Seventy-Second Year EDITED AND" MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN tUNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS "Where Opinions Are Free STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MICH. " Phone NO 2-3241 Truth Will Prevail" POET ROBERT FROST: He Takes the Road Less Traveled By Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 1962 NIGHT EDITOR: FRED RUSSELL KRAMER City Council Election Results Show Dissatisfaction with GOP By FAITH WEINSTEIN Editorial Director IT'S INTERESTING, talking to a national monument. And Rob- ert Frost is certainly as much a national monument as the Lincoln Memorial or Mount Rushmore. Frost is 88, quite deaf, and past his poetic prime. But age has not altered his vibrant interest in all life, and all poetry, and it has not removed his way with a story. His deafness makes conversa- tion with him difficult. But con- versation isn't really necessary. A simple question, a suggested topic shouted into his ear, will set him off on a series of reminiscences, theories, ,comments on poetry and poets which will go on indefinitely. He is never boring, he never loses his blunt, straightforward charm. * * * HE DOESN'T take his sudden sanctification by the forces of government, or his picture on the cover of Life Magazine very ser- iously. His fame rests extra- ordinarily lightly on him; unlike many of the poets of his genera- tion, he is thoroughly unself- conscious and completely unpre- tentious. "The government is making a movie of me," he will say, "They're trying to make me into Nanook of the North. It's a little unsatisfac- tory. They always want me to be farming and walking in the woods -standing against beeches and talking to myself." "I never talk to myself." * * * FROST SPEAKS from a world that is not quite here and today, and yet he is far from the muddled mauderings of age. He lives in the world of his entire experience- the early years of the century are as vivid, and clearly as real, to him as his current lecture tour. His memory is rich and incred- ibly detailed. He remembers Ezra Pound from 1912 London-"he ran a real she-bang there"-making and breaking poets, arguing fierzly with the other poet-rebels, reciting ANN ARBOR REPUBLICANS are still in full control of the Ann Arbor City Council after Monday's election; everybody expected that they would be. But -the election statistics should be more than a little upsetting to city Republicans who have long regarded City Council as their own private property. In the first ward, Mrs. Eunice L. Burns, a Democrat defeated Republican incumbent Mrs. Gayle D. Flannery; but this isn't any surprise. The first ward is largely Negro. Mrs. Flannery hasn't done anything substantive for her con- stituents. In spite of her position as the City Council's representative on the Human Rela- tions Commission, she has opposed a Fair -Housing Ordinance and cannot be construed as a strong advocate of direct civil rights action. Further, she comes from a district that is usually Democratic and whose other Council- man has been the only Democrat on Council for the last year. IT IS MORE SIGNIFICANT that Democratic support is growing in other wards in the city. Handicap? BYRON R. WHITE was a Phi Beta Kappa, a' Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of the Yale Law School and a clerk to the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson. Yet White has an image which overshadows these intellectual achievements and which would be favorable in almost any instance except the one he may find himself in-the robes of a Supreme Court Justice. The image of White. is that of a speedy halfback crashing through the line for five yards on a muddy field. A sports background has been an asset to politicians, and even Presidents are remembered for their interest in sport. But a Supreme Court justice _is con- sidered primarily as an intellectual scholar and a human being secondarily. The only justice to surmount this image is William O. Douglas, champion of the great out doors. It is too early to judge the contribution White will make to the Court, and whether he will join the Warren or Frankfurter bloc. But his qualifications are quite acceptable. -HARRY PERLSTADT In the third ward, incumbent Republican Coun- cilman Robert Meader's victory margin was cut to 177 votes from his more than 400 vote margin in 1960. The Republican incumbent, John R. Laird, of the fifth ward also found his victory margin trimmed by 50 votes. Clearly, there is some dissatisfaction. Clearly, these districts, wealthier than the first, are