The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 65

A The Evita Legend Won Take Root IT RUSSELL H. FITZGIIBON LotZnttltiCimtf Sunday, juiy u. iM3-fcin 5 Our Atom World Is Still the Same BY WALTER MILL'S I Karachi How does a legend grow and then wither? Argentina gives us a case study. It was just a year ago, on July 26, 1952, that Evita Peron, probably the most Plympian and politically glamorous female the world has produced In this century. ended her triumphant and tragic career by a premature death.

She had been at once symbolic and realistically power ful. She had thrown her po- litical weight around as only a Sandow or a Dempsey could do in a more literal sense. She had been called a king- maker, the power behind the Argentine throne, the real wearer of her husband's governmental pants. Many of the figures of speech applied to her were extreme to the point of absurdity. Curiously, the President's lady proved to be a phoenix.

When the corporeal Evita had been earlier displayed at the quarters of the great la-bor federation with which she had had a close connection, was on Aug. 9 displayed in state in the congressional palace; the coffin was drawn to that building by three columns of workers through a mile-long, fourfold file of troops. The. government promptly announced that for a year the only postage stamps permitted would be a new series bearing her portrait (and most attractive tamps they Banknotes were also designed with her likeness on them. A short time after her death a day's wage was collected from all Argentine workers (the estimated sum was $15,500,000) to finance a great mausoleum.

A metal working firm in Wilton, Ct, was asked to quote prices for an elaborate permanent coffin with an inch-thick glass top (its quoted price: I fsS II If I I I II 17 If i II UHiSV- MS Arabian fF S53k --T tit) Bengal L- 1 1 1 '1 BY FRANK J. tury had undergone a vast expansion of her Hindu peoples into the East and the West Indies, into the islands off East Africa, and even into Canada and the United States. She became a mother land with colonies in many parts of the world. British military power in India could readily put down any ordinary insurrection but Gandhi's weapon of civil disobedience or nonco-operation amounted to a treatment of the whole foreign government as no less untouchable than the lowest castes of Hinduism. Only under Hinduism, with its caste system, A Civilization That Refuses Mme.

Peron died the legendary Evita was born. And now the legend is fading, prematurely, like its physical inspiration, but after the same meteoric career. Certainly this hemisphere and possibly the world has never before seen the unbelievably frantic and stupendous efforts to manufacture a legend such as gathered round the figure of Senora Peron in th days, weeks and months after her death. It was a synthetic endeavor whose magnitude and excesses out-Hollywooded Hollywood at its most extreme. The movie capital would indeed have rejected the buildup as being "as corny as Kansas in August." If it seems irreverent to consider the life and death of a legend in such cold and crass terms It must be remembered that Evita consciously made herself into a political tool of great potency and exploited its sharp, cut-ting edges and its driving, force to the fullest Just what was done to build up the legend? It may be well to look at the record briefly before examining what a year has done- to the legend.

Ont of the responsibilities from which Lavrenty Beria was summarily relieved was that of organizing and forwarding the Soviet atomic weapons program. Whether the condition of the program had anything to do with the summary relief or what the consequences of Beria's sudden translation from a pillar of the state into a "hireling agent of foreign imperialism" may be for the weapons program are alike unknown- Probably atomic energy was not involved in what looks like an internal convulsion of Soviet politics. The Soviet stocks of bombs, if they exist, will no doubt go on accumulating, like our own, at the previous rate a very large bureaucracy must by this time be in charge of the effort and while abrupt allegations of treason at the top can hardly be helpful they need not seriously upset the productive mechanism. Yet one cannot help noticing how little' the atomic bomb has figured in the current international developments. Few even realized that the eighth anniversary of the first atomic detonation In human history an event which was supposed to have transformed our world occurred 10 days ago.

It was at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, that the first test shot was fired in the New Mexico desert, 120 miles southeast of Albuquerque. It was, and remains, a staggering success of scientific ingenuity and industrial organization; nevertheless, the slightly empurpled prose in which the War Department's chosen reporter recorded the moment for history reads a little oddly now, only eight years later: "Mounted on a steel tower, a revolutionary weapon destined to change war as we know it, or which may even be the instrumentality to end all major wars, was set off with" an Impact which signalized man's entrance into a new physical world. Eight years later, the "new physical world" still looks rather distressingly like the old one, with a few unpleasant and expensive added gadgets. No one except, perhaps, a few saints and childrenbelieves that "all major wars" have been ended.

