Seventy-Sixth Year
EDrrED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNWVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
SNCC: Like A Barometer
+" :' _Y
ere Opinions re Faree ' 20 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MicH.
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.
SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1967
NIGHT EDITOR: DAVID KNOKE
Johnson Learns That Caution
Must Precede Escalation
WELL, WE'RE AT IT AGAIN. President
Johnson in a meeting of the minds
with his generals and Secretary McNa-
mara has called for still more troops to
be sent to Vietnam.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff met with
General Westmoreland and the Presi-
dent on Thursday, where they expressed
their own minds by replying to the Presi-
dent's suggestions with a snappy "Yes,
sir."
And so it is that we will send an un-
specified number of new troops to Viet-
nam, with the understanding that they
will be used to better the ratio between
combat and supply troops. While figures
on the relative numbers of each vary by
more than 25 per cent, depending on
whether the newspaper or the adminis-
tration figures are used, it is generally
agreed that somewhat less than half our
troops there are in a true combat status.
It will be .interesting to see how long
these new troops keep our generals hap-
py, and how long it will be until still
more are needed-for one reason or an-
other.
IT IS A GOOD SIGN that the adminis-
tration , now feels it necessary to re-
assure and forewarn the public when it
announces new commitments in Vietnam.
Not too many years ago, when the war
was still young and the opposition had
not yet galvanized, increasing involve-
ment was announced almost with an aura
of satisfaction.
Things have changed now, and even
though the news was far from unex-
pected, and indeed was almost anti-
climactic, the administration still felt
it wise to "soften" the blow a little by
explaining that it wasn't really a miscal-
culation on the part of our generals after
all, but just a little book-adjusting to
make up for a lot of men who were in
the country but weren't doing any fight-
ing. Similar to a bookkeeping error that
hadn't been counted on, and now must be
cleared up.
THE ADMINISTRATION went to great
lengths to explain why the ratio of
fighting men in service status, rather
than combat status was less favorable in
Vietnam than in Korea. Perhaps this was
to keep its image as an efficient admin-
istration intact. It doesn't really matter,
-the important thing is that Johnson
and the Joint Chiefs now consider it nec-
essary to explain their actions very care-
fully.
While the announcement that more
men will soon be committed to the fight-
ing cannot be welcomed, the caution with
which the announcement was made is
surely a good sign. Johnson has become
aware that the (voting) public is no
longer willing to blindly accept whatever
decrees and actions the administration
may feel expedient, and he is at least
making some small effort to let the peo-
ple know what is going on.
Now, if only the public actively con-
tinues to demand explanations for ad-
ministration action, perhaps we will be
able to proceed in the direction of a
government which is responsive to the
will of the people even in non-election
years.
--JIM FORSYTH
By GERALD BRUCK
Collegiate Press Service
(Secopd of Two Parts)
Late in March a series of
demonstrations took place in the
little town of Cordele, the seat of
Crisp County Georgia. Negro
school children boycotted their
segregated school and began daily
marches to the center of town.
The demonstrations were in part
inspired by the SNCC staffers who
maintained an office in Cordele.
It was the 12th anniversary of
the 1954 Supreme Court decision
to e nd school segregation. In
Cordele, children who had been in
a segregated first grade in 1954
were graduating from a segre-
gated 12th grade in 1966. There
was the "deliberate speed" behind
white America's good intentions.
On May 31, the children
marched into the center of town
for the third time. They congre-
gated on the lawn of the Crisp
County Court House. A jeering
crowd of whites taunted them as
they stood there. Then Rufus
Hinton, a 17-year-old member of
SNCC, had an idea.
"The crackers were yelling,"'he
told me later as he hid in Atlanta
from the FBI. "And I looked up
and I saw that Confederate flag
(the state flag which resembles
a Confederate flag) and that
American flag flying there. I
thought, gee, it would really be
a nice idea to lower that flag."
HINTON LOWERED the flags
to half mast, but the children
were more enthusiastic; they
grabbed them and tried to rip
them apart.
The news sped out of Cordele:
the flags had been desecrated. A
federal offense.
