The Danville Register from Danville, Virginia • Page 6

Tht Register: Danville, Va. Sat, April 29, 1967 A Soldier's Speech When General WILLIAM WESTMORELAND ended his address to a joint session of the Congress yesterday, the lawmakers, bolstered by state governors and members of the diplomatic corps, stood and cheered and cheered some more. Senator MIKE MANSFIELD, the majority leader, called it a soldier's So it was. It was the speech of a fighting man who has no intention of losing a war, provided he has the backing of the hoihefront. None of the Senate's "Doves" could find fault with WESTMORELAND'S report to them and to the country, although they might not agree with the strategy and tactics he is employing as commander of the action in the field.

The General is carrying out the directives of the Government for which he acts, and critics of Administration policy in Vietnam, such as FULBRIGHT, MORSE and even MANSFIELD, can find no fault with that. Missing from the Congressional address was any criticism, direct or implied, of those who disagree with the war policies of the Government. Several Senators thought that General WESTMORELAND had been brought home by President JOHNSON to silence criticism of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. They expressed apprehension lest the right of critics to be heard would be infringed if not place critics in jeopardy from an intolerant public.

Whatever reasons President JOHNSON may have had in mind when he invited or directed WESTMORELAND to come home for the first time in two years, it seems quite clear that by his presence and by his comments the commander of U.S. fighting forces in Vietnam has given the people a strong and bracing tonic. He has helped improve understanding of the aims and the actions in Vietnam and he has dissipated the fog of discontent over an apparent unwillingness to prosecute the war by hitting the foe where it hurts most. This is no small achievement for a field commander in a couple of speeches on the homefront. He will be able to return to his headquarters in Vietnam with assurance that the country is behind him and the hundreds of thousands of Americans fighting under his command.

There was no credibility gap in WESTMORELAND'S words. Something Better From Ordeal The U.S. Senate is yet to decide whether to censure the senior Senator from Connecticut, THOMAS J. DODD, for diverting to his personal use at least $116,083 and for conduct that tends to bring the Senator into dishonor and disrepute, or agree that what DODD has done is no worse than actions by up to half the membership of the Senate, as Senator RUSSELL LONG contends. The decision will force many a Senator to look into the mirror at himself before he leaves for the Senate floor to participate in the debate and vote on the motion for censure that has been recommended by a special Ethics Committee.

Not only will Senators ponder the evidence against Senator DODD in the light of their own experience but they, also must consider it in the light of their own attitude toward the Senate and how they want the legislative branch, to be regarded by the public. Senator LONG says that if only non- sinners throw stones at DODD there will be very few stones. It well may be. But if Senator DODD is not censured, what then? instead of half the Senators doing as DODD has done, all will have an invitation to get in on the racket. Something better must come out of the ordeal of THOMAS J.

DODD. The Senate, should it not censure or otherwise disapprove the actions acknowledged by DODD, even though he sees no wrong involved, will open the floodgates to a torrent of questionable or wrongful practices. By letting DODD off and then adopting a Code of Ethics, it will be like closing the door to the barn of honesty after the mule of license has fled. Fact that some other Senators or many among them have been guilty of offenses tending to dishonor the Senate and have misused funds cannot justify dealing with DODD other than as the evidence and the circumstances of his offenses suggest he should be treated. Unless there is a confrontation and a penalty to suit the offenses when evidence of misconduct is established, the Senate inevitably wiE deteriorate in character and in the confidence of the public.

The debate to bring out the evidence against DODD and the evidence on his behalf should proceed. The chips should fall where they may for the, future of the Senate and the confidence Americans can have in its membership, individually and collectively. If half of the members are off the moral track, no better time to set them aright, or have them set themselves aright, is likely to occur. Holmes Alexander Wrong General Chosen To Win War On Crime WASHINGTON, D. C.

Attorney General Ramsey Clark, 39, is winsome, witty, slow- spoken, quick-minded, homespun and humane, but he's not going to win any wars on crime. Somewhere in this favored land, there must be lawyers who are fitted by temperament and training to carry the title of general-officer in the running battles against the enemies of American society. But Democratic Presidents can't seem to find them. Mr. Kennedy picked his kid brother, and Mr.