not beset by the same racial discontent that led to victory of the Democrats in Mrs. Burns victory. In fact, many of these districts ac- tually oppose the Fair Housing Ordinance. As one fourth district voter said, "Here in the fourth ward we're for liberal action all over the country-except in the fourth ward." WHAT THEY are protesting, and the real reason for Democratic gains, is the do- nothing attitude of the Ann Arbor Republican Party. Everything from airports to race rela- tions is treated in the same "wait and see" light. The unsuccessful Mrs. Flannery said in her campaign that "The major problems of Ann Arbor have already been confronted by the City Council and sound solutions have been proposed." These sound solutions generally take the form of studies-of the downtown area, urban renewal, property purchases and race relations. Mrs. Flannery's constituents didn't think her solutions were so sound. These studies, even if completed, rarely are implemented. Rarely do they ever confront problems directly and .many of the major problems are overlooked. THE COUNCIL squeals like a stuck pig when- ever it is faced with further University purchases of city land but does nothing. Little consideration ha been given to the conse- quences of Ann Arbor's eventual absorption into the 'Detroit urban complex; the down- town area has degenerated into a second rate shopping center offering little or nothing to consumers; and Ann Arbor is increasingly degenerating as slums spread. A static attitude will not solve these very real problems. If the Democrats ever surge in Ann Arbor-as they did in 1956-it will be because the Republicans have failed to meet the need of a growing city. -DAVID MARCUS KATHERINE VOGT MICHIGAN'S TAX PROBLEMS: State Income Locked In the wrong Drawers By FRED RUSSELL KRAMER Daily Staff Writer (Second in a Series) MICHIGAN has plenty of money. This year, Gov. John B. Swainson's budget plans on taking in $1.2 million. The problem is that funds have to be channeled into areas where they often aren't needed. The result has been that the state sometimes can't pay its com- mitments, a situation it found it- self in during the "payless payday" of 1959. * * * THI DEFICIT invariably comes in the general fund of the budget -the part which is left over when "earmarked" money not under control of the Legislature has been siphoned off. The general fund this year has $478 million,' but if there is a deficit here, the earmarked funds can't be used for relief. This is the nub of Michigan's periodic finan- cial crises. The general fund comes from various sources: " 43 per cent from sales and use taxes. 0 16 per cent from the business activities tax. S13 per-cent from corporation franchise taxes. 0 18 per cent from liquor and cigarette taxes. 0 10 per cent from other taxes and revenues, including a substan- tial sum from fishing and hunt- ing licenses. The money is spent for a va- riety of state-wide services and debt repayment. One-quarter goes to education, and half is return- ed to local governments. ** * BUT there is a lot of money in the coffers. The overall budget shows a surplus of $35 million. But within this budget is the gen- eral fund, which will be in the red by $96 million by the end of June. The budget provides $64 million for capital outlay. Under this fig- ure, $54 million must be spent on highway construction. The re- mainder is used for construction of new classrooms, hospitals and of- fices. The state is hampered by con- stitutional limitations which ear- lier legislators pushed through un- der political pressures. Among them is a 15 mill limit on property taxes persdollar of real estate value. Also, state indebted- ness is limited to $250,000 except for emergencies such as invasions by a foreign power, or military aid to the federal government. AS A RESULT of such constric- tion, general fund crises can only be solved by Juggling the appro- priations and taxes. Obviously, a $96 million deficit can't be managed with a $250,000 debt limit. So the constitution is partly responsible for the fact that the Legislature often resorts to stopgap taxation or appropriation cutbacks to solve a financial cris- is. A more flexible debt limit would mean a more stable and equitable tax structure. But earmarking is often due to more recent legislators. They yielded to local pressure and lock- ed up large sums in specific treas- ure chests. So, at present, over two-thirds of that $1.2 million in Gov. Swainson's budget is ear- marked. * * * BESIDES THIS, legislators haven't applied the state consti- tutional rule that taxes must take an equal percentage of each citi- zen's financial worth. The only part of personal property not tax- ed is automobiles. (Apparently an- other concession to a strong lobby in Lansing.) Besides such inequities in tax base, almost all the state's taxes. are highly regressive. People in lower income groups pay between 12 and 20 per cent of their incomes to the state, while the highest in- come groups pay only five to seven per cent. * -.