Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom EDrED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN . UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS ROGER RAPOPORT: Truth, Justice, and The A sere Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICHt. Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. NIGHT EDITOR: W. REXFORD BENOIT1 r E ngin Council's Proposal: Distorting Apportioning ENGINEERING COUNCIL'S recommen- dation last week that representatives to the campus student government be chosen by the individual colleges rather than elected at large would not, as in- tended, make the organization more rep- resentative. The proposal would actual- ly create a more disproportional struc- ture than before. The plan is based on the philosophy that students enrolled in colleges other than Literature, Science and the Arts have traditionally been denied fair rep- resentation in both Student Government Council and Graduate Assembly. As Gene DeF'ouw, one of the chief proponents, of the plan, points out, the literary college is the largest on campus, and other stu- dents may "hate to have to adhere to rules we have had no say in Mnaking." But in. the light of past SGC .elections, the lack of future engineers, musicians, artists and business administrators in student government is more a product of these groups' own apathy than any wild electoral enthusiasm on the part of the literary college. LAST YEAR, for example, two engineer- ing students were among the 17 can-, didates for five Council seats. They ran 14th and 15th respectively, polling about 500 votes apiece, while the winning can- didates each received over 1100 votes. But this is hardly evidence of discrimi- nation against engineering students. If the College of Engineering had been par- ticularly eager to demonstrate its intense political interest, its 4000-odd potential voters could easily have swung the elec- tion any way they saw fit. That this did not in fact; occur indicates at least as much political apathy on the part of engineering students as everyone else. And even because all Council members are from the literary college does not mean that their interests, classmates and constituency are the same. A mechanical physics major, for example, would have more in common with an undergraduate engineer than with a fellow literary col- lege student majoring in English. Sim- ilarly, the English maj or mighthfind a great deal in common with fellow human- ists in the MusicSchool or the College of Architecture and Design. BLUT MOST IMPORTANT are matters that student government at the Uni- versity deals with. Of all the recent issues. brought up by SGC and Graduate As- sembly, not one-from the rent-strike against the University's married student housing to the-proposed SGC-Mobile - has been of more concern to students of one college than of another. Choosing representatives on the basis of school would serve no useful purpose. It would only allow student politicians from the apparently more apathetic col- leges-such as engineering-to capital- ize on voters whom they could not other- wise woo in an at-large election. -JENNY STILLER A PRESIDENTIAL TEAM of distinguished American physicians has brought back cheery news from the Vietnam battlefield. The group headed by Dr. F. J. K. Blasingame, executive vice-president of the American Medical Association, reported to President Johnson that those pictures of hapless Vietnamese children burned by napalm are misleading. Actually, the kids were burned through the misuse of gasoline in stoves, not U.S. chem- icals. According- to the presidential team there "is no justification for the undue emphasis . . placed by the press upon civilian burns caused by napalm." "A greater number of burns appeared to be caused by the careless use of gasoline in stoves which were not intended for gasoline. Probably most burns occurred from this source." Among other encouraging conclusions reached by the Blasingame team were: * there are less than 75,000 civilian casualties an- nually in Vietnam. * "civilian casualties due to (American) military actions are often an unavoidable and regrettable part of war, whereas the Viet Cong terror attacks amount to deliberate murder and mayhem." And the committee added it is * "not convinced that construction of additional facilities is necessary to give adequate care to civilian war- related casualties." THE PRESIDENT'S SIX-MAN team should be con- gratulated for finding this silvery lining in the Vietnam- ese cloud. In these anxious days people rarely look on the brighter side of life. The President would do well to hire this group on as a permanent investigating team and put them to work on other unsavory situations. Consider, for example, how their report might look on the recent Detroit race riot: "Generally we found press accounts of the Detroit riot greatly exaggerated the gravity of the situation. While there were 43 fatalities, the news media chose to ignore the fact that the rioting prompted a vast reduc- tion in the number of traffic accidents. The week's events kept many reckless drivers off the highways. "Moreover, police noted that crime on the streets dropped drastically during the period. There was a sharp curb in the number of rapes, prostitution arrests, nar- cotics violations and lost dogs. "Fire department officials indicate that many of the fires were ndt set by arsonists but by lightning and smoking in bed. "And Housing officials note that many of the build- ings that did burn down