By the evening of the 31st, a
mob had formed at one end of
town.
The sheriff refused to protect
the "agitators" who remained in
town, and Hinton had no way to
get out. A SNCC car left Atlanta
-its purpose to .'ish Hinton out
of Crisp County.
That night, from the SNCC
office, I telephoned local and na-
tional news media to read them
SNCC's official statement on the
occurrence.
The statement talked about
school integration. The reporters
wanted to know about the flag:
SNCC was sorry: the flag had
nothing to do with the issues.
Still the reporters wanted to know
about the flag desecration.
I could feel their hostility.
SNCC wasn't helpful to their news
gathering, true. But the press, as
it sounded to me over the phone,
didn't think too much of SNCC.
("Now is the time to separate
the men from the mice," Car-
michael said at one point on the
Mississippi march. UPI quoted
him as saying, "Now is the time
to separate the men from the
whites.")
LATER THAT night, in a slum
apartment in Julian Bond's dis-
trict, I heard a radio announcer
talking about Cordele. A flag had
been desecrated.
No mention of the schools.
No mention of Hinton, cowering
in some corner of town, fearful
that he would be lynched.
Governor Sanders had dis-
patched state troopers "to guard
the flag pole in front of the Crisp
County Court House."
"SNCC is like a barometer,"
SNCC chairman John Lewis told
me last March. "It's a reflection,
I think, of how black people aie
beginning to feel more and more
now."
And short weeks later, Carmi-
chael took over.
Carmichael talks about the
"racism that pervades every fiber
of our society," and I think I have
learned something about that, too.
One night, after I had had a
long talk with Julian Bond in his
home, he turned on the television
set, and we were presented with
a laughing, singing Al Jolson.
Bond sat impassively.
JULIAN BOND was the main
reason I had journeyed to Lown-
des County in the first place. I
was following him on one of his
speaking tours. Lowndes County
was on the agenda, and so I drove
in with him from Montgomery to
the Mount Moriah Church and'
Stokely Carmichael.
In the spring of my freshman
year, on my way to Selma, I saw
an old Negro man on the train. I
sat down beside him and asked if,
he had ever been to the "deep
South."
He smiled. "Yeah," he said.
"What was it like?" I said.
"Just like the deep North."
"The deep North?" I asked, but
he only smiled back at me.
There is no escaping the deep
North. One of my teachers felt
obliged to tell his seminar (inte-
grated) that he personally be-
lieved that all men were created
equal. At the start of this semes-
ter, I was beaten up by a group
of Negroes in the Hill one night,
and was entertained the next
morning by a nurse at the Yale
infirmary who explained to me
that "Martin Luther King is re-
sponsible for all this."
I AM NO ACTIVIST, and I
have no pretensions on that score.
I do not devote my time to ame-
lioration of the social condition, I
do not teach, agitate, organize.
Instead, I spend a good deal of
my time in the manuscript room
of Sterling Library, reading the
family letters and diaries of
Southern white people who lived
before and during the civil war.
I try to reconstruct men from
the faded handwriting. I see how
they treated their slaves and what
they thought of their slaves. I see
how a young man grew to believe
that slavery was a sacred and
benevolent institution, I see how
they thought and what they
feared.
I am a magician: I can play
with time, I canconstruct them
in any image I wish; they are at
my mercy.
But that is not the point. I am
engaged in an historical exercise.
I must try to discover the "truth"
about them. So I study these let-
ters, the residue of their lives, and
in the process, I suppose, I shall
learn something of what the past
was and means, and, through the
past, see the present more clearly.
It is almost dark when I leave
the rlibrary at night, and from
time to time, I see groups of small
Negro kids walking on the cam-
pus. Then, I see the University
police arrive and chase them
away. After all, they explain, an
unidentified someone had turned,
in a complaint or "this is private
property."
The kids run off, exuberant and
perhaps a little more angry in-
side. The campus cops look at
them sternly and I see in their
faces the men whose handwriting
I have just read. Those ghosts
from the past reappear before me.
(No, I don't blame the campus
cops.)