And the embattled South Korean infantry, American tankers and artillerymen, fighting furiously against the Chinese Communist hordes along the Mumsong, probably noticed no great change in "war as we know it" and have known it through all the muddy, bloody, disgusting fields of ground combat from the first Marne to Okinawa or theYalu. Eight years later one must grant that the successful harnessing of atomic energy to war has fulfilled neither the higher hopes nor the worser fears of 1945. None of the greater political or military upheavals then envisaged has come anywhere near to realization; so far as the control or direction of international political developments is concerned, we are still just about as dependent as before on infantry and TNT and on the skill and wisdom of our old-fashioned diplomacy. We have acquired the knowledge and capability to produce the terrible radioactive fireball almost at will; By George Clark his face. He just wants himself shoving.

we have learned how to deliver it in packages as small as an artillery shell or handy enough to be fitted into a jet fighter-bomber. It Is believed that we are on our way to ward producing it in the gi ganticaily larger powers implied by the hydrogen bomb The British have learned how to -produce the fireball without our help. So have th Russians though the elimination of Beria and, even more, the absence of any further reports of Soviet atomia detonations since the threo known to have taken placo behind the Iron Curtain raise at least some question as to the real state of the art in the Soviet Union. We have learned a great deal more about the actual ef fects of the fireball, on human beings, on structures, under differing conditions of wind and weather, against differing types of target areas. We have take very expensive precautions against its possible use by an enemy and have provided enormously expensive means for utilizing it ourselves.

In the light of the experience of the last war (and of bombing in Korea) Strattgie Air Command probably would not exist today in anything like its present costly elaboration if it had nothing but World War II TNT bombs to work with. Yet the radioactive fireball is still an inefficiently overpowerful, unhandy, uncontrollable instrument, politically as well as militarily awkward, which neither we nor anyone else has learned how to apply in practice to those social and political ends which are the only ultimate justifications for war. weapons are a horrible peril, a horrible expense and there seems no way in which we can get rid of them or of the costly apparatus which they have imposed upon us. But they have not actually been of any help at Tanmunjom, or in Pelping or in Moscow, or in Indo-China or Iran, or in the NATO councils. And as Beria disappears the last thing anyone recalls is that he was head Soviet atom-bomb man.

The declsiva forces in this world, as in that before July 16, 1945, are still political and psychological; violence Is an unavoidable element, but not a final one, and overwhelming violence, if it is unmanageable in form, is far from an overwhelming answer to our difficulties. Coprrteht. 1953, NT. Heruld Tribune. Inc.

NOT LONG AGO BY CHUCK HILLINGER One of the most influential men in early Los Angeles wa Abel Stearns of Salem, Mass, who, during the 42 years he lived here, amassed the largest fortune in the area and had a fabulous career as trader merchant, landowner, cattle baron and social and political leader. Stearns was a gringo who came to the Southland by way of Mexico from his native New England. He first was a trader. Then he joined a group who at one time or another were at odds with Mexican Govs. Mariano Chico and Manuel Victoria.

Stearns was ordered out of California for his part in a revolution against Chico. Powerful and wealthy Don Juan Bandini was a member of this group and it was through his friendship that Stearns later married Dona Arcadia, daughter of Don Juan. Abel Stearns' success wae an amazing thing. He began buying up huge acreages of land and became one of the leading cattle barons in the State. He was also judge, Council man, and served in other capacities for the infant city government of Los Angeles.

In 1849 he was one of four delegates from Los Angeles to the State Constitutional Convention. His home In Los Angelee was the most luxurious in the pueblo and called Don Abel's Palaclo. It was on Los Angeles near the Plaza. He imported the first carriage to roll through the dusty streets of the Southland in 1853 from Boston. And in 1858 he built the Arcadia Block, the largest business building in the city, at a cost of $80,000.

to Die monotheistic creed, stands in sharp contrast with caste-ridden, flexible, philosophical, polytheistic Hinduism. Hinduism, ever in motion, has had the elasticity from time immemorial to absorb other faiths and to produce such men as Tagore (1861-1941), the poet who in 1913 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and became an eminent painter and musician after the age of 68. He was honored in Britain in 1930 by being asked to deliver a series of lectures on "The Religion of Man." The British had for decades accepted the idea of eventual home rule, if not complete independence for India. In short, not only was it difficult for them to hold on to this huge subcontinent with an annual population increase of 5,000,000, but, in addition, in the last analysis they were willing to let India go in the hope of continuing commerce and maximum goodwill. Policy and expedience combined to make possible an independent India Mohammedan Pakistan with people and the Hindu India of 400,000,000, America's hope is that Hindu India under Nehru will line up with the west, just as Moslem India is almost certain to do.