Johnson has picked two, Nicholas Katzenbach and Clark, It is as if these Presidents had chosen military commanders who are conscientious objectors and who faint at the sight of blood. Twice within a week or so, Ramsey Clark has been on display for the character he bears. He was a limp witness in his own behalf before the National Press Club. A law-enforcement officer? No, but a worrier about social justice, and a hotspur for civil rights instead of a mailed fist against civil wrongs. About the time Clark was telling us how terribly unfair and inadequate the American system of education and opportunity is, Stokley Carmichael was rampaging through Nashville on the crest of an organized riot.

There he was exercising his academic freedom to disturb the peace on three college campuses and giving aid and comfort to just about every enemy we've got. Carmichael is a warlord sorts. He needs an environment in which to Federal funds are needed to teach school kids why they should obey the rules. There may come a time and maybe a country where fellows like Ramsey Clark will shine in the role of law enforcement, But it is not now. It is not here.

McClellan remarked that the FBI had released new crime statistics since the last round of subcommittee hearings. Not surpisingly, major crimes around the nation took another statistical jump a bouncy 11 per cent during 1966. The D. C. Metropolitan Police Department announced that serious crimes in February, '67 had increased by 32 per cent 633 new outrages bringing the total to 2,631 over ruary, '66.

The glossy, 300-paga (illustrated) Report by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administra' William F. Buckley, Jr. New Wrinkle OnDraft-Avoidance Mr. James Reston reveals ing a religion?" the young mamown. discretion, opt out of any Cassius Clay's Rubicon Little note would be taken of the refusal of CASSIUS CLAY to enter the Army were it not for the fact that he is the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

As an athlete who has reached the top of his sport, CLAY became a public figure and his every antic and action became news to some people. The man who would fight anybody for money, will not fight for his country. A professional athlete, he claimed exemption from military service by insisting he is a minister of the Black Muslim faith. But his preaching, largely confined to the ring until recent weeks, began only after all his other stratagems for avoiding military service failed in the courts of the nation. CLAY expressed readiness to die for his religion but he well knows that in this country no one is called upon to do any such thing.

He may be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to prison for as much as five years for his refusal to accept induction. These penalties may appear exceedingly light to a man who probably has spent considerably more than $10,000 in lawyers fees in his effort THE DANVILLE REGISTER All Departments Dial SW 3-2311 Entered at Danville, post office ai mail matter. Zip code 24541. Member of The Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited to this paper and also the local news published herein. All of reproduction on special dispatches herein are also reserved.

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Los Angeles, Uiami, avoid military service. Highest penalties for CLAY will be stripping him of his title and the refusal of the boxing commissions of the states to sanction any contest in which he may seek to appear when he is released from prison, should he exhaust Ms rights to appeal before beginning service of any to which he may be sentenced. The tragedy of CLAY is that he has seen an idol to countless young Negro 3oys and he has let them down, as well as his and their country. Unfortunately, an athlete is more familiar to youth than a Medal of Honor winner. Everybody knows the name of CASSIUS CLAY, alias MUHAMMAD ALT, but who can recall the name of the fine young soldier from Fayetteville, N.

C. who was decorated recently by President JOHNSON with the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam? That CLAY is misguided in his refusal to serve his country is beyond question. One of the 35 young men who were in the induction group with him at Houston on Friday remarked that "He probably will regret his Little doubt can be entertained on that score. Once he is aware that he has crossed his own Rubicon and no more can be respected, his often-repeated attempt at ego-boosting, "I'm the will acquire a mocking echo. The time for self-deception has ended for CLAY.