How little things have changed.
At such times, I think of Stokely.
FILMS
Vivid Documentary
Depicts Holocaust
By KAREN KUGELL used, effectively alternating in
"The War Game," now play- style with the hand-held cam-
ing at the Campus Theater, is era for the future time of at-
a simulated documentary orig- tack and its aftermath. This
inally produced by the BBC for technique serves to eliminate
use on television. Judged by one any possibility of the film's de-
critic to be possibly the most teriorating into a maudlin page-
important =film ever made, and ant and builds the irony, ten-
winner of an Academy Award, sion, and horror of the situ-
it has never been shown on ation.
TV nor has it been released in The story of the future prob-
Great Britain. able time is divided into the
We are fortunate that it is following chronology: the be-
being shown in the United gining of the war precipitated
States. Although it cannot be by U.S. reaction to the invasion
termed entertainment, this film of South Vietnam by the Chi-
should be seen by every voter nese Communists; the evacu-
and must be seen by every nu- ation and billeting of twenty
clear policymaker. per dent of the urben popula-
Its subject, nuclear attack tion in an outlying community:
and its aftermath in Great preparation for the attack; the
Britain, is extremely well han- attack; its aftermath; arnd the
dled in documentary style. A conclusions. Each part of the
series of standard news media story describes a disaster unto
announcements of impending, itself. For example, it is matter-
then actual, nuclear attack are of-factly announced during the
interlaced with two alternating evacuation scenes that the
time sequences, the present pre- evacuation alone, without a nu-
war situation which accentuates clear attack would be an econ-
unpreparedness and the future omic disaster from which it
probable situation in a nuclear would take Britain three to four
attack and its+ aftermath. years to recover.
N Factual and statistical in-
THE PREWAR TIME is formation known from the af-
handled on-the-spot interviews termaths of bombings in Dres-
which point out the total in- den, Hamburg, Hiroshima, and
adequacy of attitudes of civil Nagasaki are used to build the
defense, religion, science, med- conclusions of the film. One is
icine, government, and pop- presented as a question near the
ulace. For these interviews a end: "Would the living envy
conventional stable camera is the dead?"
The Naked I
4
g
:i1
By ANDREW LUGG
Mac Arlberg's "I, a Woman"
at "The Fifth Forum" is neither
interesting nor well made, but
it is bound to run for a couple
of weeks and get considerable
exposure.
If I were to tell you that most
beautiful nymphomaniacs tend
to cause men trouble and end
up by becoming little more than
paid whores, I would be adding
little to your fund of knowledge.
Yet this is the storyline of "I".
To be sure many fine movies
have been made with an even
triter plot, but these are re-
deemed by beautiful and care-
ful filming. Either this, excel-
lent visuals, or intelligent story
is the absolute minimum re-
quirement for a film worth
seeing.
A DISPLAY OF FLESH, the
raison d'etre of "I," is nowhere
near good enough. A girl, named
Siv is Arlberg's "luxury item."
Our director indulgently photo-
graphs her undressing, time af-
ter time and to the limits of
"common decency." All very
boring.,
In "I" we are in the realms
of pornotopia - every room
looks the same, undressing pro-
ceeds identically every time and
nothing gets said. The thin
veneer of story and the final
meeting between Siv and a
gentleman who has exactly the
same idea--non-involving sex,
as regularly as p'ossible-is con-
sistently played down in favor
of a visual description of "sex-
ualis.' Arlberg has the box-of-
fice more in mind than he has
honesty or desire to comment
on Siv's predicament.
"I, a Woman" it seems to me
is not worth viewing rom a
sociological point of view: how
far can you go without being
censored?
Nor do I think, as one friend
of mine put it, that this film
will set aright the young. After
this film they are not very like-
ly to be any less straightforward
in their sexual dealings.
Scandinavia is not the moral
center for the New World. Prob-
lems of youth and sex (if they
must continually be investigated
on screen) should be discussed
seriously and truthfully.
Don't Rock the White Man, Baby
Letters to the Editor
WHY RIOT, BABY? You don't seem to
know- how good you really have it.