THE NEIGHBORS St a. "There's nothing wrong her to think he cut OuL with Evita'g autobiography was made required reading in all schools. A civil servant in one provincial capital was banished for life from government employment for coming to work one day with neither a black tie nor an arm band. A judge solemnly, warned that insults to Evita's' memory were to be regarded as crimes against the safety of the state. Labor leaders proposed that the senora be beatified as a step toward ultimate canonization.

Publications appeared on the Buenos Aires streets with titles such as "Evita, Madona de America," recounting miraculous cures ascribed to her memory. The Buenos Aires paper La Pren-sa, now a part of the kept press and not the sturdy in-dependent sheet it had once been, reported last September that the "beloved effigy" of Evita had been seen on the face of the moon. Of such stuff was the leg-' end of' Evita frantically constructed. It cloyed and backfired. Now, a year later, it has resulted In the virtual disappearance -of the legend.

Even at an early date the crepe on a government office door was mysteriously set Evita's picture dis- appeared from a university dining hall. The required black ties were with increasing frequency covered with incongruously bright scarves. More significant were the subtle changes in governmental policy and direction. Within a few weeks Jose Espejo, who had once been Evita's political darling in the great labor federation, was supplanted by another secretary supposedly more pliantly under the control of President Peron. A former Foreign Minister who had long been in Evita's political doghouse was quickly reconciled with Peron himself.

The President took over active direction of both the CGT (the labor organization) and the Peronista Women's both of which Evita had been the guiding genius. Those who predicted that with the undoubtedly strbng prop which Evita afforded the regime removed by her death the control of Peron would quickly disintegrate, were forced to eat their words. The touchstone of Peronista control continued to be, as it had in large measure been before, the economic condition of the country. As an almost incredibly elaborate illustration of conditioned political psychology the year of the legend of Evita has been illuminating. As a factor of permanent influence on the course of Argentine domestic and external affairs the legend's influence, as could have been pre- dieted at the beginning of the year, has been insignificant.

the Chamber of Commerce unanimously endorsed Mayor Woodman's plan to eliminate all city commissions, merging them with city departments under executives. A police raid on Venice and Ocean Park yielded 27 slot machines which were stacked in the Venice Jail. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO July 26, 1938 Lifeguards rescued 51 bath-, ers caught in rip tides in the surf over the week end. Paul Chotteau, 40-year-old French concert violinist was only 12 miles from Venice in an attempted 5-mile swim from Santa Barbara Island. THE SEYMOUR FAMILY BY LEE SHIPPEY Immediately after her death a year ago an official mourn-.

ing period of 30 days was de- creed. July 26 was declared a permanent da(y of national mourning. It was ordered t- that Peronista Party members must perpetually wear black ties. The Fundacion Eva Peron, a gigantic "char- 5 itable organization" founded by and named for Evita, an-, nounced that it would keep a perpetual flame burning in its huge headquarters building. The government decreed a name change for Buenos Aires' Avenida 9 de Julio, world's widest street," to Avenida Eva Peron.

The name of La Plata, the capital city of Buenos Aires Prov- ince, was changed to Eva Peron. The Ministry of cation ordered that a school in the federal district and one in each provincial and territorial, capital be given her name. A ship in the merchant marine promptly adopted her name as its own. Senora Peron's body, which KLINGBERG could such an attack be used successfully. Gandhi was careful to make no distinction between Hindu and Mohammedan, with the result that thousands of both religions flocked to his -banner.

He campaigned to free the untouchables from their degradation and developed a vast program pf reform from within. His frailty, asceticism, and personal magnetism gave him a massive hold over the millions of India, difficult for the British to understand, impossible for them to combat. The peoples of India escaped into a realm where military power stood helpless. Mohammedanism, with its democratic, militant, rigid, many things they did not want at the moment had been flung outside. And dinner was was to be in the patio.

