The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 40

xGac to See You Back I've Been Handling Most of the Comedy Around By Bill Vaughan Starbeams -S TSar In Troubled Ireland: New Hope And a Time of Testing FOObPRtCZS imflationI REVIVAL OF OLD CHARLIE CHAPLIN' FILMS STATISTICS SHOW that farmers receive less medical attention than other people This either means that they are healthier or get a doctor Bobby Fischer finally agrees to play the Russian chamoi-on Settlement of the chess strike might be a good omen wr baseball Well if it's any consolation the nation's voters will no longer have John Lindsay to ignore SPIDERS SUBJECTED to drugs spin sloppy webs So if you want to have nothing but nifty webs around the house be sure to keep your spiders dut of the medicine chest Presidential candidates who had hoped to set the voters afire in the primaries are discovering that many of the electorate these days seem to be wearing asbestos suits The new husband down the block says he mind buying steaks for his bride to cook but they are too valuable to be entrusted to an amateur CONGRESSMAN SLUDGEPUMP says he has difficulty confronting his opponent on either principle or personality since he has so little of either one The government sets a certain limit on the amount of dirt in food but we assume there will be no prosecution of those whose products fall below the quota April is recognized by the poet as the cruelest month and Ed Muskie might agree NOW THAT the Washington Senators are no more we wdll no longer have to pick a President who can toss a nifty opening-day pitch Every politician is a friend of the average man which is fine except that in return the average man is expected to support them all Some members of Congress are complaining that they are misquoted in the Congressional Record It might be even more disastrous if they lem and eventually agree to the reunification of Ireland That would turn 1 million Ulster Protestants with a 2-to-l majority in their own into a minority ruled by a Catholic Church-oriented regime in Dublin The Republic of Ireland currently has a population of almost 3 million of whom 95 per cent are Catholics Except for a few politicians seeking to make political points with their Irish-American constituents the United States stands aloof from the troubles in Ireland It is in fact none of this country's business regardless of the many historical and ethnic ties that Americans have with both the British and the Irish peoples Obviously the difficulties of Ireland cannot be worked out this year or next There has been an for 800 years and there is no reason to expect a satisfactory solution in this generation But a situation that has approached civil war can be improved The British have made a start toward re-establishing public order Today minister in Belfast ordered the release of 73 Catholic internees who were among the 700 being held without trial under a highly controversial policy The next logical step would be to eliminate some of the legitimate grievances that the Ulster Catholics have concerning political rights jobs and housing Conditions in Northern Ireland may not get notably better soon But at least there is some new hope that things will not get J0T70S 6SOD worse A judicial finding on the causes of violence in Northern Ireland scarcely could be more out of date The British government created a 3-man tribunal following the Ulster riots in the spring and summer of 1969 The judges were so thorough and deliberate that their belated report misses the main points of the current trouble The tribunal and does it really matter today? that neither the outlawed Irish Republican Army nor any Protestant organization nor any other party planned a campaign of violence But whether the 1969 rioting was spontaneous in origin has long since become academic The IRA has made it so with its cold-blooded murders by rifle fire and bombings The provisional wing of the IRA has been conducting guerrilla warfare against British troops and more promiscuously against the civilians of Ulster both Catholic and Protestant By late last month the situation was so out of hand that the British government felt compelled to intervene with direct rule from London That action has pleased many Catholics in Ulster discomfited both IRA killers and Protestant extremists and outraged even some Protestant leaders who previously could be regarded as moderates The suspension of the Irish government in Belfast for one year triggered cries of and a 2-day general strike Ulster Protestants appear to have mixed feelings Many in this time of testing see the full British take-over as possibly forcing a letup in the bloodshed Even so they are worried that the British may grow weary of the Irish prob- North Vietnam's Puzzling Venture One Man's Lamp Along the Levee ty was the better for his having been better in fundamental human ways whose example and influence reached far beyond his little newspaper's voice In 1963 when much of the South was still wrapped in violence and brutality a member of The staff passed through Greenville and talked with some of its people One of them a truck driver said: don't like some of the things they (the Carters) but we love Unless you were in Mississippi during that terrible summer you cannot know what a leap of decency and progress that statement implied Hodding Carter was in New Orleans then ill his sight failing But the Democrat-Times high tradition carried on then as it does now under the editorship of his son Hodding Carter III You can see the Mississippi River levee itself from the printshop door And now the elder Carter is dead and the nation is poorer for it Big Hodding tha townsfolk called him whether in anger or affection Just as they naturally call the son Little Hodding But they are wrong about that There are no little Hodding Carters They come only in one size and that is large indeed The Mississippi delta in the 1940s and -50s was a lonely place to be a public champion of racial moderation But Hodding Carter chose his battleground and stood on it He was a Southerner by birth He believed that the South truly could arise again but