosophies and socialprogrammes. Universities are struggl¬ing today with this enormously complexproblem, which has become a heavilypolitical issue.

Most systems are trying to plot a

course between the two extremes of

neutrality and social activism by main¬taining the maximum of independencefrom society while also makingconcessions to the new concerns in

admissions policy and curricular ven¬tures. Numbers, costs, and relevanceare terribly important issues, but thecentral question is, to reiterate, therole and mission of the university: Isit a neutral and protected arena forfree thought, or an instrument forsocial betterment? The division of

opinion on this question has produceda crisis that has inflamed the others.

Behind even the crisis of universityidentity and mission there is anotherand deeper crisis that imperils thevery idea of the university itself. Thisfifth crisis is the new scepticism thatdenies the possibility of objective,rational thought. It would take a wholebook by itself to thread our waythrough the complexities of this cen¬tury and to trace the widening attack

on the rationality of man and even onhis potential for rationality.

Suffice it to say that the comfort¬able Western belief that reasoningman in a reasonable universe would

increasingly comprehend his environ¬ment to the benefit of a better

evolution of mankind is a notion that

has less currency with each passingyear. In its place has risen a mysti¬cism and a belief that somewhere

in the dark reaches of the mind, inthe senses and sensations, in feelingrather than in thought, one is morelikely to find truth than in an objectiveexamination of the world around us.

All this has undermined one of the

central notions upon which the univers¬ity is based that learning is cumula¬tive and that the opportunity forrational discourse is its raison d'être.

With these concepts under attack, the

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

STANDING ROOM ONLY. Student "cram-in" in this lecture hall at the Sorbonne,

in Paris, illustrates one of the big problems of the modernuniversity the crisis of numbers. Enrolment in higher education has doubledon the average in the last ten years and is likely to double againby 1980. Throughout the world the largest percentage increase ineducational growth is at the level of higher education.

CRISES OF THE UNIVERSITIES (Continued)

Idea of the university itself is inquestion.

In summary, therefore, the univers¬ity is facing five crises the crisis ofnumbers, the crisis of costs, the crisisof relevance, the crisis of priorities,and the crisis of scepticism.

Is it surprising therefore that theproblem of university governance isboth universal and pressing? Anyinstitution that had such a series of

interrelated crises placed on its agen¬da within a relatively few years wouldhave staggered under the load. It isone of the miracles of the centurythat the university has survived at all.

A professor who comes on stagebriefly as a distinguished president,rector, or vice-chancellor will not evenunderstand the problems in a shorttour of duty, let alone be able tohandle them.

Recent convulsions on the campuses

of the world have not made universitymanagement an attractive next stepfor the distinguished professor. Con¬siderable tradition still protects theprofessor in his classroom andlaboratory, but does not serve toprotect the president or rector in hisoffice.

Staffing, however, 'may turn out tobe the least of the difficulties in

university governance. The redis¬tribution of power and responsibilitybetween students, faculty and theadministration is bound to preoccupythose driven by concern for relevanceand for the new priorities.

Those who are caught up in thecurrent social revolution are demand¬

ing the university's participation andare not likely to find the traditionalroles of faculty, students and adminis¬tration to be congenial to their ob¬jectives. It would be a great error toassume that the current redistribution

of power rises merely out of thematuring of the entering student body.The real fuel for this demand for new

style of governance comes from thosewho are dissatisfied with the curri¬

culum and who believe that new forms

of governance may be necessary toredirect the university onto differentpaths.

We have been inclined to think of

the crisis of the university as beingthe crisis of governance. This maybe so, but we will not understand thenature of the crisis of governanceunless we realize it is compounded offive crises of numbers, costs, rele¬vance, priorities and scepticism. Nonew organization chart will be adequateto embrace the considerations with

which universities must now deal.

Statesmanship of the highest order,both in and out of the universities, will

be necessary if they are to fulfil theirhistoric mission in our new world.

A WORLD APPROACH TO THE WATER CRISIS

(Continued from page 13)

32

general hydrological survey. TheChad Basin project, which got underway in 1966, is an outstanding exampleof practical, scientific co-operation.