* THE BIGGEST THING wrong, however, is not the inequity of the existing tax structure, but the probability of the addition of fu- ture inequities by partisan legisla- tors letting political pressures over- come the true interests of the peo- ple of Michigan. This is basically why Michigan's tax climate is unhealthy. It isn't the high corporate income tax which keeps industry away, but fear of an inequitable tax being passed with littleswarning to solve a short-range cash crisis. Thus, the system is unfair, and can't meet the growing demand for services in a growing state. If Michigan is ever to have- a favor- able financial climate, free of cris- es and elastic enough to grow with the state ,a completely new tax structure must be created. TOMORROW-Proposed Solutions to the Tax Crisis his poems aloud in crowded res- taurants. "I remember once, when Ezra decided he would teach me jiu- jitsu," he recalled. "We were in the middle of a restaurant, with people all around. He suddenly put his knee in my stomach and threw me over his back. But it did it gently-he was just showing me and he came down with me. I learned a lot of jiu-jitsu from him." But in spite of Pound's eccen- tricities, Frost has admired him. He says, "If he can write, he can write, and nothing else matters." HE REMEMBERS Amy Lowell, as well, but chiefly from her later days. She once came to Ann Arbor on a lecture tour when Frost was 'poet-in-residence at the University. "She insisted on stay- ing in Detroit, because she had to have all night service," Frost says. "I went in to see her and there were feathers all over the room. She had been tearing up the pil- lows and stuffing one into the other. Thehpillows weren't fat enough for her." Later, just before the Ann Ar- bor reading, Miss Lowell decided she wanted something. Shepoint- ed to a person in the group around her and said imperiously "Boy!" Frost took her aside and explained to her that the "boy" was an older student, head of the society which was sponsoring her read- ing, and a good writer in his own right. She went up to him a quite contrite, Frost says. " I'm sorry I called you "boy"' she said. 'You can call me girl.'" FROM HIS OWN recollections, it is clear that Frost was never cut out for the bohemian life cf these young poets who were so determined not to be Victorian. "They were a party," he says, "I've never belonged to any party." And so, after a few hectic weeks, he moved out to the country. "I'm not a bohemian anyway." And in spite of the efforts of John Ciardi and others to fit him into English-American symbolist tradition, he never has belonged to any party. In an era of re- bellion, bitterness and artifice in poetry he has remained secure, essentially happy with life and devoted to the things of th earth. At a time when poets seem to spend most of their time in in- tense self-consciousness, inspect- ing the detailed convolutions of their own minds and styles, Frost is able to advise the young poet to "Write. Bedifferent. Don't try out your, work too suddenly on others." * * * FROST SEEMS to have walked the sane balance between the ex- cesses of his age. He dislikes free verse-he told some of his pupils once that "writing free verse is DAILY OFFICIAL BULLETIN The Daily Official Bulletin Is an official publication of The Univer- sity of Michigan for which The Michigan Daily assumes no editorial responsibility. Notices should be sent in TYPEWRITTEN form to Room 3564 Administration Building before 2 p.m., two days preceding publication. