The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 16

Um, Jo 14, itrr 18 Wilt ffissmzg Heoir Truman's Plan for Dealing With Sick President Intelligence Is Word of Many Facets Ry Sydney J. HarrN CHICAGO, ILL. A couple dropped in while I was playing chess the other evening, and the woman rwide the customary remark that she The Hells Canyon Battle By Hurry R. Truman rrrrikt, 1117, kf Rmtt a. TnmiMl fTIHERE has been in under-JL atandabla reluctfinct to deal with th delicate and sensitive problem of what wt are to do when any presi i 4 mm wasn intelligent" enough to take up the game.

a dent becomes incapacitat and is unable to perform his dutis. Our Founding Fathers did HI nlaying since i I WILSON I was 10, with duffers and experts alike, I have not seen slightest relation between chess ability GARFIELD Question about their ability to serve not provide for such an eventuality. During the 168 years of our history under the Constitution, there have been IMKKI1 TIUMAW only two occasions when the question arose of a president's ability to serve. I refer to James A. Garfield and Woodrow Wilson.

We have been fortunate, indeed, that we have not had to face such crises more often. But the job of the president Is getting to be an almost unendurable mental and physical burden, and we ought not to go on trusting to luck to see us through. Should Be Studied Carefully We may find that we have waited too long to provide a way of meeting the situation in the event a president becomes incapacitated. There have been suggestions to deal with the matter through legislation. Others have proposed amending the Consti take in public relations at least when It failed to recognize that the Helli Canyon project was a "specinl case." It was special because of the private vi.

public power controversy. The power company had itressed, in seeking a license to construct the two dams, that there would be no cost to the taxpayers and that the company wouldn't ask for any "contributions" from the federal government. To the public, the granting of tax write-off certificates even though under an authorized and established federal program seemed to conflict with the. company'i views on private vs. public power.

We hope the Hells Canyon tax writeoff fiasco will speed up government action to end. or drastically restrict, the granting of tax amortization certif-icater. That would save the taxpayers a lot of money. The senate vote Friday for one big federal dam in Hells Canyon was a victory for public power advocates and for the Democrats. (Forty Democrats and five Republicans voted for the bill; five Democrats and 33 Republicans voted against it.) However, it's unlikely that this bill will become a law.

It faces more op-postion in the house than in the senate. Should the house pass the bill, there's the possibility of a presidential veto. There is no reason for the government to finance dams and power projects when private power companies can do the job satisfactorily. For most projects, the private companies can do the job. But private projects should not be permitted to block the full development of needed power and other natural resources for an area.

That's the issue in the Hells Canyon affair. Those opposing the senate-passed bill say: it would call for unnecessary government expenditures (regardless of what future amounts might be repaid) in an inflationary period; it would "close the door" to private enterprise; it would upset the just and fair decision of a congressional agency (the Federal Power Commission) which has been upheld by the Supreme Court in licensing the private power dams; it would result in payment of damages to the power firm for work already started; it would delay the delivery of power needed in that part of the country. Those favoring the bill say that the high dam would produce much more power and more economically than all three of the private power dams. They also say it would have greater value for other purposes, such as flood control, navigation, irrigation, wild life conservation and recreation. But their primary argument is that the high dam is the key project for the comprehensive development of all the resources of the Snake and Columbia river area.

The decision of the Idaho Power Co. to reject rapid tax amortization (write-off) certificate on two Hells Canyon dams came just a day before the U. S. aenate passed a bill (45 to 38) which would kick the power company out of the canyon. So the company' change of heart influence the annate.

The pow. er firm had explained it was rejecting the tax certificates "so that there can be no diversionary questions pending to divert attention away from the merits of our licensed projects." The licensed projects are three dams (only two of which are to be built immediately) in the Snake river bordering Idaho and Oregon. These dam sites would be ruled out by government-financed construction of one big dam, as proposed in the bill passed by the senate. Idaho Power rejection of the tax "write-off certificates was a tic retreat from the company's previous position. It did not constitute, as some hostile senators commented, any acknowledgement or indication of past improper conduct.

And it did focus attention on the real Hells Canyon issues whether there should be public or private power development. The company is correct in maintaining that any criticism for granting the certificates should properly be directed at the law itself. This tax amortization program originated in World War II and was expanded during the Korean war. It was intended to encourage private capital to invest in facilities important to national defense. The companies which qualified could depreciate a large part of their investment in a five-year period.

This meant tremendous tax savings. The program was successful in its defense purposes. But it's a program favoring certain industries which shouldn't go on and on. It can result in making millionaires as well as in building potentially-useful defense facilities. Some of the applications of this program have seemed far-fetched, and emergency and "temporary" favoritism programs should not become permanent.