Another example is the study ofground-water resources in the NorthernSahara, which will cover the area under¬lain by principal artesian aquifers inAlgeria and the Saharan area ofTunisia. The study is In progressunder the auspices of the govern¬ments of the two States, under anagreement with UNDP, with Unescoserving as executing agency.

Quite a different type of project isthe establishment of a Centre for Hy¬draulics and Applied Hydrological Re¬search at Ezeiza, Argentina. This alsowill be assisted by UNDP, with Unescoas executing agency. The overallpurpose is to build up within theState facilities for advanced studiesand research in water science and to

apply the results to practical develop¬ment projects.

An establishment with a similar pur¬pose is the Institute for Hydrosciencesand Water Resources Technolog/ inIran, established by the Governmentof Iran, assisted by UNDP, withUnesco as the executing agency.

A considerable number of similar

and varied activities may be cited:co-ordinated planning of InternationalHydrological Decade activities by thecouncil of the five Nordic countries ;

research on uses of saline water for

Irrigation in Tunisia; world-wide re¬search on the uses of radio-nuclides In

hydrology (led by the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency) ; the interstatehydrometeorological study of Lake

Victoria, administered by the WorldMeteorological Organization, whichalso directs the development of theCentral American hydrometeorologicalnetwork; development of a flood-warn¬ing system for the Mekong RiverBasin; establishment of a NaturalResources Institute in Iraq; and manyother activities.

Decade activities have exposed theglaring Inadequacy of Information aboutwater in many parts of the world andthe depressingly retarded state ofsome aspects of hydrology, the onlyscience that can translate raw data

into water information that can guideaction to conserve and use water.

Developing countries are anxiousto see construction machinery inaction on water-development projects.International organizations that provideproject funds also want to see dirtfly. Planning studies have generallybeen heavily weighted toward en¬gineering and economic feasibility andminimally toward hydrological or eco¬logical aspects. Possible unwantedside effects have received little atten¬

tion. Consequently, some projectshave been over-designed, under-designed or wrongly designed.

Over-design entails excessive costsfor construction. Under-design resultsin failure to achieve maximum use of

resources. Wrong design can causeeither or both results, and it may leadto projects failing.

Circumstances are now changingand scientific studies are being author¬ized and carried out in advance of

crystallization of plans and beginning

of construction. An example, alreadymentioned, is the organized interna¬tional study of the La Plata River basinin South America, involving five na¬tions and one of the world's greatrivers. Advance studies can save

many millions of dollars of construc¬tion cost and greatly improve thebenefit/cost ratio of projects.

Developing countries have recog¬nized the necessity for cultivating theirown hydrological competence andestablishing observation networks.During the Decade, various govern¬ments and universities, with the colla¬boration and assistance of Unesco,have established advance-level semes¬

ter-length special courses in hydrologyand water resources problems. Suchcourses have been established in

Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Israel, Italy,Netherlands, Spain and Venezuela.These are for foreign nationals.

In addition, Unesco, WMO and FAO,in collaboration with other organiza¬tions and universities, have sponsoredmany seminar-type short courses inhydrology, chiefly in countries ofLatin America and North Africa. Fur¬

ther, various universities in developedcountries have offered many scholar¬ship to foreign nationals to enablethem to enrol in regular universitycurricula oriented toward hydrology.

The International HydrologicalDecade has created a new awareness

among the nations of the world thatwater problems are large and growing.Thus the Decade is taking its properplace among the many internationalprogrammes that aim to improve thelot of all men°in all places.

MODERN ARTAT UNESCO'SNEW

BUILDING

Photos Unesco - Dominique Roger

Unesco has added a new building to its Paris headquarters. Located a short distancefrom the four existing H.Q. buildings in the Place de Fontenoy, it was inaugurated by theFrench President, M. Georges Pompidou on March 17 this year. Here we show threeworks by internationally known artists which decorate the building. Left, walking figureby Alberto Giacometti, a work in the highly individual style of the famous Swiss sculptor,stands in the main patio. Above, abstract sculpture in steel by Spanish artist,Eduardo Chiliida, outlined against the façade of the building. Below, designed by Sotoof Venezuela, two "op art" ensembies, incorporating coloured rods and a revolvingelement, stand in the entrance hall. Another modern work, a large muralby Ellsworth Kelly, of the United States, decorates the main lounge. Designed by the Frencharchitect Bernard Zehrfuss, Unesco's new eight-storey building also has two levelsof offices set below ground level and opening on to four garden patios.

