The Kansas City Times from Kansas City, Missouri • 50

1 THE KANSAS CITY TIMES, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1965 Anniversary of James Smithson His Name Lives On I in Nation He Never Visited ffilff Kansas (Stltj Simru i (THE Morning KANSAS CITY STAR) i The Kansas City Star Company Owner and Publisher. i MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. The Associated Press exclusively Is entitled to the use for reproduction of all local news pub-l lished herein as well as all AP dispatches. i Paid circulation, August, 1963. i Evening (daily average) Morning (daily average) Sunday (average) i 330,217 332,832 388,329 'Jk County.

At present them is nothing in the law compelling them to become unified. If Kansas follows the example of other states, it will find that complete unification cannot be achieved without a compulsory law. Once 96 per cent of the territory is in such districts, it should not be difficult for legislators to complete the job. It is a point worth considering by the holdouts. NATO MUST PLAN FOR LIFE WITHOUT FRANCE CHARLES DE GAULLE of France held up his favorite NATO doll the other day and stuck another pin in it.

By indirection, of course, it was a doll labeled U. S. There can be no doubt that the French president, ordering NATO out of existence by 1969, was also giving vent to his basic distrust of this -nation as a world leader. Even so, we would venture a guess that both NATO and the U. S.

will vive. In fact, the press conference statement that the Atlantic alliances integrated command structure must be dismantled was not surprising. The French leader has been traveling this road for some time. France cannot, of course, pull out of NATO now without violating the mutual defense treaty signed in 1949. But France can pull out in 1969.

Such a move would not destroy the alliance. It could force some serious rethinking and reorganization on the part of the other 14 members. Significantly, Gaullist France is the only member to express its dissatisfaction. This, thent is another bold bid for French leadership of Europe. And the paradox of De Gaulle is that his leadership ploy in the case of the Common Market, for example, or of NATO has persistently tended toward division rather than unity.

Nevertheless, the other NATO nations cannot ignore De Gaulle any more than a man on a highway can ignore the traffic. Very probably, before 1969, there will have to be some brainstorming on the reorganization of NATO. No defense setup can ignore changing times, and quite obviously conditions today are greatly altered from the conditions of 1949. The large problem hinges on geography. The French government can force the departure from its soil of NATO headquarters and all other allied units.

It would be a matter of inconvenience and expense to those remaining within NATO. Nevertheless, relocation would be possible even though France physically is the center of Western Europe. Such a relocation would in all probability further isolate De Gaulle from the rest of the free world. It is a development that the general at the moment does not seem to fear. Closer to the fact, he might have some second thoughts.

De Gaulle will not wreck NATO, nor will he help it by withdrawing. But adjustments can he made if the U. S. and its allies plan ahead for 1969. They will need to, if NATO which still serves an essential purpose is to remain a potent force.

general diffusion of knowledge? Devoting his life to scientific research, Smithson contributed at least 27 papers to scientific journals, and carried his experiments so far that not even a ladys teardrops, shed at a dinner table, were too sacred for his laboratory. Though he lost some of them, he caught what he could in a crystal cup, analyzed it, and found that it held salts in solution. As for remembering him, a zinc carbonate is called smithsonite after him. On an Angnst day In 1846 President Polk signed the document that made the United States the official trustee of the Smithsonian Institution. Eight years earlier Richard Rush, American diplomat, had disembarked at an Atlantic port with the half-million dollars in gold bequeathed to a country 3,000 miles away from the donors homeland.