only as a decent place for men of any color And he believed that principles were worth paying for Seldom in the modern history of American journalism has any let alone such a modest journal as the Greenville Miss Delta been the target of so much abuse so many economic pressures such real and threatened physical violence But Hodding Carter the editor and publisher did not know the meaning of intimidation He had fought the ugly battles of the '30s to help rid his community of the Ku Klux Klan night riders When the times and the issues changed the White Citizens Councils and the elected bigots in Jackson the state capital held no terrors for him His courage and his leadership won him the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1946 earned him the admiration of his professional colleagues around the land More than that it earned him the right to know that his communi years in order to settle just when the last of the American ground forces are packing up Maybe after the election if he still finds President Nixon in the White House free of political pressure to bring the Air Force home too Giap might talk compromise rather than face four more years of punishment from the air but to settle before the election thus aiding re-election is scarcely plausible Meanwhile the most serious military operation since the Tet offensive is under way and the guess here is that even if American air power is effective the battle will last until mid-May That is not a pleasant prospect here for Nixon is due in Moscow on May 22 and if the invasion is not over by then the atmosphere for the talks on critical world questions will not be very genial Laos Cambodia and South Vietnam In this recent invasion operation Hanoi has openly invaded South Vietnam across the DMZ and increased the risk of a counter-attack by air and sea in North Vietnam behind their advancing forces Maybe Giap's swift organized blows north and south at the same time can split and paralyze the south and provide a political capita for the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam but it is a risky adventure The intriguing question is why Giap chose to move now The weather favors the offense and won't later on but the United States expeditionary force will be down to 69000 by May 1 and will be below the 50000 mark a month later with election pressure on the Presiderit to bring most of the remnant home before November Officials here are not as suming defeat though they are reasonably confident the offensive can be contained and they are even saying once again that if the enemy fails this time Hanoi will finally agree to a negotiated settlement Giap always has the option which he has taken many times before of retreating across the Cambodian and Laotian frontiers if his invasion is stopped He would obviously like to demonstrate that the Communists can defeat the South Vietnamese on the ground even against American air power and thus disrupt Washington's Viet-namization program and compel a settlement on terms But if he fails he can always break off the battle and regroup back home He has not fought and waited for 30 over 500 attack planes in and around Southeast Asia and these are being steadily reinforced and directed against the larger enemy units now invading South Vietnam not in scattered guerrilla bands but in classic organized formations Apparently General Vo Nguyen Giap who masterminded the Communist victory at Dien Bien Phu hopes that dramatic victories in the north around Quang Tri and in Binh Long province 75 miles north of Saigon would stun and disorganize the entire South Vietnamese defense organization but this is not likely with American planes dominating the air Moreover the Communists have left themselves vulnerable at the rear According to Pentagon estimates 12 of North Vietnam's 14 regular divisions are now operating outside of North Vietnam in 1W2 Npw York Times News Service The Commu nists in Vietnam are now trying to win the war in one decisive stroke as they defeated the French in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 It is a bold but puzzling strategy For while the enemy has thrown about 35000 men into the battle just south of the demilitarized zone and has had some initial success under cover of cloudy weather there is little chance that they can corner and eliminate the main units of the South Vietnamese before the United States gets the full thump of its airpower into the action This is not a Dien Bien Phu situation The South Vietnamese now have over a million men under arms and they are not concentrated and vulnerable as the French were in the bloody ending of the other Indo-China war Also the United States has Speaking the Public Twin Plus That Sliding Roof 'M (jtfgg fail Cits Both young men proved themselves to be very capable in a time of crisis went back to their homes unnoticed and only wished they could have done more All of us need to take time to appreciate the fine quality shown by a majority of the Marge Askew 10809 Witthar Independence Needs Facts If Walker of Overland Park 3-31-72) has knowledge of something which is apparently not available to the rest of us approaching fairness about Mr Nixon and his it is a shame that he did not include it in his letter! James Dawson 1121 Manheim Road Low on His List I am concerned about the plight of the poor baseball players who feel constrained to go on strike to get what they deem to be their just due in the way of retirement income We are told they would have to go without pay during this period How shattering for them What a great blessing that most of the rest of the world have anything this traumatic to contend with This must rank close to the bottom of any thoughtful list of the things in the world of today which are least worthy of general concern andor of a reportorial spot on the front page of this or any other public newspaper If I can bring it to mind say about 1987 be most happy to do what I would consider to be my fair share and help the players in this (what The 6-story Boley Building oh the northwest corner of 12th and Walnut has become a Kansas City landmark since its completion in 1908 