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4 General Notices AUTOMOBILE REGULATIONS -SPRING RECESS The student automobile, regulations will be lifted at 5:00 P.M. Fri~, April 6, and will be resumed again at 8:00 A.M. on Mon., Aprii 16. office of the Dean of Men. (Continued on Page 5) -Daly-Ed Lange Robert Frost like playing tennis with the net down." He uses short lines and tight rhymes and likes the couplet form best. These disciplined forms come most naturally to him. "I never fuss a poem into existence" he says, "If it doesn't go, I drop A poet in an age of symbolism and deliberate obscurity, Frost has maintained the courage of his clarity. He has written his own poetry in his own way; he has lived his life without bitterness. AS A POET, as in his poetry, he has taken the road:' less traveled by And that hasrmade all the differ- ence." TODAY AND TOMORROW where Are' We Today? By WALTER LIPPMANN LOOKING BACK, it can be said, I think, that in the first round at Geneva, which ended last week when the three foreign ministers went home, all was accomplished by diplomacy that diplomacy could accomplish. There was a recognition on both sides that the existing bal- ance of forces prevents them from making war and from making peace. Neither side is strong enough to impose its own terms on the other, and there is no compromise in sight which both sides can afford to sign. Both the Soviet Union and the Western powers are living in a military stalemate in Geremany and in a poli- tical standstill. FROM OUR point of view the situation has improved during the past year. The big dif- ference is that as late as last June, when the President saw Chairman Khrushchev in Vien- na, the crisis in Berlin had a time limit, in the nature of an ultimatum. Unless by the end of 1961 the West agreed to the Soviet proposals for West Berlin and East Germany, Mr. Khrushchev would sign a separate treaty with East Germany, and then we would be faced with the ugly task of dealing with Herr Ul- bricht about access to West Berlin. The threat was withdrawn during the Rusk- Gromyko conversations in September. There were, I think, two reasons. One is that the President had convinced Mr. Khrushchev that he would retaliate if Mr. Ul- bricht interfered with access and that, there- fore, the Soviet Union could not divest itself of the risks in Berlin by signing a separate treaty. In fact, it would merely place its most vital in- terests in Mr. Ulbricht's hanids. The other reason is that by building the wall Mr. K., although it cost him dearly in the propaganda contest, reduced drastically the threat of West Berlin to the East' German satellite. It ceased to be an escape hatch, it ceased to be a show window, and it has become ' a much less efficient place for intelligence work and political operations. THE NET RESULT is that for the time being the status quo in West Berlin is one that both sides can live with. But not forever, and almost certainly not for very long. West Berlin remains, as Gen. Eisenhower once called it, "abnormal." It is surrounded by the East Ger- man Communists who have the power to make life very difficult indeed' for the inhabitants. The best proof of this is that the West Ger- mans and the people of West Berlin require constant public assurance that we are still more brothers, and that leaves him with three brothers-in-law and a wife. Gen. Clay cannot spend the rest of his life in West Berlin. Sooner or later, the freedom of West Berlin will have to be guaranteed in an international covenant which makes it an international city under the specific protection of the great powers, the general protection of the NATO and the Warsaw alliance, and of the United Nations. But that eventual solution, although both sides know that it is coming, cannot now be spelled out in a treaty which everyone con- cerned with Germany could sign. The Soviet government cannot sign a paper which recog- nizes that West, Berlin and the corridors to it are not under the sovereignty of the East Ger- man state. And we cannot sign a paper which says in black and white that there are two German states. All that both sides can now do is what they appear to have done, which is to deflate the Berlin crisis without reaching a Berlin settle- ment. IT HAS LONG been clear that no general dis- armament policy can be negotiated unless and until there is a settlement of the German question. Neither side dares to disarm while there is an unresolved vital conflict that could lead to a world war. At the most, there may be possible some pacifying, agreements on the fringes between the NATO and Warsaw alli- ances, an agreement about outer space, a tacit agreement about spheres of influence in South- east Asia built around the neutralization of Laos. As for nuclear testing, it has been evident for at least a year that there could be no agreement because both sides want to make more tests- the Soviet Union because they are behind us in the nuclear art, wy because we want to stay ahead of them. There is, as the papers have been saying in the past few days, some reason to hope that the time may not be too far off when both sides feel that they have learned about all that