Now, in the fall of 1965 the Smithsonian owns millions of historical prizes. The board of regents which governs the institution Vice-President Humphrey, Chief Justice Warren, three senators, three representatives, and six citizens who are not federal officeholders is guardian of a collection of formal evening-dresses worn by our First Ladies, beginning with George Washingtons Martha, and a bust of Phineas Barnum. The regents are guardians of dinosaur and mastodon skeletons and a flawless crystal ball almost 13 inches in diameter. They are guardians of the Dur-yeas horseless carriage vintage of the early 90s, and of drawings of steam locomotives more than 100 years old, the desk at which Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence and animal groups Theodore Roosevelt brought back from Africa. Kings Boat Mat Displayed A royal boat-mat used by Ka-mehameha king of the Sandwich islands, conqueror of all the Hawaiian islands, reposes in the nations attic, along with a topaz crystal which, weighing 153 pounds, is the largest in the world, at least 70,000 times as large as one ordinarily set in costume jewelry.

There is a 48-spindle spinning machine, built in 1790, the oldest cotton-mill machine By Julia Spiegelman WHEN the Smithsonian Institution was founded who would, or could, have imagined that the bequest of an Englishman to the United States would grow into an art and science organization with worldwide contacts? Currently it is the most visited complex of buildings in Washington. Last year it was host to 13 million visitors. Beginning next Thursday, for three the so-called nations attic it houses a variety of treasures from prehistoric fossils to recently returned space capsules is commemorating the 200th birthday of James Smithson with a pro- James Smithson, the Englishman who stirred a controversy with his bequest to the United States, was born 200 years ago this month. gram in which, it is expected, about 700 scholars will participate. A man who never visited and who never, so far as is known, had communication with Americans or things American, he now lies burial in the lobby of the institution.

What had Smithson been up to, anyway? Perhaps he felt ill-will toward his fathers homeland. Certainly he wanted posterity to remember him. He said so. But why the United States? Could he possibly have read George Washingtons Farewell Address in which Americans were urged to promote as an object of primary importance, institutions for the The complex of Smithsonian buildings is along the mall which links the Washington monument and the capitol (in the background When this picture was made several years ago, the Museum of History and Technology (lower left) had not yet been completed. The turreted structure barely visible at right center is the original Smithsonian building.

TENTATIVE START TOWARD I NATURAL BEAUTY fTHE Presidents natural beauty program, I I which has been bottled up in commit-1 tee all summer, has now started to imove through Congress. Although heavily amended, three of the four proposals received unanimous approval this week by the Senate Tpublic roads committee. It now seems likely that the bills can clear the Senate. The House committee, which is hearing the same propo-Jsals, has been slower to act. We see no special urgency in getting final action this session.

With the hearings out of the way. Congress can take up the measures again Rafter it reconvenes next January. There might even be certain advantages in tackling this program again after the lawmakers have had a good rest. Proponents of the bills might he more willing to fight off damaging amendments. Some compromises were in order and quite a few were made in the Senate committee.

Most of them would seem to make little difference one way or another. The only change that troubles us is the reduction in the ban on billboards from 1,000 feet from freeways and primary iiighways to 660 feet Of course, 660 feet (which 5s a little more than the length of two football fields) is a good distance back from the road. But a ban would be better, i The Senate committee killed the Presidents fourth proposal, calling for scenic drives that would be financed from secondary road funds. This recommendation has drawn strong protests, particularly from governors and state highway engineers. They saw it as a threat to farm-to-market road programs.

Actually, the proposal was so vague that it was difficult to determine exactly what it meant. One interpretation, made by a top government official, was that any country road through the Ozarks or the Flint Hills could qualify. If so, w-ork would have continued as usual and the plan wouldnt have amounted to anything anyway. The only danger is that additional amendments could water down the President's plan until it would have little meaning. Everything Mr.

Johnson sought isnt essential at the start. But not much would be achieved by keeping most of the billboards and junkyards, only slightly farther back from the highway. Unless genuine gains can be made in the battle to preserve the beauty of America, there seems little merit in doing anything at all. THE FIGHT FAN SCHOOL UNIFICATION FORGES AHEAD IN KANSAS If ffl A Sir Hugh Smithson, duke of Northumberland. Elizabeth Made, aristocratic heiress and lineal descendant of King Henry VII, had fled to France, one step ahead of the censure that would follow her indiscretion.