The American black man is making
real progress; his white brothers are giv-
ing him his equality. Sure the wheels of
dlemocracy are turning slowly, but then3
again, they always have. The schools
are being integrated, Negroes are getting
more jobs, and the black man is gaining
a real respect in the white community.
Don't blow it all by rioting; violence
can only turn your new friends against
you. The white man shudders at the pen-
tion of Stokely Carmichadl, or Elijah Mu-
hammad, or Malcolm X, or black power,
and one scene on the news of the New-
ark riots can turn thousands of im-
portant whites away from the move-
ment.
Your true leaders are men who accept
responsibility and use their offices with
lignity to work within the American
system. Follow Martin Luther King, and
show your dissatisfaction with American
society. Protest if you must, but protest
with discretion and understanding, and
most important, protest peacefully.
NINETY PER CENT of the popula'tion
of the United States is white, and
he American Negro must be brought to
realize that he needs the friendship of
the white man to insure his progress. In
hort, he must learn to understand that
he is necessarily dependent upon the,
white man.I
Only by exhibiting himself as a law
abiding citizen under the most tenuous
)f circumstances can he really prove him-
self to America, and only then will the
rast majority of the whites work to help
him reach human equality.
The answer does not lie in avoiding his
duty in the armed forces. In the Army
i.e., Vietnam) the Negro has been able
o prove his mettle in the heat of battle.
This is one unforeseen windfall of our
Asian involvement in that it has provid-
ed a ready-made proving ground for the-
American Negro. The Vietnam conflict'
The Daily is a member of the Associated Press and
colegate Press Srvice.
Summer subscription rate: $2.00 per term by carrier
$2.50 by .mall); $4.00 for entire summer ($4.50 by
nail).,
Daily except Monday during regular academic school'
year.
has, indeed, forced many whites to com-
prehend the full potential and capabili-
ties of the black man.
Neither, of course, does the answer lie
in the violence of race riots, or their at-
tendant looting. Many influential white
men have poured a great deal of money
into the Negro ghettoes and when they
see their hard-worked-for properties and
investments go up in flames they are
necessarily discouraged from being active
in' the civil rights movement. These men
who have spent their lives working for
-the betterment of the Negro are the ones
that the black man should be seeking
most to align himself with. Rioting, by
necessity, precludes this important
white power group from working with the
Negro in his quest for civil rights.
O, DON'T RIOT, BABY. Learn to ac-
cept the principles of American socie-
ty and work within that framework to
insure a better America for your children
and grandchildren. Keep the ball rolling
peacefully; it's the only way.
-JOHN LOTTIER
Bag MICHI WAY
THE DAYS of the freshman beanie may
be over, but the planners of the orien-
tation program still think that the bestt
way to gain the respect of the freshman
is to insult his intelligence.
For the third consecutive year, every
blue and gold orientation packet - the
true sign of a "freshie"-contains a large
blue and gold MICHIWAY campus map.
According to the Orientation Office this
was designed to give the freshman a
"feeling for University tradition by creat-
ing humorous slang" descriptions.
Is that feeling perhaps a vague nausea
or merely disgust?
For instance, the map:
-Promises 3000 girls on Palmer Field;
-Distinguishes Waterman Gym for its
"funny odors";
-Advocates "cavorting" in the Arbore-
tum;
-Suggests those who "flunked" 'are
buried on the Diag;
-Questions the editorial freedom of
The Daily.
THE FRESHMAN is entitled to throw
MICHIWAY in his favorite "circular
file." which he, will surely do. knowing
Tuition Hike
The poverty level budget un-
der which the University must
labor in the coming year is at-
tributable to the lack of leader-
ship displayed by Michigan's
absentee governor. I find his
performance deplorable and the
performance of the University
(in granting this individual an
honorary degree) disgusting.
Through the effective exclu-
sion, via pending tuition in-
creases, of many talented non-.
Michigan residents, the great-
ness of; this institution is being
challenged. To award an honor-
ary degree to the individual
most 'esponsible for this situ-
ation is extremely ludicrous.