Letters to the Editor

ARMENIA'S ANCIENT PAST

Sir,

Last year marked the 2750th anniver¬sary of the founding of Erevan, thecapital of Soviet Armenia. This year itwill be exactly nine centuries sinceGreater Armenia lost its independence(1070). However, those inhabitantswho did not wish to submit to theTuranian hordes, founded in Cilicia thekingdom of Lesser Armenia, the lastChristian state of the Orient, and allyof the Crusaders.

An Indo-European people of Traco-Phrygian origin, the Armenians are theheirs to a very old civilization. Armeniawas the first Christian state in the

world. Despite ravages of all kinds thecountry abounds in fortresses, churchesand monasteries. This would make a

fascinating subject for treatment in the"Unesco Courier".

Armand Mekitarian

St-Martin-d'Heres, France

MONGOLIA 1969

Sir,

I found your article on "Mongolia"(November 1969) interesting and, I amafraid, rather disturbingly naive.

Authors Facknitz and Kostikov state

that the people of Mongolia werenomads because, since all the land washeld by nobles and lamas, the nomadswere reluctant to farm, and the revo¬

lutionary saviours finally opened up theland. However, since nomads generallylike being nomadic, this argument isunconvincing. In Tibet, where a similarsituation previously existed, those peo¬ple who wished to farm had no diffi¬culty in doing so and certain advantagesexisted if they did.

The authors' statement that "demands

of the lamas were heavy burdens" isnonsense in the context of the religiousphilosophy of the people. Every familyhad at least one member who was a

monk and thus had a vested interest

in the monasteries. An assumed schism

between Vajrayana Buddhism and thepeople is a typically non-Asian pointof view and is taken only by those whohave no understanding whatever of thisreligion itself.

The authors say that due to the sparsepopulation there must be an increase infarm mechanization. Then, in all

seriousness, they state, "the scarcityof people combined with rapid indus¬trialization has created a problem whichIs probably unique in Asia : more peopleare needed to keep Mongolia's economicboom going." So now they have toincrease the population to keep goingthe production which, in the first place,is supposed to be for the benefit ofthe population. Is it possible that, ifproduction is not suited to the existingpopulation density, something is wrongwith the production method? This gameof "ring-around" gives rise to a veryserious question: which is of first im¬portance, the sense of satisfaction andwell-being of the people, or the gamecalled "increasing the gross nationalproduct?"

The authors extol the virtues of

rapidly-growing Ulan Bator and its

"rival" (is there a race?) Darkhan. Theymeasure the well-being of the peoplein terms of the number of theatres, pre¬fabricated buildings and jazz concerts(which means that the people of Londonand New York are the happiest in theworldl)

Why do we continue to insist thatif only everyone would be like us theywould be better off . . . oblivious to the

fact that in "being like us" we havepoisoned our environment, alienated ouryouth and brought mankind to the brinkof annihilation.

Dr. D.K. Edwards

Victoria, B.C., Canada

PIONEER OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Sir,

After reading your number on theInternational Labour Organization (July1969), I would like to remind you thatsomething had already been done toimprove working conditions before theILO was founded in 1919. One of the

pioneers in this field was Daniel LeGrand, an early 19th-century Frenchindustrialist, who has been honoured

by the ILO with a commemorative pla¬que at the International Labour Officein Geneva. I feel that his efforts to

promote social justice should have beenmentioned, even though the resultswere not apparent until later.

Pastor Stabenbordt

La Broque, Schirmeck, France

Daniel Le Grand (1783-1859) was theowner of a silk factory at Ban de laRoche, in Alsace. In 1841 he playeda leading part in drawing up a lawgoverning the employment of childrenin France. In 1811, the English indus¬trialist Robert Owen had reported onthe working conditions endured bychildren in mines. Daniel Le Grand

followed up Owen's ideas and in 1818called on statesmen attending theCongress of Aix-la-Chapelle to introducein every country "measures to protectworkmen against the ignorance andexploitation of which they are victims."Between 1844 and 1859, Daniel Le Grand

drew up drafts of four international lawsaimed at improving working conditions.Other French pioneers of social impro¬vements include Louis Blanc, Pierre

Leroux, Auguste Blanqui, ConstantinPecquer and Dr. Louis Villermé, authorof the disturbing survey on 'the phy¬sical and moral state of workers In

cotton, wool and'silk factories" (1840).Another pioneer of social reform wasChancellor Bismarck in Germany. Bet¬ween 1883 and 1887 he introduced laws

providing for social security, limitingwoman and child labour and establishingmaximum working hours Editor.