There her son, James Lewis Made, was horn. When Elizabeth died his father took the boy to England and gave him the classic education at Pembroke college, Oxford, that any son of a duke of Northumberland should have. And though he was subsequently elected to the Royal society, and though Parliament allowed him to use his father's surname, he felt so depressed by the stigma attached to his birth that he left England. My name, he wrote, shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northum-berlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten. Hinged on Condition Yet he certainly didnt become wealthy from being a chemist.

His fortune, amassed by inheritances from his mother, a half-brother who was his mothers son, and a half-sister who was his fathers daughter, was left to the United States only on the slim chance that his nephew, Henry Hungerford, should die childless. In that event the entire estate, except for a beqirest to a former servant. was to be used to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an institution for the increase and diffusion of the knowledge of man. Hungerford died in 1835, six years after his uncle, leaving no direct heirs. Ergo, the Smithsonian Institution.

Seventy-five years after Smithsons death and burial in Genoa, his remains were disinterred and transferred to Washington 'his grave had to make way for a quarry. Congress didnt accept the fortune of $508,318.46 with a flip of the finger. Heated controversy Should the United States take it? Should the United States not take it? John C. Calhoun told his fellow senators that in his opinion it was beneath the dignity of these United States to receive presents of this kind, from anyone! John Quincy Adams War troupe in sheets full of cracker crumbs, house them in hotel rooms next to convention parties, and steer them through a program of rigorously planned activity such as Doris Day movies, visits to the Senate and afternoon TV game shows. Dr.

Hanss critics have vilified him for daring to think about ways of making culture an effective weapon of the state. As the Russians have shown again, however, culture in the ear of the superstate is as much an instrument of policy as the I. C. B. M.

and the secret agent. As Dr. Hans puts it, You cant make an omelet without cracking a few Sne Surgery Is 100 Years Old Modern medicine is younger than you sometimes realize. A hundred years ago, for example, surgery and infection were almost synonymous. There was a good chance that surgery would mean death from postoperative infection.

Then a British surgeon, Joseph Lister, doused a young boys fractured and infected hip with carbolic acid from creosote. The patient lived. Antiseptic surgery was born. By modem standards, it was drastic treatment. Phenol also is a caustic that bums tissues.

So Lister tempered it with shellac. He also developed absorbent gauze for dressings and sterilized catgut for sutures. His inspiration came from Louis Pasteur, who had discovered, a short time before, that infection was caused by microbes. Between them, Lister and Pasteur revolutionized the science of medicine, and it is proper that Britain should honor the centennial of the 1865 case with a commemorative stamp. In this country alone, there are 11 million operations a year.

What is being commemorated then, is the saving of millions of lives over the last cerrtury. 'C Yx AS I I- 1 talked down Calhouns objection. Three years later Rush brought the money to this country along with Smithsons minerals, books, about 200 manuscripts, paintings, prints and reliefs, notes and memoranda arrived, all that were allowed in his bequest. Unfortunately most of these materials were consumed by fire exactly 100 years ago. Meanwhile our congressmen were at it again.

They had a name for a project Smithsonian Institution but nothing to attach it to. What should they do with the money? Establish a teachers training school or a national university? An agricultural school or a chemistry laboratory to increase knowledge, an astronomical observatory or a botanical garden? An art musem or a publishing business to diffuse knowledge? Original Sum Intact The United States faced a dilemma. It could find no precedent. By the time President Polk signed the bill that created the institution the half-million dollars had grown to three-qjarters of a million. The money was lent by law to the United States Treasury which pays 6 per cent interest on it in perpetuity.

The original sum remains intact. The newly-appointed board of regents met within a month and, before the end of the year, decided on its policy and selected the design for the building pseudo-Goth-ic. The following spring they laid the cornerstone and began landscaping Smithsonian park. Two centuries have passed since the birth of James Smith-son. an Englishman who never saw the United States.