Next day Sylvie lectured the children sternly: "Never touch the Goodwill hag again or Nanny will spank. Those clothes were not in there to mop floors with. Remember, if you do it again, Nanny will spank." When chicken pox htys a family with several children it just goes on a on. Chuckie was the last to have it and the cooped-up children wished to celebrate the day he could be at large again. They descended on Nanny, but after getting cookies and lemonade Ginny Lou led them to the garage.

When Sylvie went out half an hour later the irresistible Goodwill bag had been plundered again. The garage and its environs were littered. Sylvie uttered a fierce exclamation and strode toward the garage. Ginny Lou heard and saw her coming, and ran to meet her. "Chuckie got into the Good-' will bag!" she panted.

"But please don't spank him he's been sick." Ginny Lou is 5, Chuckle, S. G. was wearing an ancient garment which trailed after her as would a wedding gown. Sylvie had little doubt that G. L.

was Culprit No. 1, but was smart enough to figure that if Chuckle escaped punishment, everyone would. She couldn't help laughing, but added sternly: "Next time Nanny really will spank." India's great age and complex heritage have been well described by an eminent authority: "The Aryan peoples, who may be recognized as the first foreign conquerors of India, laid the foundations of Indian civilization long before. Rome or Athens were born and longer still before the rest of Europe emerged from savagery, and unlike any of the ancient civilizations of the world, it has remained a living civilization." Ancient India, steeped in its own traditions, was already 3000 years old before the first English merchant-adventurer stood upon Indian soil, a forerunner of what became a superimposition of western culture upon the vast subcontinent of India. Robert Give and Warren Hastings of the period of the American Revolution, 150 to 200 years ago, were but a recent page in the history of India.

Westminster Abbey is filled with statues honoring the statesmen, admirals and generals who in the 18th and 19th centuries held Russia and France in check by land and by sea. Curiously enough, while the primary aim of military and naval measures was the protection of British interests in India from European rivals, the idea that India might herself rise and drive out her European conquerors was only dimly envisioned by Euro- peans. The meeting of the first Indian National Congress in 1S85 was regarded as an eccentricity to be tolerated by the western authorities without serious question. But these Hindu pioneers foreshadowed Gandhi (1S69-1948). Gandhi appeared as the man of destiny, arousing the Hindus in favor of their ancient religious force, an opponent of the western invasion in all its forms.

Famous for his defense of the Hindus In South Africa, where he mastered Thoreau's (1817.1862) work on civil disobedience, he rose as the leader against discrimination in all parts of the world. In Africa he had perfected his policy of passive resistance, civil disobedience, hunger strikes, and mass demon- strations. India for a cen The Seymours keep a big bag from the Goodwill Industries in their garage, and much of the time it is generously stuffed with junk they would have to hire someone to cart away if the Goodwill truck didn't take it away for them. One day- when the yard had just -been set in order, because guests were coming the grandchildren came swooping in for a visit and Sylvie thought fast. If they littered the yard in their inimitable way there would, not be time to get it shipshape again.

So she commanded: "Children, you must play In the garage, not in the yard. There are some big cartons there. You can turn them on their sides, so you can get in them and play house." Johnnie and Chuckie were "not thrilled. But little girls love to play house, and Ginny Lou was so enthusiastic that the boys followed reluctantly. Soon cheerful sounds came from the garage and Sylvie went indoors congratulating herself on her wise management.

She was not so happy when, dressed for comiuny, she and Greg strolled Into the yard to greet the first guests. The inquiring children had investigated the Goodwill bag and found cast-off grownups clothing. To play house properly some must be mamma and papa. Seeking what they thought they needed they had flung things helter-skelter. Cyclones could have done no worse.

The' children had stayed in the garage, but IN OTHER TIMES FROM THE FILES OF THE TIMES FIFTY YEARS AGO July 26, 1903 The yacht Venus, owned by Commodore Herbert Pease of, the South Coast Yacht Club, won the silver Times Cup in the annual regatta at the Harbor. The Judges pondered calling the whole thing off, however, due to protests over the use of a whisker pole by the Venus. Survey of four townships in the Antelope Valley was approved by the U.S. Land Office for opening to public entry the homestead la. THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO July 2, 101S The board of directors of It I lV.