Professional Documents
Culture Documents
T
0 It I A L S
I
The Beginning
Premier BenyoussefBen Khedda of the Alg,erian Republic is right: Independence is only a beginning. Yet
for the moment it is-a happy consummatio;l, arid perhaps it is also an augury ofpeace and prosperity for
North Afnca. All men of good will, especiallyFrenchmen, rejoice with theA,lgel;i,ans.Thedirty ~7a.r~ with
Itscasualtiesandcostsandmoralsqualor
1s over. AS
Robert
, ,
C. Doty wrote in T h e N e w Y o ~ kT&nes, a dip>lomatic millstone has ,been cre,moved from -the necks of
FranceandtheWest.
- Many illusionshave gone by the board - contrived
andcalculated illusions, aswepointout
belo,w. One
is theassemonthattlie
Algel-,ians had no desirefor
freedom, that the rebellion was all the work of agitators
a n d Commun1st.s. The Algerianelectoratecanhardly
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 pollsand
of these, 99.6 percentvotedforindependence.
IC there is trouble ahead, i t can hardly be as bad as
thetroublethathas
beell leftbehind.
A revoluti,on
normally ends with the revolutionists fallang out almong
themselves:the FrenchRevolution was morenearly
typlcalthanthe
American, one of thehappy exceptions. But the Algerians must be sick of bloodletting,
and the desireforpeaceand
reconstruc*ion
should
favorthe forces olf moderation.Then, also, this is a
disciplined revolutionarymovement,tried in the years
of struggle against superior forces. The military side of
the Algerlan achlevemen,t has been widely praised
as a
remarkabledemonstration )of organizationalability. It
is now time to devote the talents
of the organizers to
the welfare of the Algerian people. Themosturgent
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 dictatorsand losers whodeserve t o lose, inthiscasehas
backedawinner.The
occasion is apersonaltriumph
fer PresidentKennedy.Hisstatement
of July 3, ad dressed to the
Algerianpeople,concludes:
We look
forward t o workcing togetherwith you in the cause of
Information ~ a p
In the June 14 BBlC L i J t e w r , Martin Harmon discusses the role of the press In war.Freed,om of information, h e writes, was an earlyvictim
of the
Algerian war. A t the root of chec,hronlc failure of Algeliaa p o l ~ c ylay 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 agitators,thelastquarter
of anhour was athand,and
so on. To close the gap betweenmythandreality,
Harrison
concludes,
progressively
tighter
control
of
informatlollseemed essential.
Without the change of asyllable, the lesson can be
applsedin South Vietnam. There IS, however,one difference,whichJack
Fo1sles anticle inthis issue (see
page 12) brings out. The French ~pubhcists deceived no
one b u t themselves; theSouthVietnamesedeceive
no
one but the Amencans,a majority of whom still seem
to believe thatanarduousbutultimately
wctoriious
waris lbelng waged on aheguerrillas. This fiction is
of anEpiscopalianchurch
in Northport, Long Island,
put a slgn on his outdoorbulletin
)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 drivenGodout.Representative
John Bell Wdliams of Mississippi,in anextension of
remarks in the Congrersional Record (June 30), quoted
a long prayer-editorial in
the Yickrburg Evening Post,
full of sentimentssuchasthis:
And we prayThee,
of
dearGod,that
as the six littlemen,inthename
separation of churchandstate,haveactuallymade
ours an atheisticstate,thusbringinguntoId
glee to
the capitals of the godless communistic world, let Thy
strength and wisdom flow into Thy loyalservants, so
they mlght rise up in universal anger and demand
the
restoration of their own rights, which havebeen
so
flagrantly cast aside by the little men.
Inmany newspapers, Ned Callmer pointed out on
CBS-TV (July 11, demagoguerysupersededdiscernment or dlscretmn, T h e ,editorialists paid no attention
to what the Supreme Court had actually
decided, but
went of$ onabinge
of vituperation so violentthat
sensiblepeople musthave concluded that t,heseparatlon-of-church-and-state
clause in the
Constitution
must now bedefendedwithredoubledvigilaice.
Few
papersmentionedthefactthat
tlhe New YorkCivil
Liberties Unlon, alffiliated with the American
Civil
Llbertles Union, had provided the lawyer and paid the
costs of the action which, as Calmer pointed out, would
have set tshe casein its proper perspective in the first
place. Likewise overlooked was the fact that t,he prayer,
innocuous m itself, was drafted by state dficials, that it
was in effect compulsory, that it was recited daily, and
so const,ituted a coercive indoctrination of children too
to them and of
youngtoknowwhatwasbeingdone
teachers who were forced t o repeat the formula on pain
of losing their j o b . Nor did many commenitators trouble
t o consider Ithe widespread opinion among religious leaders t h a t nothing is more debilitating tmoreligion &an a
rendition of empty phrases without sponltaneity or feelattention was diverted from
athe fact that
ing. Finally,
the use of a phrase like So help me God, by an, adult
taking a position of public trust, has nothing to do with
indoctrination of school children against the will of their
parents,
I
<(
The NATION
of anationalsugar
policy. In the
reason $0 be grateful to the flies.
end, we mayhave
i.3