But the United States has memorialized his name, has given it the immortality he craved, in ever-expanding muniments. TOWN r-d fc1 SQUARE -J fer A TDTTP.RZL Eldon. Mo. The summer market offered all sorts of devices for instant swimming, none of which seemed to improve on just standing up in a canoe. The dean of our senior citizens is enrolling in some of the adult education classes.

He claims he didn't get a chance to be a drop-out in the earlier years. An earnings tax proposition, aimed at getting some revenue from non-resident workers, may be placed before the people. If accepted, the next step will be to get someone from out of town to come here and work. No one on the current affairs bench understands Norwegian hut all agree Oslo's Daily Dag-bladet is a fine name for a newspaper in any language. The airlines age policy is out in the open and explaining why there is never a story of a mother and daughter graduating in the same stewardess class.

Tom Eilcrts Mrs. W. B. Thayer of Kansas City, widow of William B. Thayer of the Emery, Bird Thayer Dry Goods company, died at Coronado Beach, Calif.

She was the former Miss Sally Casey of Covington, Ky. At Thirty-first and Parallel, Kansas City, Kansas, Betty Jean McGuire 6, was struck and killed by a street car. Joseph B. Hester, 25, personable doorman at the Hotel Muehlebach, left for Cambridge, to enter Harvard university. He was graduated from the University of Texas last year.

Yesterday the friends of Sanford B. Ladd remembered his 81st birthday at his home, 3959 Warwick. He came to Kansas City in 1868. PROGRESS toward the unification of its baffling complex of elementary and high schools in Kansas has been almost incredible, cpmpared with the experiences in many other states. A virtual revolution in school district organization is building stronger schools more responsive to the needs of the pupils.

IThe goal, as expressed in the law, is to have all the elementary and high schools in Kansas in unified districts. The intent is to have one kind of school district unified replacing the 17 varieties described in many confusing laws two years ago. As a starting point in September, 1964, the state had 1,745 operating districts, the third highest number in the nation. State officials estimate that by July 1, 1966, the figure will drop to slightly more than 400 districts. All except 2 or 3 per cent of the states land area and all but 8 or 10 per cent of the pupils will be in unified districts by then.

It is remarkable progress under a voluntary law. The opposition, highly vocal at first, largely has ended. Once unified districts have been operating a year or so, resistance usually tarns to acceptance. A few large schools are not yet in unified districts, including those in Northeast Johnson in the United States and the medals, scrolls and badges Madame Schumann-Heink received from American veterans groups of World War from kings and from cities, in appreciation of her singing. Since that August 10, 1846, the United States National museum has expanded into a mul-timillion-d 1 1 a educational project with a variety of buildings around the Smithsonian building on the Mall.

The History and Technology building and the Natural History building compose the National museum, with 59 million specimens. In the Arts and Industries building guests of President Garfield danced at his inaugural ball just as it was completed. The all-marble National Gallery of Art with its paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, the Freer gallery with its paintings of the Tang and Sing dynasties, its Chinese sculptures and Japanese screens, the National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Zoological park in Rock Creek Valley, the Astrophysical observatory in Cambridge, all belong to one family. Similarly the International Exchange Service for scientific publications, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the National Air Museum, the Division of Radiation and Organisms, the Canal Zone Biological Area, the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition of portraits and statues of Americans who have contributed to the development of our country, and the incipient John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Some Restrict Visitors Under Smithsonian auspices are scientific laboratories seldom seen by visitors, study rooms for scholars and scientific expeditions not only in the United States but all over the world. Variety at its widest. A chemist of no great reputation, Smithson came of a titled English family, although he himself was a plain Mr. He resolved to do something that would perpetuate his own name for posterity longer than the titles of which he was deprived, for he was the natural son of Dr. Hans points out that in refusing to let Fischer go to Cuba to play chess, the United States, unwittingly perhaps, was escalating to step 22.