were dilapidated eye sores to begin with. A number of them were substandard and in violation of the city housing code. Their removal has made way for the construction of new parks in the riot area. "Officials also n'ote that the rioting has prompted a great increase in tourism in Detroit. Sightseers have Lmerican Way crowded into the 12th St. area, prompting big business in the area. Moreover there is talk of setting a Grey Line sightseeing tour of the region as well as a new 12th St. Cafe where waiters would dress in National Guard uniforms." OR CONSIDER HOW the commission might report civil-rights violence in the South: "Our investigation shows thzat reports of lynchings in the backwoods counties have been misconstrued. The majority of the victims were injured while doing rope climbing on oak trees as part of the President's physical fitness program. "In many cases we found that shooting incidents had no racial overtones as charged. For example, the shoot- ing of Nego marcher James Meredith at Hernando, Mis- sissippi, was actually a hunting accident. Mr. Meredith was marching through Hernando on the opening day of the Mississippi snipe season. He was wounded by, near- sighted hunter." All this may sound a bit implausible, but tell us, Dr. Blasingame, how many families in Vietnam have gasoline stoves. * * * CLOSER TO HOME a sign of the times should not be neglected: Michigan State University has closed its dairy and begun purchasing milk from an outside supplier. There weren't enough cows to meet demand at the bur- geoning school. 4 4 4 Letters: Arguing With Acheson on Vietnam America in Crisis' Teach-In To the Editor. Mr. Acheson (Daily, Oct. 3) was as objective as any American in his position could have been. He interpreted events in the light of American interest. As a re- tired statesman, he practiced skillful evasion of responsibility for some of the events of the past which have significant implica- tion to the present, e.g. the U.S. involvement in the two-Vietnam policy. I wish to point out some inconsistencies which must be made clear, inconsistencies cir- cumstantial to Mr. Acheson's past position. First, Mr. Acheson stated that negotiations are incoherent with communism as evidenced in Korea, and thus such are not likely to occur in Vietnam. He went on to state that China will not involve herself militarily, which 'is unlike the case in Korea. Thus, in a sense, Vietnam is like Korea, and unlike Korea, which- ever way American interests see it best. Furthermore Who refused to negotiate in the true sense of the word when the U.S.S. Mad- dox ventured within the 12-mile limit to provoke the Tonkin Gulf retaliation? When Kosygin and DeGaulle proposed a settlement and when U Thant appealed "to the great American people" in February of 1965? When, in March of the same year, the NFL and the Government of North Viet- nam displayed willingness to ne- gotiate with its proposals of a settlement patterned after Gen- eva? When Hanoi's willingness to negotiate was confirmed by England's William Warbey, by the Soviet Union's Dobrynin, and by Marshal Tito? When Fanfani and LaPira announced Hanoi's inten- tion to negotiate? When the Ron- ning Mission of 1966 favored ne- gotions with a pause in bombing of the north? - and the many other instances where Hanoi and the NLF were within grasp of the conference table? MR. ACHESON gave an explan- ation,grotesquely inconsistent, why the North Vietnamese,.are fight- ing. He inferred that the north was jealous of the flourishing Americanreconstruction in the south and the goodness that re- sulted. If conditions were so good, then they the numerous rebellions within the south? The people re- belled against rule by oppression and the reign of terror, the farmers against the exorbitant back rent, the general populus against irrational social decress and general social injustice. I respect a man of Mr. Ache- son's stature, but I was truly dis- appointed that highly educated and diplomatically experienced as he is, he is not able to view the matter of Vietnam creatively and at the same time, rationally. -Tuan A. Le '71 John Birch To the Editor: FEEL I MUST take exception to the opinions presented by Mrs. Julia Veetion (Letters, Sept. 30)., Four other students and I were leafletting outside the Ann Arbor High School Auditorium for forty- five minutes before the Birch So- society program began, and there were, by actual count, six other students who entered. One of these six was a Daily reporter (not Roger Rapoport, by the way). I could hardly call this display of student interest "so great." As for Mr. Gary Allen's "excel- lent speech," it was very typical of the far right-full of paranoic fear of "Communism" which caus- ed a gross distortion of whatever factual material he started with. Besides calling names and mak- ing fun of "pinko Commie beat- niks," he pointed out conclusive evidence of the "Communist con- spiracy"-Dr. Martin Luther King wears elevator shoes. We do need to hear more "sen- sible speeches," but I really couldn't recommend the John Birch Society as the place to find them.. -Jay Callahan, '69 Power Crazy To the Editor: I would say, contrary to Miss Kennedy's naive editorial (Daily, Sept. 29) Panhel has rather good insight into the affairs of the University and Student Govern- ment Council. Miss Kennedy thinks Panhel's resolution ques- tioning the right of SGC to }give the students the power to make our own regulations might "slow down establishment of student conduct r u le s in dormitory