He now joins some unattractive company in the list of those who have refused the call of country and who have been branded as slackers. It is a roll of dishonor. ALI'S name, alphabetically at least, will be near the head of the list. that, he much taken by a line of argument that is going strong in Yale undergraduate circles, and may very well take the country by storm as a sort of idee du is, hold your hats, as follows: We.Jive in a secular age. That being so, why is it that the laws permit only religious scruples to qualify a man as a conscientious objector? And why shouldn't a young man be permitted to object to a particular war? Why, in short, shouldn't John Jones inform the draft board that he is quite prepared to enlist if, say, the United States should declare war on Rhodesia, but nix on Vietnam, and please stop pestering him.

The tradition, of course, is one that takes into account the natural temptation to the development of pacifist scruples on the eve of one's induction. And so the rule evolved that someone declining to serve in the business end of the army had to prove that he had been a regular communicant in a religion (most conspicuously the Quaker religion) that enjoins its flock not under any circumstances to shed human blood. And of course all along there have been exemptions for ordained clerics. Complications arise, as we have just seen in the case of Cassius Clay, from the pseudo- religions. Is it a basic American freedom to found a religion? And to ordain oneself a cleric in it? "How do you go about found- JI1UU TT A-l VIliJWJ.

asked Voltaire. "You go and particular 'war. get killed," Voltaire answered Th nrono a1 ine proposal is testily, "and then you rise again on the third day." Such rigid requirements are nowadays considered undemocratic, so that we have for instance the "religion" of the Black Muslims, to which Cassius Clay subscribes, and out of respect for which he asks that the draft boards defer him. And then there are Jehovah's Witnesses each one of which is, by his reckoning, a "minister." More problems for the draft boards. It isn't always easy to distinguish between real and ersatz religions, and the question is a nice one whether one shouldn't be entitled to roll one's own xeligion.

But the Yale line is by far the most interesting wrinkle of them all. It is generally agreed that categorical conscientious oppo-l sition to war should exempt a citizen from, the requirement of fighting a war. It is something else to say that the citizens should be free to pick and choose his wars. Now if the Yale position were based on the estimate that the Vietnam War could be fought by volunteers, i.e., that no draft was really necessary, it would be an enromously appealing position why the draft if you don't need the draft? But the proposal is made in context of the draft as necessary for the prosecution of the Vietnam War and suggests, in effect, that anyone may, at his proposal is strangely appealing to'ears (like my own) that have always found music in the rhetoric of anarchical liberalism. In fact, of course, it doesn't work, any more than analogous ideas have worked out, whether Calhoun's idea of the concurrent majority (the notion that no federal law operate.

Well, General Clark's the point is sentimental attitude toward Johnson has crime provides just the atmosphere in which Carmichael's sort of -unholy terror can prosper, as it did under Bob Kennedy and Nick Katzenbach. More recently, the cool and charming Attorney General showed up to testify before Senator McClellan's subcommittee on criminal laws and procedure. Again, the nation's top law-enforcement officer was on a character-revealing spot. You could tell from Clark's responses to the subcommittee's questions that his solution to be crime problem in America was the sociological one. Cops have got to study public rela- tion of Justice (Katzenbach, chairman), has added another, hand-wringing lament on the nation's plight.

Just about everything has been done to prove how much American officialdom disapproves of crime everything, that is, except action. There won't be any action, I warrant, if we wait around for General Clark to get angry at the wrongdoers. He feels too sorry for them. He's more interested in reforming society, than rescuing it. Sure, I know, he's the old shoe type.

He drives a small car instead of riding in the Justice Department's long limousine. He's as nice a young fellow as you'll ever meet. But what's more to that President appointed the wrong guy to the wrong post at the wrong time. You listen to General Clark, and then you think of California's Governor Reagan who recently permitted a cop-killer to be executed in the gas chamber. You think of Florida's Governor Kirk who went out and hired a private detective agency to spy on the crooks.