(Insulting the enemys national game.) A reasoned response by the Russians would have been a long article in Pravda denouncing baseball as hooliganism. This, he notes, was impossible for several reasons. For one, the Russians hadnt read his book and hence did not know the proper response. INSTEAD, they escalated immediately to step 67. (Harass the enemys road shows.) Even at this level, Dr.

Hans points out, effective cultural warfare can be waged without intense danger of wiping out all culture. To ban further tours by the Bolshoi, for example, would invite further escalation by the Russians. The reasoned response would be to bed the THE HUSTLER'S REQUIEM He was born all balled up. He grew, dreamed and played. But at noon he slowed down.

Stopped. He didn't have much Chased by the sun He opened up. Ripped and ran. Won a few, lost a few. Then in twilight.

All opened up. He died. Never knowing what life Was all about. Lacy Banks CL ftiblsL (da. Jodcu.

Lie that nppresseth the poor reproarheth his Maker: hut he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor Proverbs 14:31. Fighting a War on Peacetime Basis Hello, Dolly Good-by Escalation in the Cultural By James Reston 1C 95. Nnw York TimM Nnn Sfff-vue) IERY RUN, VA. On a 1 14 long flight from Viet- nam to Virginia, there i is time to reflect on the American war effort in Asia and the even more complex political crisis in Asia as whole. 1 One contradiction stands out.

The Americans in Vietnam seem to be talking about a long war and planning a short personal stay. Vietnam is a savage test of strength, but is only a limited effort in the much larger struggle for the future of Asia, which the undeclared war between India and Pakistan makes clear will probably go on for a long time. There is little-evidence in Saigon that the United States is ready for this larger war in Asia or even that it is prepared for a long war in Vietnam. THE AMERICAN strategy in Vietnam is to stun the Viet Fong with air power, force Hanoi and the Communist National Liberation front in South Vietnam to sue for peace, and ihen leave the control and pacification of the country primarily to the South Vietnamese government, which still shows no aigns of being able to control or pacify its own squabbling and ambitious leaders. What the armed forces of the United States have done to stabilize the military situation in Vietnam in the last few months is impressive.

The commitment tof more than 100,000 Americans to the struggle, the bombardment of North Vietnam and particularly the hounding of Jhe Viet Cong by air power all over South Vietnam have undoubtedly avoided defeat, but this is only the beginning of Jthe beginning and even in Vietnam, let alone the larger bat tles for Asia, there are shortages of men and materiel and contradictions of policy. THE NAVY, for example is carrying the burden of the air war against North Vietnam from its aircraft carriers in the South China sea. Paul Nitze, secretary of the Navy, anticipating this assignment, called for volunteers from the Navy reserve. They did not respond in sufficient numbers. So the men on active duty in Vietnam were forced to extend their service for four months.

This was done without much complaining. In fact, the spirit below decks in these aircraft carriers in the South China sea is an inspiration. But the men there are working literally 18 and often 20 hours a day, keeping the fighter-bombers repaired, often in 120-degree heat, sleeping fitfully for an hour or two and marking off on their calendars the days when, with a little bit of luck, they may get a short relief for what Ls prudently and inprecisely called rest and recreation in Hong Kong or Manila. MEANWHILE, the civilian representatives of the much criticized Agency for International Development (AID) (the Foreign -Aid administration), who have the Important and dangerous jobs of working with the Vietnamese province chiefs in hamlets surrounded by the Viet Cong, are in even more difficult circumstances. They do not know, from one foreign aid appropriation struggle in Congress to another, whether they will have a job.

They are without their families in isolated communities that can be overrun by the enemy every night, and the surprising thing is not that so many of them go home after their term of duty, but that so many of them stay on long after they are free to go. In summary, then, there seems to be a basic conflict between the long-range problem in Vietnam and the short-range American personnel policy designed to meet the problem. The shortage of materiel -of spare parts, of some medical supplies and of certain types of weapons, planes and helicopters can probably be met fairly quickly in Vietnam. Even the shortage of specialists mechanics, electronic experts, etc. can probably be eased over the next few months without calling all the reserves of the armed services to duty, but there will still be a problem.