houses. Panhel's resolution will do just the opposite. It is the student power crazy majority of SGC which has ruin- ed any chances of students get- ting a real say in the regulations that govern us. By repeatedly, brutally craming their wants down the throats of the admin- istration, they have accomplished very little for the students and are doing a great disservice by mak- ing foes rather than friends of the administration Panhel's resolution, I hope, will show the administration there are some Wlear-thinking students who are mature enough to realize adults should try to compromise and work out differences rather than make rigid demands and throw temper tantrums when, their demands aren't met. I HAVE ALWAYS considered SGC to be a link between the students and the administration. -- _ ;, ;; ( ='= ij 1yt ij I \ lip " Y.i I sure have been disillusioned! I wish the elected representives would realize they should try to represent the majority student opinion as well as that of the minority. If they can't abide by the majority opinion, they should withdraw from the student body, to paraphrase Miss Kennedy. Panhel, along ; with the minor- ity view of SGC, are trying to make SGC a more affective or- ganization and I hope for the sakes of the students and the ad- ministration that they sigcceed. -Avil Lynne Hanning BA '69 A RARE OPPORTUNITY awaits all members of the University commu- nity this evening with the Teach-In on "America in Crisis." Departing from the schedule of speech- es and panels that have highlighted the week so far, tonight's program focuses on debate and discussion of "the Viet- nam war, the ghetto uprisings and the third world revolution." The speakers include economist Gunnar Myrdal, a guest for the University's Voices of Civili- zation program, as well as Prof. Staugh- ton Lynd, a major New Left spokesman; Carl Oglesby, past president of Students for a Democratic Society; Rev. Albert Cleague, leader of the Detroit Ghetto Or- ganizing Movement, plus a number of University faculty members and others. This University initiated the teach-in concept over two years ago, and since then debate on college campuses over na- tional and international issues has ex- ploded with a hundred other teach-ins and conferences. The planners of tonight's affair, em- bracing a wide array of campus organi- zations of different political leanings, are anticipating an exciting intellectual event. Make sure you are a part of it. -ROBERT KLIVANS Editorial Director 't J "t p nn r I.. S . ,tih..sj....w~s-'sa. ., Galluping Bobby's Poll Vault "Ah wish somebody'd ask to marry HER...!' 4 T E LEADERSHIP vacuum created by the Johnson administration within the Democratic Party is a sorry side- light to a most discouraging four years. .The emergence of Bobby Kennedy as LBJ's undisputed heir apparent, while certainly not surprising, does depict the moribund quality of the Democratic Par- ty. The latest indication of the extent of the RFK charisma was a recent reading of the heart and soul of Americana by that most sensitive of barometers, the indefatigable Gallup Poll. This month's attempt to make politics an exact science revealed that 51 per cent of those lucky enough to be queried wanted the Democrats to nominate next year New York's hyper-youthful junior senator and a resolute 39 per cent stood staunchly behind this nation's awe-in-' spiring Commander-in-Chief. 'l'he paily is a member of the Associated Press and Collegiate Press Service. Fall and winter subscription rate: $4.50 per term by carrier ($5 by mail); $8.00 for regular academic school year ($9 by mail). Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. Daily except Sunday and Monday during regular summer session. Second class, postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 420 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48104. itorat itaf j ROGER RAPOPORT, Editor MEREDITH EIKER, Managing Editor MICHAEL HEFFER ROBERT KLIVANS City Editor Editorial Director SUSAN ELAN ... ........Associate Managing Editor STEPHEN FIRSHEIN ......Associate Managing Editor LAURENCE MEDOW ...... Associate Managing Editor JOHN LOTTIER ........ Associate Editorial Director RONALD KLEMPNER .... Associate Editorial Director SUSAN SCHNEPP .............. Personnel Director. NEIL SHISTER ............... Magazine Editor While this poll indicated Kennedy's pervasive popularity among the perambu- lator generation, the result should not be misinterpreted as a harbinger of a 1968 Bobby boom. While the baby boom begins to vote next year, the curly-coiffed senator will shrewdly delay his updated children's crusade until politically more propitious 1972. THE DANGER of such engulfing Ken- nedy enthusiasm is that Bobby will increasingly be viewed by disillusioned doves and desperate Democrats alike as a sort of political Sir Lancelot-who will returnthe ravished Republic to the Cam- elot of the Cuban Crisis. Even if the current scion of the Ken- nedy clan were to risk rupturing the Democratic Party and then go one to rout the redoubtable Richard Nixon, the Kennedy's personal patsy, the country's foreign policy would continue to founder among the shoals and eddies of late Cold War semi-militant anti-Communism. Most of the masses are too mesmerized to realize that beneath that outdated hairdo lies the head of a veteran cold warrior. The myths of martyrdom have obscured the harsh realities of that earl- ier Kennedy Administration in which Bobby played secretary of state when not studying law and wiretapping. Few