The' conclusion you'll draw, if you're like me, is that the crime solution is a matter of thought revolution. The need is for a turn-about in thinking, so that we get men in national law enforcement who don't mind picking on the National Geographic Mason-Dixon Line Work Finished 200 Years Ago should be binding on a dissenting state), or the idea of voluntary taxation advanced by such economists and political theorists as Madison and Herberl (you pay as many taxes as you think you should). The trouble with any government at all is that you are likely, on this issue or that one, to find yourself with the minority. (That, by the way, is why conservatives insist that the state's powers be kept slight, so as mechanically to reduce the number of occasions when you find yourself obeying the majority's orders.) The majority's decision, expressed through their choice of the President of the United States and the Congress, to fight the war in Vietnam, and it makes very little difference that Mr. Reston, lecturing at Yale University, ran into not a single supporter of Mr.

Johnson's policies, even as Henry Wallace traveling in Russia just after the war found not a single opponent of Stalin's policies. It would be interesting to hear the pleas of some of the young gentlemen of Yale who face the draft, but do not desire to participate in this particular war. Alas, their draft boards are not likely to listen to them, any more than the executioner listened to W.C. Fields who, noose around his neck at Tombstone, Arizona, was asked if lie had a final wish: "Yes," he said, "I'd like to see Ireland Lions, he told McClellan, andlkillers and the ct-ooks. TOTHEPOINT Death-Urge Legislation By Russell Kirk New York City now has plenty of Everybody knows the name of America's most famous boundary.

But few know why the Mason-Dixon Line was drawn 200 years ago and where it runs. In popular belief, the bound a separated Confederate States from the Union during the Civil War. It remains the symbolic division between South and North. The line was drawn earlier, however, to end a bitter colonial land dispute. Completed in 1767, the line extends from east to west between Pennsylvania and Maryland, with a shorter branch reaching southward then east between Maryland and Delaware.

All three states were on the Union side. TRAIL ENDED AT WAR PATH The English surveyor-astron omers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon wound up four years of arduous work in the summer and fall of 1767. Work ing westward through wilder ness, they reached the "top the Great dividing Ridge of AUeganey Mountains" in July The Englishmen and their sistants and guides, all fcarfu of Shawnee and Delaware In dians, reached the so-calle War Path on October 9. Th Indians with them refused go any farther. Thus a poin 230 miles 18 chains and 21 link from the beginning of the line formed its western terminus.

The boundary controvers water, so it can forget all about the flared in the mid-ieoo's whe drought until the next one comes along. President Johnson passed tip the gridiron dinner. Having all those knives stuck in him is bad enough, but maybe they only hurt when he laughs. the Dutch Government and Calverts of Maryland bott claimed the big fertile penin sula between the Delaware anc Chesapeake Bays. After the Dutch were pushet out of the region, William Penn inherited the dispute.

The bic Jeering, kindled by conflicting interpretations of the Penn and alvert charters, continued for enerations. At last the case came before ingland's Court of Chancery. compromise decision gave laryland the bulk of the pen- nsula. Pennsylvania retained tie northeast portion that later ttained independence as Delaware State. The American disputants sign- sd the agreement in 1760, and work was begun by local surveyors.

They made so little progress that Mason and Dixon were invited to the Colonies "mark, run out, settle, fix, and determine" the line. Mason, 35, was assistant astronomer at England's Greenwich Observatory. He recently had been abroad with Dixon, 30, a quiet-mannered Quaker, to observe a transit of Venus. STONES SET UP Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia in 1763. They set to work checking and correcting the peninsula lines, then took the westward trail with a large party of assistants, ax- men, and guides.

Handsome boundary stones, inscribed with the arms of Penn and Calvert on opposite sides, were set at five-mile intervals. Simpler intermediary stones bore the letters and M. The four-year project cost $75,000. When Mason and Dixon sailed back to England, they left behind them the largest engineering-surveying achievement of 18th-century America The job they did in trackless wilderness with crude instruments was astonishingly accurate. Modern surveyors have found a difference in latitude of only 2.3 seconds (232 feet) from the Mason-Dixon figure.

before I die." Judging from the way all the flashlights around the house seem to have dead batteries when we need them, we have some doubts about 'the reliability of the electric car. A curious enthusiasm in "liberal" quarters for the Slaughter of the Innocents has been spreading across the Western World. I refer to proposed legislation to permit abortion on a grand scale. Here is Freud's death-urge, with a vengeance. In Parliament, the House of Commons has passed a bill which "would make London the abortion-capital of the world," in the phrase of Mr.