FOR THE DEMANDS on Washington and the American people in Vietnam, great as they are, could easily be repeated elsewhere in the vast area of revolutionary struggle from Japan and Korea through Southeast Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean, and if China should try to meddle in the Indian-Pakistani conflict and encourage the chaos of communal and religious slaughter in the Indian sub-continent, the pressure on the U. S. to do far more would be urgent. Vietnam is only a symbol of this larger problem. We have no adequate professional military and civilian service to deal with it.

We are fighting a war on a modified peacetime basis. We are improvising brilliantly in with a constant turnover of ambassadors and officers and technicians, but we are not yet ready either for a long war in Vietnam, or for the longer battle for Asia. FORTY YEARS AGO in The Star against Communist culture. This suspicion may have been heightened by the negligible coverage given to the United Statess Fischer gambit in the American press. THE STATE departments motives are obscure.

The Fischer affair may have been merely a case of bureaucratic bumbling, or it may have been a small probe by the CIA designed to test Communist cultural defenses. Whatever the case, no one anticipated a violent Communist response. Compared to Hello Dolly, Fischer is scarcely more than a popgun in the American cultural arsenal. At most, the Soviets were expected to hit back by throwing a couple of touring American engineers out of Dnieper-petrovsk. In banning Hello Dolly Moscow abruptly confronted Washington with a cultural challenge of the deepest gravity.

The men here who favor lobbing one into the mens room of the Kremlin are already urging a 5-year prohibition against the Bolshoi ballet, and Sol Hurok has been warned that were eyeball to eyeball under the complexion bulbs. THE VOICE of sanity behind the scenes belongs to Dr. Hugo Hans, whose work, Culture Can Turn the Tide, defines 93 brilliantly thought-out steps up the escalation ladder which precede the dreadful step 94, universal cultural war. (Banning pre-dawn Russian classes on educational TV, permitting unlimited export of movie magazines to the Soviet Union, etc.) By Russell Baker (r- 1965 New York TimM News Service) WASHINGTON Moscows abrupt decision to keep Hello Dolly off the boards in Russia is bad news. The official interpretation 4hat the show was banned in retaliation against United States war policy in Vietnam is not taken seriously by people who understand relations between modem superstates.

These people find it laughable to suggest that Moscow thinks it can give American bombers tit-for-tat by cutting off David Merricks rubles. (Merrick is the shows producer.) The Hello Dolly crisis, they agree, is retaliation all right, but not against anything that is happening in Asia. IN THE WORDS of one war-room thinker, What we are faced with is the danger of total cultural warfare. In striking against Broadways most successful musical, Moscow is over-reacting in an escalation out of all proportion to the original American thrust. The crisis was begun quietly enough last month when Soviet photographic planes flying over Cuba recorded the absence of Bobby Fischer from the Casablanca chess tournament.

Scanning newspaper cuttings in the Ministry of Cultural Warfare, several commissars reported simultaneously that Fischer, the American chess champion, had been denied American passport permission to attend the tournament. Here, it seemed, was a quiet, concealed move by the United States to strike a sneak blow From (he Files of September 11 and 12, 1925. Rescued after nine days afloat in mid-Pacific in a damaged seaplane, Commander John Rodgers was appointed assistant chief of the Navys bureau of aeronautics. His rescuer, Lieut. Donald R.

Osborn, 27, was a Kansas City boy, whose parents are Mr. and Mrs. D. R. Osborn, live at 3925 Manheim road.

Rodgers is a descendant of Commodore John Rodgers, father of the United States Navy. Ben Jaudon, six times elected city treasurer, is the Democratic candidate for mayor. An organization to conduct the campaign for George E. Kimball for mayor was formed at Drexel hall, Hunter (Linwood) and Baltimore..