liberal critics of the war in Viet- nam choose to recall that it was Presi- dent Kennedy's stress on fighting "brush- fire wars," as much as Lyndon Johnson's style, which is responsible for our tragic involvement in Southeast Asia. And when the balance of terror pos- tulates of midcentury brought the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust over the missiles in Cuba, Attorney General Kennedy was one of a valiant band of hardliners who gallantly refused to blink. .:TODAY AND TOMORROW " . . by WALTER LIPPMANN .: Thne President and the General--I 4 First of a Two-Part Series WE ALL KNOW that Gen. De- Gaulle and President John- son have very little in common. They are wholly different in tem- perament and in the personal style of their lives. They have quite different ideologies, and in background and in outlook they belong to different cultural and historical epochs. Yet while I was in Europe this summer I came to recognize a highly significant sim- ilarity in their current experience. Both have staked their hopes and their ambitions on playing a role in world affairs, and, wheth- er they meant to, they have had to do this at the expense of the domestic needs of their own peo- pie. Both are now beginning to suffer the consequences of engag- ing themselves in attempts to set the world in order while they ne- glected the disorders at home. For this neglect they are paying with a loss of popular confidence. Nei- ther has a majority of his people behind him any longer. The essential fact-that world problems have been given priority over domestic problems-can be seen even more vividly in France than in this country. For at least until the summer of this year, DeGaulle's foreign policy, unlike Mr. Johnson's, w a s popular among the French. The great majority from the right to the left approved of his attitude toward the Vietnamese war, and with only some criticism of mean and measures the great majority liked his resistance against American political and ec- onomic domination and superior- ity. cial reform, but each individual person's probable position in the Gaullist succession. Thus, there is a general feeling of having come to the end of an historical epoch, with no one able to foresee when the end will actually come and what will come after it. That kind of uncertain- ty makes men nervous and mel- ancholy. THIS, I THINK, is the key to what has been happening, that the general and the Gaullists feel the term of their authority is lim- ited and that they no longer have what they had in the period after the Gaullist restoration of 1958- the feeling not only of holding su- preme power in France, but also of having unlimited time to exer- cise that power. I feel the recent controversial changes in De Gaulle's foreign policy are due in the main to a de- sire to achieve his historical ob- jectives, which used to be far- reaching and distant, in the few years of power which he may still have before him. This foreshort- ening of the time span is the un derlying reason, I think, of the miscalculations of his recent for- eign policy. His ultimate aims have not changed things greatly. Thus, the general's basic con- viction that the United States is too powerful for the good of the world has been there a long time. But now it has become more in- tense. Moreover, he feels that he must do something .about it in a hurry. His policy for correcting the sit- uation has been to correct the bal- lance by throwing the weight of France into the scales against the U~nited Sate.That is_ T think. 4 What Do These Men Have in Common? The reason for De Gaulle's de- cline lies in the fact that modern Frenchmen are finding it harder and harder to live successfully and agreeably with the modern technological revolution: with the automobile which is choking the French cities and with the me- chanical, the engineering, the me- dical and the agricultural innova- tions that are changing the cus- tomary French life. THE GREAT IMPULSE behind the Gaullist restoration in 1958 sprang from a wide general con- viction that the French parlia- mentary system was incapable of agreeing on the measures which would adapt France to the mo- dern age. l r,- T~- tt l' - nnl rgrlVi t'4771' they were told by the President, that with a big bipartisan major-. ity operated by a master of the legislative process the urgent and neglected problems of the United States could be dealt with. But, as we know, DeGaulle, who had had little experience with and little interest in the grubby material problems of his people, made it his first task to reorder things in Europe and even to at- tempt to tamper with the balance of power in the world. While he was doing this, De- Gaulle's constituents went into spasms of irritation because it was so difficult to park their cars and because there were such blockades of traffic and because it was so difficult to have a telephone in- Ho Chi Minh in South Vietnam he would have struck at the heart of world revolution everywhere. But for both President Johnson and Gen. De Gaulle, this putting of foreign policy ahead of domes- tic needs has resulted in the fact that neither any longer commands a majority of his people. THE ATTITUDE of President De Gaulle's regime has changed greatly during the past year - noticeably since the elections last, March showed the government no longer commands a popular ma- jority. The temper of Gaullism re- quires overwhelming national sup- port. It is not there now. Recently, I was talking to a member of the regime, and I said 4