Notes and Half-Notes
By RICHARD
NEVER before has the term 'anti-intellectual.' been on so many lips or printed on so many unlikely pages. It began with the scientists. Called upon to explain the Soviet coup, they raised their voices in a familiar chant—that America had fallen behind be- cause it had failed to honour, cherish and support its best and purest minds, those that are devoted to the pursuit of the truth for its own wonderful sake rather than. for the sake of kitchen gadgets. A number of columnists and commentators and politicians took it up, and then the poets and the. novelists and the painters and the teachers and all the rest got into the act. It suddenly turns out that the country is just full of people devoted to truth and beauty and utterly contemptuous of refrigerators, auto- mobiles and the rest. My wife reports hearing some beauty-parlour technicians talking in scan- dalised voices of the case, recently brought to light, of a 'pure scientist,' a mathematical wizard of the highest order, who was drafted into the army and made a clerk-typist. (He has since been reclassified and made a '013 Mathematician.') The spirit of 'Engine Charlie'. Wilson, our former Secretary of Defence and a man addicted to asking what's-it-good-for?, is now reviled in the land, and perhaps this is a good thing and will not harm Mr. Wilson, who has a tough hide and an indestructible jollity. If it all results in more money for basic research, more pay for teachers and an improved status generally for intellectuals, who can complain? Yet what a fine bit of irony I—that we should think we are emulating the Russians and 'catching up' with them by showing more respect for the objective and disinterested pursuit of truth. The spirit of 'Engine Charlie' was never reviled in their land. It was merely given some political guidance.
JOHN FOSTER DULLES doesn't entirely hold with the theory that we have failed because we haven't pursued the higher truth diligently enough. Twice in recent news conferences he has acknowledged that the Russians 'are in some respects . somewhat ahead of us,' but this he has attributed largely to the fact that the USSR is a godless society. That is to say, it is our pursuit of the very highest kind of truth that gives them an ad- vantage in the study of the merely physical universe. Many of our most promising young men, he has said, go into theological seminaries and are thus unavailable in the laboratories.
THE Democrats won everything of consequence in last week's elections, yet did not greatly im- prove their lot. Most of the offices that were contested were already held by them. Generally speaking, their majorities were larger, and this, in the North at any rate, was something of a surprise, for it had been predicted that the move- ment of Negro voters to the Republicans, quite clearly visible in last year's results, would be accelerated. Evidently it was not. Either the Northern Negroes voted their convictions on local issues or they felt that the commitment on civil rights of Northern Democrats such at Governor Meyner of New Jersey and Mayor Wagner of New York was firmer than the corn- mitment of the Northern Republicans. The pros' pect now is for a strengthened Democratic control of Congress after next year's elections.
The Democrats won little, but the Republicans lost a lot, especially in New Jersey. New JerseY is a Republican State, and no Democrat can win without Republican votes. Governor Meyner got a good many four years ago and a good manY more this year. This year, too, the Republican National Committee threw its and the While House's prestige into the New Jersey election. The President gave a powerful endorsement to the Republican candidate and the Vice-President toured the State for the party ticket. It did no good. One of the Republican Party leaders, sup' posedly familiar with what was on the voters' minds, said that it was 'Sputnik, sputnik and more sputnik' that defeated the campaign. Of course, a Republican would be bound to overlook what may have been a factor of some importance-- that Meyner had given the State a good and honest administration and had often behaved very much like a Republican.
NINETY-SIX separate and distinct boards, commis- sions, agencies, committees and military head- quarters are participating in the missile pro- gramme, according to a chart in the current issue of Life magazine. They bear such names as OP51 Guided Missiles Division, Missiles Corn- mittee Secretariat, Missile Test Centre, Surface- to-Surface Division of the Office of the Director of Special Weapons of the Army Chief of Re- search and Development, Headquarters Air Material Command of the Ballistic Missile Divi- sion of the Air Research and Development Command. We have two Anti-Ballistic Missiles 'Committees, and if I read the Life chart properlY one agency with no name whatsoever and no stated function which reports directly to the White House. - It has been proposed that the ninety-six be weeded out, reorganised and consolidated until there are only nineteen.
Plus ca change: The Democrats are after the Republicans for grafting. President Eisenhower was given a tractor for his farm, a $1,000 bull and a good many other things of real value. Novi/ Mrs. Eisenhower has accepted a beaver coat, and the Democrats, whose lives were made miser- able a few years ago because the wife of some minor official had accepted a coat of mink as 3 token of gratitude to her husband, are in full cry. Actually, it vias a chaste and altruistic trans- action. Business has been bad for beaver trappers, and one of them had the thought that it might improve if Mrs. Eisenhower was seen wearing a beaver coat. The trappers' association offered her
one and she declined. This was last December. 'Then last March,' according to Jasper Haynes, a leader of the association who is quoted in this morning's papers, 'I had a dream. I could see Mrs. Eisenhower very clearly. I heard her say, "I have reversed my decision. I will accept the coat." So I wrote to her on birch bark telling her just how hard up the Maine trappers are. It's terrible. If they catch 'a. small beaver, they just drop it back through the ice—they only get a dollar for the pelt. She answered right away saying she would take the coat. I didn't tell her about my dream until today.'
In the fuss over all this, it has come out that the State Department has a warehouse largely filled with gifts to its member and other govern- ment officials from foreign governments. It is forbidden by law for officers of our government to receive such gifts. It is said that the problem of enforcing the law is a knotty one, for its authors neglected to write in any penalty for violators.
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