E D.1.T 0 It I A L S

I The Beginning

Premier BenyoussefBen Khedda of the Alg,erian Re- public is right: Independence is only a beginning. Yet for the moment it is-a happy consummatio;l, arid per- haps it is also an augury ofpeace and prosperity for North Afnca. All men of good will, especially French- men, rejoice with the A,lgel;i,ans. The dirty ~7a.r~ with Its casualties and costs and moral squalor 1s over. AS Robert , , C. Doty wrote in The New Y o ~ k T&nes, a dip-

>lomatic millstone has ,been cre,moved from -the necks of France and the West.

- Many illusionshave gone by the board - contrived and calculated illusions, as we point out belo,w. One is the assemon thattlie Algel-,ians had no desire for freedom, that the rebellion was all the work of agitators and Commun1st.s. The Algerian electorate can hardly be expected to rate as the most enlightened in the world a t thls stage, but 92 per cent of those e1,igrble went to the polls and of these, 99.6 per cent voted for inde- pendence.

IC there is trouble ahead, i t can hardly be as bad as the trouble that has beell left behind. A revoluti,on normally ends with the revolutionists fallang out almong themselves: the French Revolution was more nearly

typlcal than the American, one of the happy excep- tions. But the Algerians must be sick of bloodletting, and the desire for peace and reconstruc*ion should favor the forces olf moderation. Then, also, this is a disciplined revolutionary movement, tried in the years of struggle against superior forces. The military side of the Algerlan achlevemen,t has been widely praised as a remarkable demonstration )of organizational ability. It is now time to devote the talents of the organizers to the welfare of the Algerian people. The most urgent prolbiem, Ben Khedd,a says, is for Ithe state t o rest on solid and democratic institutions.

The United States, so given t o misalliances with dicta- tors and losers who deserve t o lose, in this case has backed a winner. The occasion is a personal triumph fer President Kennedy. His statement of July 3, ad-

dressed to the Algerian people, concludes: We look forward to workcing together with you in the cause of freedom, peace and human wellfare. Mr. Kennedy be-

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THE NATIONS SUMMER SCHEDULE Dlpring July and August, The Nation

is appearing on ahemate weeks only. The next issue will be dated July 28.

gan doing that five years ago; as Senator Kennedy, he ~ submnted resolutions in Congress urging the Eisen- hower admanistratlon to recognize the independent personahty of Algeria. In its issue of July 20, 1957, T h Nntmn endorsed thls effort as timely and sen- slble, even as Rolbert Lacoste, the French proconsul in Algegeria, was deridmg Mr. Kennedy as t h e spol- Lesman for old mads and Quakers, whde J,ol~n Foster Dulles decried overt Interposition The Algerians freed them- selves, w r t h thelr own blood and sdfenng, but Presl- dent Kennedys congratulati,ons - are not the empty words of one who waited to see who would colne out 011 top.

Information ~ a p In the June 14 BBlC L i J t e w r , Martin Harmon dis-

cusses the role o f the press In war. Freed,om of in- formation, he writes, was an early victim of the Algerian war. A t the root of che c,hronlc failure of Al- geliaa pol~cy lay an irrational insistence on taking wish for reality. Governments assiduously culmtivated fictions of which they were as much the prisoners as the public: the rebellion was the work of a handful of foreign agita- tors, the last quarter of an hour was at hand, and so on. To close the gap between myth and reality, Harrison concludes, progressively tighter control of informatloll seemed essential.

Without the change of a syllable, the lesson can be applsed in South Vietnam. There IS, however, one dif- ference, which Jack Fo1sles anticle in this issue (see page 12) brings out. The French ~pubhcists deceived no one b u t themselves; the South Vietnamese deceive n o one but the Amencans, a majority of whom still seem to believe that an arduous but ultimately wctoriious war is lbelng waged on ahe guerrillas. This fiction is

dissipated almost daily by Homer Rigart, but relatively few Americans read The New Yorb Timer. For the most part, the Saigon government discourages visits of cor- respondents to the scene o~f action, since the results are usuaIly so meager, but i t was [finally forced to put on a show battle to justi4y the hundreds of millions of dol- lam that Uncle Sam is throwing into the fray. The out- come was reported by Bigart and Conrad Fink of the Associated Press on June 27. A four-day major land- air-water offensive against pro-Communist guerrilla strongholds, according to Fink, ended . . , in exhaus- tion and Ifrustration for government troops. The action took place fifty miles south of Saigon and involved ten South Vietnam battalions . (2,300 men), thirty U.S. Army and Marine Corps helicopters, various American amphibious craft and plastic boats and forty or fi,fty U.S. military advisers. The South V,ietnam pulblic-rela- tions staff reported forty-three guerrillas killed in action and twenty-six taken prlsoner, but the reporters saw neither the dead guerrillas nor t,he live ones. South Vietnam a r~ thmet~c is notoriously unrelisble. We lmay assume that some relbels were k~lled - and some gov- ernment troops as well - but most of the rebels simply ran for it, as guerrillas do ,whenever they are atltacked in force.

The Algerian war is over, at a ghastly cost t o France and to Algeria. The Vietnamese war, by all indications, will go on and on, with Asians fighting Asians (,in General Eisenhowers phrase), the United States trans- porting and supplying the troops and the Asmerican tax- payer footing the bill. All this is made possible by the

I curtain of lies behind which the South Vietnamese government operates. Occasionally the truth breaks

. through. The American press sh,ould bring these frag- ments to the attention of rhe A.merican .people, who are being banlboozled by both the Saigon and Washingon adlministrations.

