Logansport Pharos-Tribune from Logansport, Indiana • Page 4

Page 4 Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana Sunday, November 6, 1983 Opinion fHjaroa-QIributt? The free exchange of ideas Us the greatest protection of liberty. Hospital's New Plan new state hospital Superintendent has outlined an ambitious goal for the hospital with the blessing of 4iie Indiana Mental Health commissioner. C-He believes Longclif can become a rehabilitation center and, what is more important, he has so impressed his department heads that they also believe days are ahead in the treatment of mentally ill at Longcliff, 5 That belief is heightened by the fact that Indiana Mental Health commissioner, made a personal visit to Longcliff last pledged that the Department of Health will provide adequate Staffing levels. Dr. Jeffrey Smith has come here after iuilding an impressive record at the Fort State Hospital.

Just this year he an accelerated learning jprogram for the patients that has gained attention. Superintendents the country have written to jbbtain information about how he has the quality of living for the iflevelopmentally disabled. He also has been actively engaged in how the state can carry out the of the Governor's on Mental Health and it was impressive performance in that project that led the commissioner to Appoint him to the local hospital He is realistic enough to know that -improvement will come only if the staff -itself is able to eliminate some of the negatives, such as the dehumanizing that so easily creeps into life. The Logansport State Hospital has long an important part of the community, IhaS most people realize, and the expressed idesire of the new superintendent to be jjaetive in the life of the community is a good that the hospital staff will play even more important role in civic fairs in the months ahead. We welcome Dr.

Smith to Logansport land hope he will be successful in making a model institution for the 'treatment of the mentally ill. Watching For Kids This is the time of the year when need to be reminded of the extra hazard caused by children going to from school. For the first few days of the school year, rchildren tend to be cautious in crossing the Igtreets on their way to school, but then "they tend to grow careless. Young children cannot realize the traffic Often they are so engrossed in play they head for home that they dart in lront of autos without thinking and without rlooking. That places a heavy responsibility motorists to be on the lookout for them to be prepared for a sudden stop.

Although school crossing guards do a job at the principal intersections near lhe schools, there are not enough guards to icover every street children must cross "fenroute to and from school. The increasingly heavy emphasis on fusing of school children also makes it Ijnore important every year that motorists taiow the state laws designed to protect -Children ho are getting on or off a school Motorists must stop when a school bus of them stops to load or unload Children, regardless of the direction in the bus is headed. a ny motorists still do not realize that are required to stop when a stopped School bus is headed in the opposite 5lirection. This results in some children Igetting hit when they try to cross the road Ito their homes. No one wants to be responsible for the -death or serious injury of a child.

To avoid all of us must use greater caution in idriving. Worl(K Cartoonist Jim Berry takes a light look at the world me '''Don't worry, you have a temporary condition affecting many environmentalists post-Watt Depression." "And this is number 16 in the series titled: 'Trilateral Commission'" 1983 bv NS A "You see Paul, when you and the Fed surprise us over the money supply, you should expect a little surprise in return. James J. Kilpatrick Hyphen: Oft-Misused Tool In his essay on punctuation in "Modern American Usage, "Wilson Follett remarked upon the "anarchy" that puts a hyphen in some words and withholds it from others. No exact rules for the hyphen, he said, can be derived from present-day disagreements among lexicographers.

But if exact rules elude the experts, certain general rules on prefixes provide guidance that will help us most of the time. These are the rules: (1) Except for such words as cooperate, coordinate and a few others, use a hyphen when the prefix ends with a vowel and the following word begins with the same vowel: anti-icing, anti-imperialism, pre-election, and so on. (2) Use a hyphen if the following word is capitalized: anti-Soviet, pre-Christian, sub-Saharan. (3) Use a hyphen for doubled prefixes: sub-subsection. The foregoing rules will not help you all of the time.

Obedient to the rule, the editors of American Heritage Dictionary give us hyphens in pre-empt, pre-exist, pre-establish and others. The Associated Press also follows Rule No. 1 on these words. Over at Webster's the spellings are preempt, preexist andpreestablish. Now and then The Writer's Art the experts disagree on application of Rule No.

2. If you follow American Heritage or Webster's, the word is transatlantic. At the AP and The New York Times, it's trans-Atlantic. The trend in hyphenation parallels the trend in other aspects of spelling. The trend is to smush things together.