Idaho Power had given this explanation of why it asked for tax amortization certificates: "Every customer of Idaho Power Co. would be entitled to protes: any failure by the company to utilize, for the benefit of rate-payers, all advantageous provisions of the internal revenue code available to all taxpayers who qualify under the requirements of the code." It says it got no special tax consideration, only that provided under law. The company says 22,000 similar tax certificates had been issued sine 1950, including 927 for electric utilities. And, it also points out, that it made Its inital application in 1953. It wasn't "hiding" anything.

The company, however, made a mis both the house of representative! and the senate. Thii committee would select a board of leading medical authorities drawn from top medical achools of the nation. This medical board, thua chosen, would then make the necessary examinations, presenting its findings to the committee of seven. Should the finding of the medical board indicate that the president is unable to perform his duties, and that he is, in fact, truly incapacitated and not merely stricken with a transitory illness, then the committee of seven would so inform the congress. Congress then would have the right to act, and by a two-thirds vote of the full membership declare the vice president as president.

The vice president, designated as president, would thereupon serve out the full term of his predecessor. Should the stricken president, thus relieved, experience during this term a complete recovery, he would not bt entitled to repossess the office. Should the congress be in adjournment or recess when a president is incapacitated, the vice president, the speaker and chief justice should call a meeting of the committee of seven. This committee, after receiving medical findings, would have authority to call congress into special session for the purpose of declaring the vice president as president. Role for Klectoral College 2.

When a vice president succeeds to the presidency and leaves the office of the vice president vacant, the last electoral college should be called into session by the new president for the purpose of selecting and declaring a new vice president. I would recommend that i every instance where a vice president succeeds to an unexpired term of a president, the electoral college be convened to choose a new vice president. By this procedure I think we would be able to ensure the proper continuance of the functioning of the presidency and, at the same time, protect the nation's paramount interests through the full exercise of the checks and balances of our free democratic institutions. I suggest procedure along these broad general lines could be enacted into law by statute. If necessary, these provisions could be framed into a constitutional amend-, ment.

(Nnr'h American A 1 1 i -nc. Kprtv1iirtinn ftf th), artifl in whnl, or in purl tt forblririan wuhmit wnltffl authorisation. From the day I succeeded to the presidency, I have been thinking about the needs of an act of legislation to provide machinery to meet the emergency of a president'! disability. He Proposed One Change Shortly after taking office, I considered setting up a commission to study the problem and make recommendations. But in the midst of war and during the period of postwar reconstruction we were preoccupied with more immediate and urgent matters.

I therefore chose instead to recommend to the congress a change by statute of succession to the presidency from the cabinet to the congress in the event the nation was without a vice president. Up to that time the secretary of state was next in order of succession. I did not think that a cabinet officer who is elected by the people should succeed to the presidency, which is an elective office. The speaker of the house who is, in fact, the top-ranking elected public official, after the president and vice president, is now, under the new law, next in succession. Committee Would Advise Congress This, however, does not meet the problem when a president is unable to perform the duties of his office.

I suggest, therefore, that the following proposal may provide us with a workable solution: 1. When a president Is stricken with an illness, raising the question of his ability to carry out the duties of his office, there should come into being a committee of seven composed of representatives of the three branches of the government. This committee should consist of the vice president, the chief justice of the United States, the speaker of the house, and the majority and minority leaders of I wish him good health and a long life. But there is a growing concern about our needs to provide against the danger of a lapse in the functioning of the presidency and the crises that might ensue. The power of the president of the United States and his influence on the world today have grown so great that his well-being is of paramount interest to people everywhere.

It is no longer a matter to be decided 'by political leaders and constitutional authorities. Even a minor indisposition of the president will set into motion unexpected and often unreasoning fears, such as we have recently witnessed. Worried About FDR After Yalta The framers of cur Constitution drafted a brilliant and inspired document in which they anticipated and provided for nearly all of the basic developments of our democracy. But who could fully foresee the role of the American presidency in the kind of a world in which we now live a role which also requires the president to be available in person at any hour to make decisions which he alone can make and which cannot be put off? As vice president, I found myself acutely conscious of this problem in a personal way when I met President Roosevelt upon his return from Yalta. Up to that time I regarded the circumstances of an incapacitated president as an academic problem 1n history, such as was posed by Presidents Garfield and Wilson.

After the first shock of seeing President Roosevelt, I tried to dismiss from my mind the ominous thoughts of a possible breakdown, counting on his ability to bounce back from the strains and stress of office. After Yalta, President Roosevelt continued to carry on with sustained energy and alertness until suddenly called by death. tution. However we deal with it eventually, this is too vital a matter to be acted on hastily without the widest discussion and study. I have felt that there is always great danger in writing too much into the Constitution.

