"We're For All Africans Named Lumumba" AT THE CAMPUS: Il Trovatore: Bad Plot But T hey EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Opinions Are FW eUNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS th will Pre&U" STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MICH. * Phone NO 2-3241 orials printed in The Michigan Daily ex press the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.. DAY, DECEMBER 8, 1960 NIGHT EDITOR: FAITH WEINSTEIN HERE IS A rather perverse (and loud) group of people who insist upon classifying "IL, Trovatore" among Verdi's come dies, and they may have a point. "Trovatore" has been called the worst plot in opera, but all of its defects are swept aside by one of Verdi's most brilliant scores. The story may be absurd, but they sing. And how they sing! Since its first appearance, in' 1853, (the anecdote has it that, Verdi wrote the music in 29 days) "Trovatore" has been the. favorite vehicle for great voices. THE MOVIE version at the' Campus, however, disregarded both the virtues of song and great voices. Instead of Verdi we were p'resented with a "You Are There" travestry of grand opera. And betwixt and between the narrated portions, the soloists vied with each other for mediocrity. All events previous to the action of the opera itself, which are re- counted by Ferrando in his open- ing aria, were instead narrated, and the scene where Azucena, standing in front of a roaring fire, throws her own child in by mis- take (verisimilitude is not one of the virtues of "Trovatore") was even more ludicrous than Verdi's original, * * * WHEN THE dramatis personae finally assumed their operatic roles one almost wished they would go back to pure narration. Leon- ora's magificient "Tacea la notte placida" in Act I was sung, and at times screamed, direct 1 y through her nasal passages. Man- rico was consistent, although not- nasal. Throughout he both yelled at the audience, and was a quarter- tone flat. Azucena, in a wig like straw, gazed absently into bon- fires, and desperately sought to stay on pitch, but, sad to say, failed. While the Count, who didn't exude, much evil, followed in the noble footsteps of the other leads. His "Il balen del suo sorriso" DAILY OFFICIAL BULLETIN The Daily Offlciai Bulletin is an official publication of The Univer- sit, of Michigan for which The Michigan Daily assumes no editorial responsibility. Notices should be sent in TYPEWRITTEN form to Room. 3519 Administration Building, before 2 p.m. two days preceding publication. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 General Notices Graduate Screening Examinations in French and German: All graduate stu- dents desiring to fulfill their foreign language requirement by passing the (Continued on Page 8) (moved from the convent garden to his tent) was best left undone. And finally, when you put these people together, particularly in the Act IV prison scenes~ it was adequately demonstrated that two wrongs don't make a right (note or otherwise). To be intellectually honest.about the whole affair, the final scene, with Leonora managing, despite a healthy dose of poison, to inter- ject "fuggi, fuggi" from the dun geon floor, while Azucena (repre- sented in the movie as sleeping, on the dungeon floor) babbles about her "hills" and "happy gypsies" and Manrico complains about in- constancy, all against a jutaposed backdrop of two scenes (the dun- geon and the hills), has to be seen to believed. -David Jordon AT THE STATE: 'Nile' Floods TODAY AND TOMORROW: Problem Number One By WALTER LIPPMANN THE INCOMING Kennedy ad- ministration will inherit a do- mestic recession, which could be- come severe. and also an interna- tional situation affecting gold and the dollar. The problems which are raised must be regarded without panic but also with great serious- ness. The two problems, the one na- tional and the other international, are tied together. As a result there is at stake the capacity of this country to overcome therecession, to satisfy adequately its military and civilian needs, to continue the policy of foreign aid, and to go on exporting capital for business in- vestment abroad. If the Kennedy administration is to carry out its commnitments, it must disengage the two problems sufficiently to recover our econom- ic freedom at home and at the same time to promote the stability of the international exchanges in an expanding world economy. It would be no great exaggeration to say that, except for some unex- pected crisis of peace and war, dealing with this complex of prob- lems is of first priority in the new Administration. S * - PERHAPS THE BEST way for the layman to begin is to fix his attention on the fact that foreign- ers hold in our market nineteen billions of short-term dollar bal- ances which they can at any time cash for gold or foreign currency. This huge short-term internation- al debt limits our freedom of ac- tion-our freedom to finance our. foreign policy and to deal with our international probl.ems of recession and accelerated economic growth. To keep our foreign creditors from cashing their balances and drawing out gold, we have to keep our interest rates higher than may be wise in view of the recession. Moreover, the short-term debt will continue to hang