If this degree is meant to
represent outstanding service,
then let the governor display
some of it through an imme-
diate supplemental appropri-
ation preventing the tuition in-
creases and its accompanying
difficulties.
-Roy A. Ashmall
President, Graduate
Assembly
The Psysicist
Having recently seen and genu-
inely enjoyed the Speech Depart-
ment's current presentation of
Duerrenmatt's "The Physicists"-
certainly a challenging play for
any cast - I was nevertheless
struck by the clumsy and gratu-
itous handling of accents through-
out the play. Though this may ap-
pear a minor problem to some, in-
cluding those professionally con-
cerned with the production, it is,
I believe, an extremely important
one, both practically and aestetic-
ally, and always present in a play
produced in a translated version.
Handled effectively, striking ac-
cents can add immeasurably to
characterization; botched, as they
unfortunately were in "The Phys-
icist,' they are annoying and com-
pletely distracting.
The problems of "accentation"
in an American version of "The
Physicists" are enough to make a
director's head swim. Specifically
they are these; you are presenting
the English translation of a play
written in German by a German-
speaking Swiss playwrite, which
takes place in. German-speaking
that the Rusian is, at some time
in the play, assuming a German
identity and the American is
sometimes assuming an English
identity. Assuming, of course, that
the director is aiming at a con-
vincing "illusion of reality," what
principles should be followed with
regard to the use of accents?
If the meaning of a play draws
heavily upon the idiosyncrasies of
a specific national or regional
locale (as "The Physicists" mean-
ing clearly does, i.e. the German-
Swiss ancestry of Catherine, the
world famous Swiss sanatorium,
the beer drinking, burgher police
officer, the Gestapo troups), it
seems that some attempt should
be made to reinforce the physical
setting with speech indigenous to
that area. The most "true to live"
manner in this case would be to
perform the play as it was written.
that is, with all the German-Swiss
speaking German, and the Amer-
ican and Russian speaking Ger-
man with American and Russian
accents (or, when necessary) Eng-
lish and German if they are as-
suming those identities). But in
Ann Arbor this is an impossible
burden to place on both the audi-
ence and the actors. Some other
strategy must be pursued.
IT IS COMMON practice when
presenting a play of this sort to a
"foreign" students simply to make
a mechanical inversion of the vari-
ables. This would mean that every-
one would speak American, the
Germans with a German accent,
the Russian with a Russian accent
(sometimes German), and the
American straight (sometimes with
an English accent). This has al-
ways been a very obvious and
simple way to circpmvent the
problem. Yet, it is too mechanical,
for if the setting too can't also be
conviently switched-meaning that
the Swiss would become Americans
and the Americans Swiss (which,
as we have hinted, is thematically
impossible in this play) this is no
real solution at all. Consider, for
example, the absurdity-and we
see it so often and for so many
different purposes that we never
stop to question its authenticity-
of having a German-Swiss speak-
ing English with a German accent
in his own home town! (I am re-
minded here of the American
tourist, who, unable to speak Ital-
ian yet visiting Rome, would ask
directions in English with an Ital-
ian aent- r hetter the hand of
this method is, as it must be, "It's
all that can be done." Its advan-
tage is that an important differen-
tiation in speech is affected,,
though, of course, only on a super-
ficial level that makes speech to-
tally incongruent with the play's
setting.
The disadvantage of this method
is apparent in the current produc-
tion of "The Physicists." It requires
considerable skill and fine ear
(Carl Reiner is a genius at this)
to move readily from, say, a Ger-
man to a Russian accent as Victor
Lazarow is asked to do. Unfor-
tunately, this was done poorly, the
result being a German-Yiddish
hodge-podge. It is also important
that should this method be adopt-
ed, all the German-Swiss char-
acters should speak American with
a somewhat equally German ac-
cent. This was the greatest in-
congruity in the play. Fred Coffin
spoke 'in a peculiar mannerism ap-
parently of his own choosing,
neither German nor American,
nor, I regret to say, very compre-
hensible in at least one major
scene. William Moore, the police-
man, couldn't decide if he wanted
to speak with any accent or not
and resolved the problem, as in-
deed; too many problems of this
sort are resolved, by simply shout-
ing his lungs out at everyone.