St. John Stevas, one of the most intelligent Conservative M.P.'s. This bill would make it even easier to kill one's unborn child than it is in Sweden. Possibly the House of Lords may delay enactment of this radical innovation until the Commons. have second thoughts.

In several of these United States, a i n-enthusiasts have been pushing hard, for legislative action this year. Why this sudden spurt of zeal? Can it be that the pro-abortion folk know then- case will be weaker, within two or three years? Are they endeavoring to pass laws, abruptly, which legislatures and the public would reject upon fuller consideration? For one thing, medical research recently suggests the fetus really becomes a living human being much earlier than Three members of the President's cabinet have TV sets in their limousines but not the Secretary of Transportation, who is supposed to keep his mind on the traffic. Upon retirement the veteran American diplomat can build a little cottage with the fireplace made entirely of stones thrown through his embassy windows. we used to think. For another, there is a definite possibility of finding a cure, within the next two years, for the damage German measles in the mother does to many unborn infants (though not the majority) whose mothers contract that disease.

Our Judeo-Christian society has forbidden the killing of unborn children for thousands of disastrous consequences. Why suddenly authorize virtually any mother. on a variety of pretexts, to de- stroy life? And in a time whea contraceptives are available more readily and more efficaciously than ever before, why permit parents to make away with their children on a second- thought whim? (In many instances, that decision would be merely selfish irresponsibility.) If unborn children may be put to death, when not wanted, why not living children As a Swedish physician said to a woman in the late stages of pregnancy who asked him to destroy the baby inside her, "Why not kill one of the children you already have?" She professed to be shocked. "It's the same thing, you know," ha told her. And if it is morally justifiable to slay children in the womh, if one doesn't want them, why isn't it justifiable, for children to put to death parents who have become nile or otherwise a burden? Yes, I know that the mother is supposed to give some reason: "clanger to my health," "tha child might be deformed," "I was raped," etc.

(Incidentally, pregnancy very rarely results from rape.) But if parents arc willing to kill, why should they not be willing to lie? Some of the "liberals" so eager for legalized abortion are among the "liberal" folk who fulminate against putting to death the worst murderers. I fait to understand their logic. If we can take life at all, surely we should punish the guilty, and not the innocent. About the first a man knows that he is putting on too much weight is when he notices hostesses are steering him away from antique chairs. Congressman are dissatisfied with their pay.

Still, you can't beat the hours. As Other Editors See It THE FLAG BURNERS An Editorial From The Washington Star IT TAKES SOMETHING out of a pleasant spring Sunday to pick up the newspaper and see the American flag being burned in New York's Central Park by a crowd of half-wits. Still, in our society, there needs to be a place for the imbeciles for the flag burners, those who burn their draft cards and the like. How they get away with this moronic activity is something of a mystery, since a man who has burned his draft card certainly is in violation of law, and if there is no law whicb makes it illegal to burn the flag there ought to be. IN THE UNITED STATES, however, these so-called protest demonstrations have to be tolerated.

And this despite the fact that they undoubtedly delight the men in Hanoi and Peking, and in spite of the probability that they will cost American lives in a prolonged war. The only alternative to tolerance would be to forcibly suppress them, and this would cast our country in the role of totalitarian states, which seem to claim the first loyalty of many if not most of the demonstrators. According to the news reports, a total of some 185,000 people turned out for Saturday's shameful performance. At first blush, this may seem like an impressive number. BUT IT ISN'T REALLY, for what it means is that for every American who joined the demonstrations, something like 999 stayed away.

Thus, the voice of the lunatic fringe, while shrill, does not begin to speak for the people of this country. If 185,000 Americans took part in the protest, something more than 185 million did not. And those who were revolted by the Saturday spectacle will simply have to hold their noses and learn to live with this sort of thing. I.