NEW GLOBAL HORIZONS

Sir,

In "The Student of Tomorrow a

New Global Horizon" (January 1970),René Habachi's comments on our glo¬bal upheaval, and changing attitudesand requirements, are almost a reflec¬tion of the Baha'i writings, which dateback to the last century.

These writings insist on everyonehaving an adequate education, freed

from rote learning, in order that mancan learn truth for himself. They alsoespouse many of the concepts on whichthe U.N. and its agencies are nowfounded, and many which have yetto be implemented if we are to solveour global dilemmas. These include theacceptance of the World Court, a glo¬bal currency, a world police force, aninternational executive body, a singleworking language etc.

Perhaps your excellent journal couldinform us further on these concepts.

R. W. Fowler

North BayOnt. Canada

WHY I READ THE

' UNESCO COURIER '

Sir,

I am attracted to the "Unesco Cou¬

rier" primarily because I believe in thefundamental need for international co¬

operation, having supported first theLeague of Nations and its successorthe United Nationsdespite its presentmood of discord and despair.

My second reason is that I thinkthe magazine is itself worthy of support.It is pleasant to hold and read, with itsexcellent paper, print and quality ofillustration. Your colour work is magni¬ficent and the clever use of the scien¬

tific photographs of the "Sculpture ofVibrations" issue in December 1969

(I have not forgotten the meaning ofthe "S" in your title), is worthy ofcomment.

Similarly I have admired the excellentreproductions of paintings and sculp¬ture: I can recall the African masks,

your issues on Venice and Florence,and the Far East. These issues alone

would justify my subscription, and Itrust you will continue these.

I think you should concentrate onissues of international interest: I remem¬

ber articles dealing with pollution (air,water, environment). You should attackevils such as deliberate and careless

oil pollution from tankers at sea andrefineries and carriers on shore, forthese are not local troubles; supersonicairplanes, for the nuisance of the sonicboom troubles the many for the selfishadvantage of the few (what DO theydo with the time they save?).

Can we have a dispassionate assess¬ment of agricultural herbicides: whetherit is better for the world to suffer food

shortages by their non-use; whetherthe abolition of malaria in Sicily by theuse of DDT is balanced by the wipingout of certain rare birds by the concen¬tration of DDT in their eggs.

I like stories covering examples ofinternational co-operation: the MekongDelta scheme, the India-Pakistan watercontrol schemes, the Aswan Dam andremoval of the Abu Simbel temples.Many of these, as well as other subjectsmentioned above, I know you havecovered.

I am not attempting to write yourjournal for you; merely expressing myviews on the type of article I like andwill read.

S.J.W. Pleeth

Haifa, Israel

Just published by Unesco

natural moarr*» mewcb X

use and

conservation of

the biosphere

unesco

272 pages $6.0036/- (£1.80) 24 F

Use and conservation

of the Biosphere

The havoc wrought by man against nature

The increasing pollution of air and water

Deforestation and loss of soil fertility

Protection of wildlife and plants

Science and the rational use of natural resources

An outstanding study of man's exploitationof nature and his environment and its

effects on the delicate balance of the Bio¬

sphere the thin layer of air, water and landon our planet where life exists. Presentsviews and findings of scientists at the firstworld conference on Man and the Biosphere,

held at Unesco, Paris, in September 1968.Poses one of the most crucial questions ofour time: 'Can we keep our planet habitable?'

Where to renew your subscriptionand order other Unesco publications

Order from any bookseller, or write direct tothe National Distributor in your country. (See listbelow ; names of distributors in countries notlisted will be supplied on request.) Payment ismade in the national currency ; the rates quotedare for an annual subscription to THE UNESCOCOURIER in any one language.

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ORIGINALITY AND TRADITION

IN AMERICAN CULTURE

(See article page 16)

Photo © Erlck Lockar - Hapho, Paria

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