Notes and Half-notes
By RICHARD The case for their admission has been simply that the people of the territories seemed to want it, and history may find that a sufficient justification. The case against it is somewhat broader, however, than the one made by the Southerners. Our heterogeneity has been our gloiy, or so we have always told ourselves, but there may be limits to its blessings. A government• representing such a diversity of peoples and interests may lose about as much as it gains in accommodating its policies to all of them. Alaska and Hawaii present addi- tional problems—and not the least of•these is the" geographical one. As self-governing territories, they lacked none of the real advantages of state- hood except those two Senators each and a Repre- sentative or so each. (They had 'delegates' to Congress, however, and representatives in the political parties.) At the moment, there are no other applicants for statehood—Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands simply don't wish it—but in the future there may be, and an America outre- titer could in time present us with some familiar problems. Right now, the only problem, outside Washington, is how to design a forty-nine- and, perhaps next year, a fifty-star flag.
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THE SHERMAN ADAMS affair has dominated the news and probably will continue to do so for quite a time. Mr. Adams is going to pay the price of failing to practise what he preached, and Mr. Eisenhower is going to pay the price of Mr. Adams. For the President, it will be high, for whether Mr. Adams goes or stays, he will be of little value around the White House. By mixing private and public affairs, he has lost his immunity to Congressional review of his activities—and in all probability he has surrendered the same im- munity for anyone who succeeds him. It is un- likely that the President, in the two and a half years he still has to serve, will be able to delegate as much authority to a single man as he has in the past. He will have to do a lot of grubby chores for himself, and this means, it would appear, that he will be able to give less of hiMself to the questions • of foreign policy and defence that have been his principal concerns in the past.
RECENT WEEKS have seen a decline in the fortunes of Senator Knowland of California and a rise in those of Vice-President Nixon. Senator Knowland has been seeking the Presidency by way of the governorship of his state, and it appears that the governorship will be denied him. The primaries showed the 'Democrats and their can didates to be so strong that only a miracle could elect Knowland in November. Despite the Demo- cratic tide, Mr. Nixon has been gaining in strength. The Gallup Poll now shows him a likely winner against Adlai Stevenson, Estes Kefauver, or any other likely Democrat. His main problem now seems to be that of keeping himself apart from the Eisenhower administration, yet not separating himself so much that its leading figures are obliged to repudiate him. He is a clever and crafty fellow and will probably find a way. * ONE OF OUR bright young journalists, Donald Malcolm, has come up with a modest proposal for ending the Cold War and the recession at the same time. He would bring Detroit back to life by having it get to work producing an automobile for every Russian family. The cars would be gifts under the Malcolm Plan, and, of course, the demands for steel would be enormous—indeed. the whole thing would reinvigorate the economy for three or four years. The Russians, he thinks, would probably love us for the Malcolm Plan, but even if they didn't the results would be beneficial. They would have to start a great highway plan of their own; juvenile delinquency—a real problem in Russia, one hears, just as things are—would increase hugely; and the loss of life, without the sacrifice of a single American soldier, would be equal to that of a fairly good-sized war. No one else has lately had any new ideas in foreign policy.
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