We must have certain flexibility to meet changing conditions. We have already experienced the consequences of hastily amending the Constitution without adequate public dis and general intelligence. Indeed, I have seen some Masters who barely knew enough to tie their shoelaces properly away from the chess-board. They can beat me blindfolded every game, but their non-chess intelligence is scarcely to the naked eye. Some Are Brilliant Mechanic I suggest that the word "intelligence" is not a single unitary thing, but is rather a composite made up of many strands.

There are different kinds of intelligences, and one is not necessarily better than the other. There is social intelligence, for instance, which few intellectuals possess the ability to understand how other people feel and to live and work with them in reasonable peace. There is mechanical intelligence, which I don't possess an iota of the ability to manipulate and conquer physical objects, to make, to repair, to take apart and put together. There is mathematical intelligence, of which chess is a part the ability to visualize abstractions in space. This is a rare gift which has sometimes been given to men who are otherwise idiots.

I. Q. Tests Can Deceive There is verbal intelligence the ability to use words with force and clarity; but some of the writers who art bet at this (Hemingway comes to mind) are appallingly poor thinkers and have evolved a philosophy of life that would scarcely do credit to a high school sophomore. And there is a deep intelligence of the blood and the bone, which is not articulate, which cannot express itself verbally, but which knows what to do in practical situations where a genius might find himself helpless or hysterical. We must not je bluffed or Intimidated by a word.

"Intelligence" can cover a wide spectrum of human aptitudes; and, besides, this spectrum Is so colored with our emotional lives that many people seem dumb (to themselves as well as to others) because they are merely fearful and confused. No real gauge of intelligence has yet been devised; the l.Q. test is a makeshift device, heavily weighted in favor of those who can express themselves deftly and swiftly. But millions of others have simply not learned to use more than a fraction of the intelligence they have. (Onpyrliht, 39ST) cussion, as in the cases of the 18th and 22nd Amendments (Prohibition and limiting any president to two terms).

In response to the many letters I have received on the subject from all parts of the country, and the world, I am taking the liberty of suggesting a way to meet this problem. Is Concern Of Everyone I would like to make it perfectly clear that it is not my intention to cast reflections on anyone, or to raise any doubts about the health or condition of the president. Along with all of our citizens, Will Cuba's Dictator Survive? Worth ri Washington Memo Repeating 'S v. I. ru.

om elections from the scheduled date of November, 1958, to June, 1958, but he still says he will serve out his elected term till Feb. 1, 1959. Revisiting Cuba this June, Herbert Matthews finds the Batista government in serious danger, whereas in February he thought it would last out its term. He thinks that 90 per cent of the young people are now emotionally behind Castro, and that Castro has won support from parts of both of the old opposition parties the "Orthodox Revolutionaries" and the "Authentic Revolutionaries." Another faction of the "Orthodox Revolutionaries" joined with four small parties early this June in a public appeal to Batista: "We want this government to abandon power by the will of the majority of the people. That isn't so fantastic as It sounds.

A good many of the pro-Batista forces in Cuba are for him because they think he represents order and progress. Last March 22 religious, civic, professional and educational associations got together on a statement: "Cuba views with consternation how the young men of the nation are being channeled toward violence and their own destruction." The statement called on the government and the opposition to "achieve permanent peace." Perhaps Eatista can only do this by resigning. Batista has dominated Cuban politics from 1933 to 1944 and again from 1952 to the present. He might just be ready to retire, if he could manage it gracefully. What's going on In Cuba? The Batista government would like to have the world think the killings, rebellions and demonstrations which have been going on for several years are over now.

It claims these protests are the work of a few disgruntled fanatics stirred up by well-heeled exiles in Miami. Opponents call Batista a dictator. They charge his military police with brutal killings and torture as part of a systematic counter-terror against the bombers and rebels. They claim that a great majority of Cubans supports the various protest movements against Batista the peaceful opposition or the bomb plotters or Fidel Castro's armed guerrilla rebellion in the mountains near Cuba's eastern tip. To be sure, the last major clash with Castro (according to the Batista government) was Feb.

9. The last major rebel attack in Havana was March 13. Most of the troops besieging Castro's mountain hideout were withdrawn in April, the government claims, and Castro's band is down to a handful. However, the enterprising reporting of Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times in February brought the Castro story to the world and to Cuba itself once Batista lifted the censorship (as he does, periodically).

Public criticism of the Batista regime has become more and more outspoken. Since late in March opposition representatives in the Cuban parliament have been negotiating with the government for a peaceful settlement by agreed terms for a popular election. Batista has made one sizable public concession: he has moved up the next "Let's not complain, senator it's the only 'unified action' in the Pentagon Praise for Warren As Chief Justice The Driving Force (Boston Herald) A government is not an army; it will not run on good staff work alone. This is particularly true of the American government with its built-in checks and balances. There is a tendency for major decisions to get sidetracked and even routine operations to stall unless the head of the executive branch exerts steady, expert pressure.