Margaret Albright, the head nurse,
speaks equally bombastic prose.
The second nurse, Marsha Fleisch-
er, speaks sorority-American; while
the head Gestapo officer speaks
Pigeon-English. The only master-
ful jobs in this respect were done
by the two finest actors-William
Haushalter as Newton and Kathe-
rine Ferrand as the director, who
incidently give striking evidence
of what consistent accents can ac-
complish when effectively devel-
oping out of character.
THE SOLUTION, it seems, in
the case of "The Physicists" is to
have all the characters speak
American, with certain inevitable
mannerisms. Since the fact that
even compotent use of accents is
nevertheless "untrue of life' offers
some justification for its absence.
and especially since the majority
of the present cast is unable to
carry it off anyway, presenting the
entire play in American would
eliminate the hackneyed and an-
noying handling of accents, which,
more times than not, detracts from
an otherwise very successful pro-
~Dozen' Does It
By'A. E. DREYFUSS
The new Fox Village Theatre
)pened Tuesday with saccharine
ceremony and an excellent
feature. Ann Arbor Mayor Wen-
dell E. Hulcher welcomed Chill
Wills, a somewhat schmaltzy
representative of "glamorous
Hollywood." Wills and two
managers of the theatre chain
attempted to make the audi-
ence welcome to a new "plea-
sure palace" with variations on
the theme, "we work while you
play."
The .feature. "The , Dirty
Dozei," was worth the wait.
The film questions' whether
murder of one's countrymen in
the name of law is a worse sin
than murder of the enemy in
time of war. Twelve men, all
,dndemned to twenty years of
hard labor at best, to hanging
at worst, are given a chance to
live and perhaps be pardoned
if they succeed in blowing up
a chateau in France which
houses a group of top German
generals.
The man in charge of train-
ing "the most anti-social bunch
of men in the Army" is Major
Reisman, portrayed by Lee
Marvin. Marvin attacks the
trite role of a sensitive-yet-
tough commander with profes-
sional skill, succeeding in
making a character from a type.
He takes a Oozen men who
are rapists, murderers and
morons, and through the force
of his own personality molds
them into a team of soldiers
who must depend on each other
to survive.
Franco, cynically played by
John Cassavetes, is the profes-
sional agitator Reisman wisely
guides into becoming the leader
around whom the "teapm" even-
tually forms.
Others in the group are Posie,
played by Clint Walker, a huge
man with a slow but uncon-
trollable temper. Jim Brown,
tension high, the comic relief
well-placed and well-done. The
original question was left open,
as most of the dozen died a
"hero's" death, and thus did not
have to return to civilian life,
where the skill of killing would
not be rewarded. In this sense it
is an honest war movie, leaving
the audience for once to draw
its own conclusions.
His' Flat
By ANN MUNSTER
"Hallelujah the Hills" at
Cinema II has been lauded by
some moive critics as "a glor-
iously fresh experience" and
a "witty comedy" but it is un-
likely to be particularly ap-
preciated by anyone else. Its
sole raison-d'etre is the amuse-
ment of the cinematic, erudite.
Comedy has a legitimate, in-
deed a vital function in mo-
tion pictures as in every other
art form. And though complex,
living characters or convincing
action is not mandatory even
a comedy must provide some
semblance of a plot.
"Hallelujah the Hills" fails
totally -to do this. The court-
ship of the young damsel by
two mischievous adolescents
is a paltry excuse for the pan-
oply of parodies and "in-
group" jokes which director
Mekas half-heartedly endea-
vors to weave around it. In
fact, it functions merely as a
literal jumping-off point, fall-
ing by the wayside as the movie
progresses and ends - as it
started - with a "bang."
The viewer is battered about
from one parody, tribute, or
personally aimed p u n to
another, discerning no under-
lying purpose except the au-
thor's desire for all of these
cinematic excesses to be ridi-
#1