There may be a few words with "over," "under" or "sub" that are still hyphenated, but offhand I can think of none. (Such formations as "over-the-counter drugs" and "under-the-table deals" are not really exceptions.) On the prefix "mid," I can give you no help. There is no reason under the moon or sun why "mid-life" and "mid-rise" should be hyphenated in one dictionary, but "midline" and "midterm" are not in another. Neither do I understand why a thing may be "bi-level" and also "bilateral." English is not an orderly language. The rule on "well" is that it always well, almost always takes the hyphen: well-educated, well-heeled, well-prepared.

The only exception that comes quickly to mind is "wellborn." My guess is that by the end of the century many of the hyphenated "wells" will undergo agglutination: wellwisher, wellfounded, welltaken, and so forth. Let me mention one more area in which hyphens must be employed. If you are combining two words to make a compound modifier, use the hyphen: a single-stick shift, a fast-moving van, a fleet-footed quarterback. Follett says that "nothing gives away the incompetent amateur more quickly than the transcript that neglects this mark of punctuation or that employs it where it is not wanted." Be forewarned. The same rule that applies to "well" applies also to "full" full-blown, full-fledged, full-bodied but the general tendency these days is to omit not only hyphens but spaces also, e.g., in such nouns as sidewalk, shoptalk, cabdriver and sportf ishing.

Yet here again there is no consistency. Why is "sports car" two words but "sportswriter" one word? When I was growing up with Webster's Fifth Collegiate (1936), the preferred spelling was "per cent." Now it's "percent." Why not "perannum," "percapita" and What's wrong with "highschool" instead of "high The best advice I can offer is this: When it doubt, choose your dictionary and look it up. Charley Reese Troops: Our Top Resource In sharing the pain of the loss our Marines, I recall watching an interview with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens during the Israeli action in southern Lebanon. He was asked if Israel would be influenced by all the harsh public criticism. Arens replied with a trace of cold anger: "Do you think if we are willing to risk the most precious treasure Israel has, the lives of our soldiers, that we are going to be deterred by criticism?" "The most precious treasure" any nation has is the lives of its military forces.

Not one is to be squandered. Nothing not world opinion nor politics should get a higher priority than supporting those who put their lives on the line in the service of the country. Duty is a word most often associated with the military but there is no need to write about that. The military understands its duty. We have before us even now gallant examples in Lebanon and Grenada.

But civilians have a duty, too. And that's where the improvement must be made. It is the civilian's role to assign the military a mission, but having assigned it, the civilian then has a duty to support the men at all costs. If Vietnam taught one lesson, it is that we must never again allow civilian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats to put American military men into harm's way and then interfere with their ability to protect themselves and accomplish the mission. Nor must we permit them to assign them impossible missions.

The security at the Marine Corps headquarters at Beirut airport was not adequate. I do not think the Marines, the most professional of our armed forces, are to blame. I think they were constrained by the State Department and by politicians who were playing the old Vietnam game again: take precautions but keep the airport open for business as usual and don't make it look like a fortress. That wouldn't "look good." After the explosives went off and Marines lay under tons of rubble, Israel placed the most advanced military hospital teams in the world on alert, ready to receive our wounded. These hospitals were a 30-minute helicopter ride away.

Instead, someone made the decision to fly the wounded to West Germany five hours away. Not all of them made it. Immediately after hearing of the explosion, Israelis just down the road cranked up their special rubble-clearing machines and readied their crews to help dig out the wounded. That offer, too, was rejected. In both instances civilians placed a higher priority on Arab opinion than on the lives of Marines.

They didn't want us to be closely associated with the Israelis. That's gross dereliction of duty. Their duty is not to Arab opinion but to the Marines. When a Marine is hurt, forget Arabs or anybody else's opinions. Forget appearances: Forget diplomatic hand-wringing.

President Reagan decided to puFthose Marines in Beirut and he duty to support wo circumstances should Diplomacy or politics be allowed to-undercut their security, their aEflity to- defend themselves, or their access to help from the best and closest source available. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher demonstrated the proper role of civilians in regard to the military with the Falkland Islands War. She communicated in essence three times with the British military. She said take the islands, she said tell me what you need to do the job, and then after they had done it, she said well done. She did not and she did not allow anyone else to place constraints or restrictions on the military forces or, worse, play armchair general and interfere in operational matters.

Our military men are not diplomats or public relations men. They It is up to civilians to tell theni when to fight, but having done that, civilians are duty-bound to support them, to give their professional judgment free rein, to make "sure no striped-pants wimp overrides that professional judg- menLfor any reason whatsoever. The of our military men are indeed otrf most precious treasure. can't back them, then don't send them. It's that simple.

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