The photograph dates from 1910 Boley Building must be) soul-searing experience by setting aside two or three minutes to worrv about the matter It has been so very difficult to find a really worth-while cause lately Willis Rose Lee's Summit New Column In Sporting Comment on April 3 1972 Sports Editor Joe McGuff suggests a possible column to be your own in regard to the current baseball pension dispute The correct word to be used is the noun and not the adjective Perhaps Joe McGuff needs a column to be your own John Peterson Consulting Actuary 5750 95th Overland Park To the Rescue Countless criticisms have been penned lately against our local guardians of the law However an incident on the Plaza last Easter Sunday morning prompts favorable comment I experienced difficulty with a automobile ie the transmission fastened in second making it impossible to lock the ignition and remove the key My alleged mechanical knowledge thwarted numerous attempts to disentangle it Upon the suggestion of my female companion I signaled a motorcycle cruiser The policeman not only graciously assisted and successfully unpinned the gears but instructed me in how to solve the problem should it arise again Kudos to Officer Rothermel and all other warm friendly patrolmen who serve on making them safe and trouble-free for citizens to enjoy Rosenblath 511 11th Her Question Sunday April 4th a letter from Pat Dowty written to the Speaking the Public Mind stated that a committee in Shell Knob Mo was considering the banning of trapping Would it be possible to obtain the address of this committee and to whom it should be sent? I would like to make my views known to the committee on this particular subject I would appreciate any help you could give me in obtaining this information Mrs Peggy Walter 7731 Kessler Shawnee Mission Note: See the following letter An Answer Persons wishing to protest the cruel and inhuman practice of steel traps should write to Larry Gale associate director Department of Conservation 2901 North Ten Mile Drive Jefferson City Mo expressing their views Wildlife rules and regulations are formulated by a regulations committee within the Department of Conservation It is within their power to change the trapping laws It does not rest directly with the Legislature Individuals or groups interested in changing the wildlife laws may request a hearing and may appear before the regulations committee in Jefferson City to present their proposals Mrs Davis 2409 NE 58th The Star welcomes contributions to "Speaking the Public Because of space limitations letters of 150 words or less are more suitable for publication All are subject to careful condensation and MUST include the signature and ddress "Wow!" Is Right In an April 3rd editorial The Star expressed concern for upgrading of quality of life in our The Star also has gone on record supporting the spending of public money for a sports arena Since other leaders of Kansas City have taken similar stands it seems fairly obvious they see a direct connection between sports arenas and the quality of life in our city Well I have an idea! Since going to have major league basketball next year and since the council and a few other leaders of Kansas City are pushing for a hockey franchise how about twin arenas! Think of it all you citizens of Kansas City: If one more sports arena would be such a boom to the quality of life then twin arenas would just about solve the problems of education housing rats streets the whole bit And if you leaders want to be sure of selling the package tell the people of the little cost and the great benefit and then promise them a sliding roof for good measure Wow! Kansas the only city in the country with two sets of twin stadiums How much higher could the quality of life get? Russell Hawkins 5605 Charlotte Faith Restored For quite some time I have complained that the younger generation gets publicity only when it does something wrong I was very pleased last week when I saw the picture and the fine article about the rescue of a 2-year-old child from a burning house by two very fine young men The marine had the look of a serviceman anyone would be proud of and the high school senior was so typical 'his longer hair Dunagin pasteboard box with string long enough to be lowered from the window to the concession stand The attendant obligingly filled our orders for snacks and we ate them at our desks without work interruption Gretchen Brown 106 Worth Brunswick Mo Mrs Sam Card From Old Kansas on the Boley Building took me back to 1919 when I was a stenographer for a film exchange that occupied most of the fourth floor A small concession stand that sold popcorn candy bars and gum had space on the alley corner of the building In 1919 we had not yet heard of breaks So one of the men in our office rigged up a irr OrUrio Fhlihsr-Hall Syndic throughout the world it makes a person wonder why the use of a tranquilizer gun might not work in subduing people who are mentally disturbed There have been several here in the Kansas City area in the last year that human lives and much property damage might have been avoided if a person could have been subdued in this manner It seems like what we would do for a wild animal we could do for a human being Louis A Weber 7947 Garfield them nor have any interest in them after the novelty wears off Instead of its misdirected attempt to portray the of this abominable practice The Star would better serve the interests of humaneness by supporting local legislation to prohibit such sales Mrs Betty Krausen 7405 Gregory Makes Sense After watching several of the television shows dealing with the capture and preser-v a i of wild ajmals A Wiser Course Once again this year The Star has seen fit to glorify and sanction the delivery of thousands of helpless baby chicks rabbits and ducks into the cruel and merciless hands of small children and infants by printing several pictures of the sales of these unfortunate Easter victims through the City Market Many of these small animals will be subjected to mishandling mistreatment and eventual destruction at the hands of children who neither know how to care for.