can be learned from testing in the atmosphere. The general situation-no war, no peace-is tolerable but uncomfortable. It is very messy for anyone who insists that things should be black or white. It is nerve-wracking. And yet, considering that the struggle we are engaged in is the mightiest which has appeared in the modern centuries, our own position is suffi- ciently good that, while we must be wary, we are entitled to be confident. GILBERT & SULLIVAN: 'Patience' Erratic But Effective. THE. GILBERT & SULLIVAN SOCIETY'S production of Patience" was generally charming-and only slightly marred by the fact that none of the male leads could sing. "Patience" was a good choice for the company. It is an extremely clever spoof of the Aesthetic Movement, with some of the best lines and funniest songs in Gilbert and Sullivan. Too frequently, however, the lines had to be funny in spite of the actors. Although well directed by Roger Staples, clever blocking couldn't hide the fact that the bevy of Imaidens were less than sprightly and in- frequently more than wooden. * * ** LAVETTA LOYD is an effective Patience, with a lovely voice and a tolerable manner. Archibald Grosvenor, played by Dick Hazzard, is a fine figure of a man-it is unfortunate that he can barel act, and sings with what seems to be a built-in mute. The undisputed stars of the show were Tom Jennings as Reginald Bunthorne, and Dana Krueger as the Lady Jane. Jennings was expected to be good-he has been G&Sing for as long as I can rememiber, and hasn't been seen in a minor role since the last time he played in "Patience." He gave an unusal rendition of Bun- thorne-very tense, very fast with a liberal sprinkling of Major-General Stanley. He is very funny, but not precisely my idea of Bunthorne. Dana Krueger, however, is the perfect Lady Jane. She has a fine contralto voice, and plenty of bounce to back it up-her every entrance brings life to the sometimes dull stage. She is the only maiden who corpulently over her cello, never overplaying or losing her part. come. She flounces hilariously around the stage after Bunthorne; sighs corpulently over the her'cello, never overplaying or losing her part. THE FUNNIEST SCENE in the play is the patter song "So Go to Him and Say to Him" between Bunthorne and Lady Jane. They sing, they dance, they make funny faces at each other, and the result is marvelous. The Dragoon- Guards are the typical G&S chorus, better directed than usual and quite competent. In the first couple of marching sequences they are beautifully out-of-step, which is very funny, whether or not it is deliberate. Musical Director Felix Pappalardi does a nice job with the music- the orchestra is better than usual, and the choruses sound very good., -Faith Weinstein AT RACKHAM: Faculty Quality High I Modern Concert THE MUSIC SCHOOL'S Contemporary Music Festival closed last night with a varied and interesting faculty concert. First, it should be remarked that the quality of performance was uniformly high; it would be very difficult to single out individual per- formers for special notice. Opening the program was Elliott Carter's "Sonata" (1952) for harpsichord, flute, oboe, and 'cello, played by Bruce Wise, Nelson Hauen- stein; Florian Mueller, and Jerome Jelinek. The work achieves a sur- prising flexibility and color in the harpsichord part, and keeps a con- stant interest through contrasting the harpsichord with the other instruments. Additional color comes from the contrast between the lone string instrument and the woodwinds. WITH A SHARP SWITCH, the program turned to Michael Col- grass's "Variations for Four Drums and Viola" (1957), performed by violist Robert Courte and James Salmon. Here against contrast of sonor- ities provided a good deal of interest, and rhythmic and melodic elements helped. Nevertheless, the work seemed to go on too long for its own good; certainly the audience failed to recognize the theme by the fifth or sixth variation. After the unaccustomed sounds of the Colgrass work, the Walling- ford Riegger "Concerto for Piano and Wind Quintet" (1953), with its more conventional instrumentation, lightened the atmosphere. Per- formed by Wallace Berry and the University Woodwind Quintet, the Concerto proved a highly diverting, very personal work, using elements of twelve-tone composition and many contrapuntal devices. AFTER INTERMISSION came the "Fantasy for Violin and Piano" (1955-56) by George Wilson, a composer on the staff of the music school, and Hindemith's third piano sonata (1936). The Fantasy, played by A Toast To The New 'Algeria -IolI