over Is and threaten us even though we suc- ceed in expanding our exports of goods and services, as we must try to do, to a level where we have a surplus to cover our foreign com- mitments. THEREFORE, THE KENNEDY administration will have to attack the situation on two fronts-one domestic and the other interna- tional. On the domestic front its ob- jective is bound to be to make our economy more effectively competi- tive as against Western Europe and Japan. This will require greater investments in research and tech- nology. It will also require a con- certed effort to stop the so-called cost-push inflation brought on by big business and big labor. This will probably mean establishing a policy by which for a term of years wages in the key industries, like steel and automobiles, do not rise faster than the general na- tional average of productivity. On the side of business this will be coupled with the policy of reduc- ing prices. Experts in this field, notably Prof. Robert Triffin of Yale Uni- short-term debt into an interna- tional reserve deposit. The idea would be to establish for world monetary transactions an ar- rangement similar tq our Federal Reserve System. One way to do this, as Prof. Triffin has proposed, would be to authorize the International Mon- etary Fund to accept reserve de- posits from its member central banks and to give these deposits a guarantee that they could be cash- ed in gold or its equivalent. Prof. Triffin believes that it would be possible to transfer from their present owners to the Monetary Fund about half of our short- term debt abroad. The proposal has already been approved unanimously in England by the Radcliffe Committee on the Working of the Monetary System. ABSTRUSE AND COMPLEX as is the whole subject, it is not far fetched and unrelated to prac- tical politics. We know frot, his book, "The Strategy of Peace," that Sen. Kennedy was already thinking along these lines in De- cember 1959. "...On the agenda," he said a year ago, "is the reserves prob- lem. The expansion in world trade has proceeded at a pace which is outstripping the free world's pro- duction of gold, and the dollar has been forced to bear a dis- proportionate burden as a reserve currency. It is time that we con- sidered in common a method for economizing international reserves which would exploit the new strength of the pound and the continental currency." (c) 1960 New York Herald Tribune, Inc. "Legions of the Nile," the latest of the Italian imports, made its way to the State Theater last night and if nothing else its a good indication that the American movie industry might not be as bad off as everyone thinks. This particular film is, for lack of a better term, what's known as an Italian Western. The Ingredients: wide screen; poor color film; toothsome husky Italian males and thinly clad dollies; the usual unnatural, dub- bed sound track; a few classic characters; some battles, cheap scenery; blood by the bucketful, and a lot of laughs. Splice well and you have "Legions of the Nile," a half dozen of its pre- decessors and who knows how many successors. The story of this one is quite simple., Scene: Egypt, the court of Cleo- patra. ,Dramatis Personae: Corridius: Commander of a legion day, a dance hall girl by night. Antony: Tired of the past, in love with Cleo. Corridias: Commander of a legion of Rome, sent ahead to try to sway Antony. Falls in love with the night time Cleo. (The good guy.) Marianne: loves Corridius. Augustus Caesar: Rome. Assorted villians. Lots of others: mostly dead. Need one say more? This one's no better or no worse than its predecessors, even though the color is better than usual. But cheer up fans, things are going to get better. Next attrac- tion: "Girl of the Night," based on the true story Call Girl by Dr. Harold Greenwald. -Harold Applebaum LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Article Misrepresents Algerianar To the Editor: WOULD LIKE to answer a few. points made by Mr. Ait-Laous- sine in his article on Algeria pub-- lished by the Daily. 1. Mr. Ait-Laoussine mentions a. French army of 800,000. This is pure flattery. Andrew Hawley, in his editorial, states the truth: the French have never been able to send more than 400 to 500,000 troops to Algeria. 2. Mr. Ait-Laoussine talks about "an, expedition for colonial re- conquest" launched in 1954. There was nothing to "reconquer": Al- geria was under French control at that time, and still is for that matter, at least from the French army's point of view. Had the French government seriously en- gaged a war in 1954, at a time when neither Tunisia nor Moroc- co were independent, the situation in Algeria might be today com- pletely different. The "war of ex- termination" Mr. Alt-Laoussine mentions (this for the American public; he knows better) has never really taken place. Let us face it: the French army never seriously tried to imitate in Algeria what the Russians have so successfully done in Hungary!! By saying this I merely want to point out that the French policy in Algeria has never been as mean and as syste- matic as Mr. Ait-Laoussine seems to suggest. 