Prayer and Hysteria When the Supreme Coukt, ,?n a six-t,o-one opinion,

decided that the prayer recommended by the New York State Board of Regents violated the Fmt Amend- ment, some politicians and a large sectmion of the press went all-out in a verbal auto-da4C. We do not recfer to the measured dissent of Heflbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bishop James A. Pike and other reasonable men, but to the frenzied outbursts which Were them- selves a travesty on the spirit of religion and on com- mon decency in controversy. The New York Mirror accused the Court of an attempt to expel God from American life and suggested that the six Justiices had perjured themselves, for when they took the oath of office, did they not say, (So help me God? The Joa~rnnl- American ran a cartoon showing a black-robed figure chiseling cGodl out of In God We Trust. The rector

of an Episcopalian church in Northport, Long Island, put a slgn on his outdoor bulletin )board 1beginnin.g Cong1atulations, Khrushchev, and ending, God Help America. Representaeive George Andrsws of Alabama declared that the Court had put the Negroes into the public schools and I driven God out. Representative John Bell Wdliams of Mississippi, in an extension of remarks in the Congrersional Record (June 30), quoted a long prayer-editorial in the Yickrburg Evening Post, full of sentiments such as this: And we pray Thee, dear God, that as the six little men, in the name of separation of church and state, have actually made ours an atheistic state, thus bringing untoId glee to the capitals of the godless communistic world, let Thy strength and wisdom flow into Thy loyal servants, so they mlght rise up in universal anger and demand the restoration of their own rights, which have been so flagrantly cast aside by the little men.

In many newspapers, Ned Callmer pointed out on CBS-TV (July 11,

Sugar and Plies Wlhere there is sugar, Senator Fulbright reminded

his colleagues in the Senate, there you will find flies. Sugar bills have always drawn flies co Congress, but this year they came in swarms. In 1956, only four lob-

- byists registered t o represent forebgn sugar interests; this year no less than twenty-t,wo registered. There was Ralph W. Gardner, the great good fiiend of Rep. Harold ,D. Cooley (the sugar ,czar), representling the British- owned island of Mauritius, way out in bhe middle of the Indial; Ocean; Donald Dawson, White House as- sistant to President Truman, representing the Indian Sugar R/lills Associatlon; Oscar Chapman, fol;merly Sec- retary of the Interior, representing Mexico; Rocco C. Sicillano, former special assistant to President Eisen- hower, representing El Salvador, et al.

T o Senator Fulbrlght, the swarming of the flies sug- gested the f,ol-,matlon of a non-diplomatic corps made up of registered lobbyists, lmostly Americans, seeking ever-larger shares of the premium sugar windfall for foreign producers. At stake, of course, is the Cuban quota. It was t.0 be expected that any attempt to redistribute this quota would create a new set of vested interests which would then have a secondary ,vested interest in keeping Castro in power. Guatemala, fror ex- ,ample, has no quota under the Sugar Act, but was given an allotment in 1960 when the Cuban quota was up for grabs. Althmough Guatemala was warned by the United States that the Cuban redistrilbution was not to be considered permanent, i t has nevertheless gone ahead and expanded its relatively high-cost sugar p ~ o - duction. The Domlnican Ropublic, in need of help, now wants a larger allotment; and whJe there is more merit in its claim than in most, one may well doubt whether it is a good idea to create a lopsided Dominican de- pendence on a one-crop economy based on the whims of *the Amencan Congress. The Admin~strat~on plan for ,helping the Republic to dlversidy ,its crops is therefore welcome.

The fact is that the sugar set-up is a racket that can only be maintained, as Senator Paul Douglas ,pynts out, because the interest of the consumer is dif,fused and relatively weak, whereas the beet-sugar and cane- sugar domestic producers are politically potent. Amer- ican consumers cheerfully permit themselves to be taxed $550,000,000 a year to keep the domestic pro- ducers happy, aItd Congress - fanatically devoted in principle to free enterprise - cheerfully goes along with this conspicuous example of state socialism a t its worst. But as long as consumers are wdling to be mulcted in this way, they have only thmxelves - and their sweet tooth - ,to blame. But time bpinggs Ian end to all good things and the swarming of Dhe sugar-hungry flies in Wnashington may blow up the scandal that will finally force some sense and sanity into the formulati,on

.Tdy I4, 1962

of a national sugar policy. In the end, we may have reason $0 be grateful to the flies.

Ike the Heretic The surest way to get a bad press, or no press a t all,

is to speak out against illimitable increases in the arms budget. The natlonal economy now depends on arms spending in the same way that drug add icts crave heroin, and ever-larger doses are needed for stability. Remonstrance m a y bring one a good conscience, but little support. A t the lecent 8100-a-plate Repubhcan dinner, General E~senhower had the audacity to say that in his personal fbel~ef substantial amounts in our current defense budget re,flect unjustified fears, plus a reluctance in some quarters to relminquish outmoded concepts. He added that he was sure he ,would receive little company in either party..He was right.

The most ti&-fisted opponents of government spending loosen up when I t comes to spending on ar;ms. W,hen Senator Harry Byrd showed signs qf resistance to raking the debt limit from $300 biIl8ion to $308 bil- lion, Treasury Secretary Dillon was sent to show him the lighlt. The Secretary polnted out that if Mr. Byrds Senate Finan,ce Committee did not raise t.he debt ceil- ing, defense cuts of 15 per cent wouId have to be ord,ered and Mr. Byrd would be 7blaImed fmor leavlng the natlon naked before its enemies, even though t>he avms bud,get would stdl be some 10 per cent higher than under the Eisenhower administration. Mr. Byrd gave in like a cream puff under a steamroller.

General Eisenhower did, get some company - Sen- ator Proxmire. Mr. Proxmire said he welcomed the statement by the former President,