The president is the driving force. He and he alone keeps the administration Ry Marquin Child WASHINGTON, D. C. In the long perspective history, the most distinguishing METHODIST BISHOP F. GERALD ENSLEY of Des Moines: The average community treats a minister as though he were a sort of Eagle Scout.

He does his daily good turn, and the people look on him benevolently, but they don't take him very seriously." A. M. LLOYD-JAMES, addressing the British Commercial Travellers' Association: The cars of tomorrow are being driven on the roads of yesterday by the drivers of today." THE REV. PAUL STEVENS, producer of television film and radio piograms for the Southern Baptist Convention: The truth is, cannibals never boiled missionaries. They either ate them raw or roasted them.

Where the cartoonist got the iron pot I'll never know." SIH HAROLD CACCIA. British ambassador to the United States: Between 1947 and 1956 the United States steel output rose by about one-third. In the same period British steel output rose by two-third. Between 1947 and 1953 United State! vehicle production rose 90 per cent. In the same yean British production increased by twice this amount We are the worldi largest exporter of generator, of boilers, of textile machinery and cf radioactive WASHINGTON, D.

C. WORKING MAN: An Army colonel, just back from a long hitch overseas, said the other day that he didn't always feel he was really working on his new job. One of his first tasks, he said, was to sit through a special showing of the movie "Island In the Sun," to see if it was fit for troops to see. A Southern congressman had yelped about its handling of racial relations. CODE: Pentagon language continues to produce new bafflers.

One of them is "a ballpark figure," meaning a very rough estimate which doesn't do much more than indicate that a given program is going to cost somebody an awful lot of money. SOFT ANSWER: When a group of editors from India visited Secretary of State John Foster Dulles the other day, he lectured them on America's foreign policy, explained what we had in mind for the world, and why the program was inevitable and right. He finished with a Scripture quotation to hammer home his point. One of the Indians replied smoothly: "Sir, since you have quoted the Bible, permit me to quote one of the sayings of my country: There are many paths to paradise and no man has a copyright on any of them. Tt" Reci'rr' Washington Bunaii The Slowpoke Is a Hazard VV, i act or president Eisenhower's administration or, at any rate, of his first term may well be the appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice of the United States.

The sweep of the opinions so ffer toward PiiMithm. vnr WMltdar fpnrnim Dr. MOTNFJ" FFOT'TFR AND TKIBI NB COMPANY Woin 4 713-15 Rt. court torn by bitter factionalism. When Warren became chief.

Justices Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas, appointees out of the New Deal, were usually in dissent. They often castigated the other justices for their conservatism. Warren's first achievement was to get a unanimous court behind the opinion holding that segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional.

In the years that followed, the chief justice has sometimes joined Douglas and Black in dissent. But on the far reaching civil liberties opinions, the court was unanimous except for a new dissenter. Justice Tom Clark, a Truman appointee. Warren is not a scholar in the sense that Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis were scholars.

But he has brought common snse and ennvirtinn to a troubled court and a troubled time. HARK which went Hi PlfTHN RftTF. Hv mH nr In tn-t vhr ithr or Trihr frrT- IM- eol lotion wntrt it vailaht ar4 ht mmti ouitU of low 3V a wit SIX 20 a wr ftv F-iil or R. I rouiM met i titthr Fciir TriMin rarnr or rJlri wnii l.t on a Si 2 tt Biem'h for pncwfi Im Than on mr 2V rM vtten til rcwrt wtfB Hundav rural jlitrv rv! the balance of restoring civil rights, together they can do with safety. But these individuals can be waved off the road urtil the traffic flow is resumed.

Adequately enforced, this could be a highly useful safety law. The super-cautious motorist going 30-miles-an-hour on a modern highway clogs up traffic, breeds impatience in the delayed driver, tempts passing in no-passing zones and is as much of a menace in his way as the 80-mile-an-hour dare-devil speedster. The motorist who can't meet, the prevailing speed on the highway would do well to pull off the road occasionally on his own. An extended July 4 weekend coming up makes this an opportune time for the unusually slow dnver to start giving consideration to the motorist behind him. Safety Commissioner Clinton Mover has called welcome attention to a little-publicized Iowa law aimed at speeding up the slowpoke driver.

The law directs that "No person ahall drive a motor vehicle at such a glow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law." The law doesn't make a driver liable to arrest merely for dawdling along. He has to be actually holding up traffic. Moreover, he must be warned first by peace officers. Disobedience of the warning can bring a fine of $100 or imprisonment for 30 days. Th law doesn't insist that elderly cr incapacitated drivers be firced Uivtl at faster rate of speed than with the school desegregation opinion of three years ago.

in itself make the would P.i any chief justice tenure of r-m In rural area 1 em memorable. But since he was sworn in Mth chief justice on 1953 Warren also has as the Oct. 5. in 't all been able to bring a Urge measura of harmony to a.