3. For example he speaks of the French as if they had "organized a plan for mass illiteracy." If it were true, this plan would be a remarkable failure: Mr. Ait-Lanus- sine himself, educated in French Universities would testify for that, as Ferhat Abbas and most of the leaders of the GPRA. It is true that Arabic was only taught as a foreign language, on the same level as English, and that the percentage of scholarization was different in case of French chil- dren and Algerian children. Still passions have been so aroused on both sides, that it is often impos- sible to use only one's reason in talking about the subject. Let us try however. The war in Algeria is the re- sult of the IVth republic weak- nesses. Had the liberal "Status of Algeria" voted by the French Par- liament in 1948 been applied, Al- geria would have evolved peace-, fully toward independence like ALL the former Freftch colonies of Black Africa. But, the pres-" sures of the colons was such that Paris never tried to impose this liberal solution; and it is the stubbornness of those colons and the cruelty of some of their ac- tion which have driven the Alger- ian people to despair and war. On the other hand, there is to- day, after six years of war, only one obstacle between the GPRA and independence: it is the fear of 1,000,000 Europeans living in Algeria. This obstacle, the OPRA itself built it systematically by its irresponsible (if understand- able) use of terrorism against the civilian population, Moslem as well as European. Neither side is pure: this wary is a civil war and nobody is never quite innocent in a civil war. IT IS CLEAR that the end of the war is in sight. De Gaulle has finally pronounced the words "Al- gerian Republic," and he is de- termined to use all his power, still considerable, and his skill to reach that goal. He has tremendous ob- stacles to overcome (in France) but he will succeed. For Ferhat Ab- bas, in obtaining Peking's prom- ise of military assistance has man- aged to "unite" Moscow, Wash- ington and Paris: nobody in those three capitals really wants to see Chinese volunteers in Africa, and it is imperative for those three governments that a truce and a political settlement be reached as auickly as possible. It is also the Ait-Laoussine's sentence: "We have to prepare ourselves for the construction of an independent Algeria" shows that, he too thinks the future is more important than the present. What he wants, what I want, what the French people want (as will clearly show the referendum planned by de Gaulle) is justice for Algeria; that means a free choice of her own destiny. It is already necessary to forget the past and to build with Algeria, Tuinisia and Morocco a durable friendship based on our common cultural, economical and political interests. -Jean Carduner Asst. Prof. of French Caricature .. . To the Editor: IT WAS WITH regret that I' found that the article on page 5 of Wednesday's Daily, dealing with the lecture of Professor D. C. Watt,, gave a totally mislead- ing impression from its headline, namely: "British Caricature An- glo-U.S. Relations," to its final paragraph, in which Prof. Watt is made to say that still, today, as a result of Suez, "a lack of rap- port and confidence exists be- tween the two countries." If such, a lack exists-and, if so, I for one am not anxious to encourage it- I fear it is because of this form of misrepresentation, brought about by the sensationalizing of a' scholarly talk intended essential- ly for a perceptive, specialist audi- ence. It was bad enough for such an audience to have to put up with the intrusive efforts of a Daily photographer to secure a blurred image which can only be described as unrecognizable. NOR IS THIS the only ground for criticism of yesterday's issue. We might pass, perhaps, the ubi- quitous, hoary horror of 'British- December may be seen in their fireplaces alternately squatting on and saluting the Yule Log they have 'brought inside' from out- side? Or for that matter that an- cient British plays are still being performed as they have been 'for the past hundred years?' Enough of this, Sir; we come to Michigan to enhance international relations not to bury them, but with its impressive customary standards of truth and accuracy' we expect better things from the Daily than this. -Peter Calvert, Grad Perhaps... To the Editor: PERHAPS, if Mr. Roberts had allowed himself the luxury of attending both performances of the Messiah, the review he dashed off for the Sunday issue would have been radically different in attitude. Perhaps .. In any case, the inadequacies, real or imagined, which Mr. Rob- erts was sa eager to point out in the Saturday performance were wholly absent from the Sunday performance. I would like to con- gratulate all of the persons whose efforts culminated in a fine and moving performance of the Messiah. * . * I WOULD, at this point, expand my comments to include the rest of that motley collection of re- viewers (the word critic, by defi- nition, does not apply) which presently compose a segment of the Daily staff. I would like to comment, but it has already taken me two days to rewrite this let- ter in such a manner that the con- tents-are composed neither of ap- plicable, butmunprintable, obsceni- ties nor subject matter for libel. Daily editors and psuedo-critics take heed. An effective review can contain elements of criticism and