The Racine Journal-Times Sunday Bulletin from Racine, Wisconsin • Page 17

Redundancy and How It Works This Leaves You in Dark, Good! UIV The young lieutenant opened the door of the waiting room and beckoned to the journalist! from Shakagga. "The colonel will see you now." The weatherbeaten reporter studied his escort as the two walked along a sound-proof corridor in which the decorative scheme used the letters "SH-SH-SH!" in varied patterns. The lieutenant's uniform, of a light green cloth, had many pockets. Some of them contained dictionaries. Others were marked "Classified" or "Top Secret." Some were fastened with combination padlocks.

At a bronze door the officer halted the reporter. He said: "You understand, of course, that you may not reveal anything that the colonel says!" "Then what am I here for?" asked his charge, flipping his dead cigar into a corner. Immediately bells rang loud ly and wall cabinets opened automatically to display fire extinguishers aimed at the journalist. "Aren't you folks a little nervous?" asked the reporter. "Please!" demurred the officer.

"We prefer to say 'alert'." Vocabulary and Idiom. Then he smiled and waved a hand vaguely in several directions. "This section of our estab llshment will interest you as a working journalist he began. "Please!" said the reporter. "That expression has an pleasant sound.

His escort continued: "This is the Military Vocabulary and Idiom Center which the colonel directs. It is doubtful if you have anything like it in your country." The newsman saw corridors with clusters of closed doors bearing various signs, such as: "Redundancy Section Private," "Elucidationary Directives Restricted" and "Military Vernacular Closed on Saturdays." "This the foreign-langue department?" the reporter asked. The lieutenant looked shocked. "Oh, my, no. This is the place where we prepare announcements for the public." He pointed to a hallway to the left "You may recognize some of these sub-departments." "Huff and Puff." A door marked "Re-activate, De-activate" was followed by one labeled "Discretionary, Diversionary" and another bearing the words "Formalize, Finalize and Revitalize." "This section," explained the officer, "has the function of phrasing communiques in terms which make them seem important.

We call it the Puff Bureau'." "Well," remarked the jour- nalis, "we don't have the routine so highly specialized back In the U. but we get similar results." They approached another group of offices. The doors had small barred apertures and were labeled Ad mittance." "Now, thfs first office is in charge of a sub-lieutenant who is intrusted with inserting the word 'tactical' in public announcements. The next office is the headquarters of the term 'over-all which is used in speeches given before service clubs. The third cubicle specializes in 'operational' and This chap is the envy of the department.

Last year he was on special as signment with the Obfuscatory Cadre of the Lingual Legerde main Branch. They said he was the greatest obfuscatory since the days of patent medi cine shows." A Special Wing. The visiting reporter rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "I sup pose you have a scientific divi sion. "Indeed, yes! It has a spe dal wing of the building to itself and you should see the dictionaries and books of synonyms! Stacks of them" They passed through a series of two steel folding gates, a radar-operated portcullis and an electrically-charged drawbridge equipped with a fluoroscopic scanner to detect bur glar tools carried by visitors.

"I feel like back at Sing Sing," quipped the newsman. They entered a corridor cov ered with velvet carpeting. Geometric symbols and alge braic equations festooned the walls. There was a high pitched humming sound like the background music in a space-man movie. "Lovely, isn't it?" The lieutenant looked into the news man's iface for signs of appre ciation.

"Yeah, like an appendectomy with chartreuse sutures!" The lieutenant's face fell. Oh, we prefer magenta! Now, here we are in the top- bracket department. This is the home of such lingual material as 'supersonic' and 'ballistic Not a week passes but some specialist will produce scientific terms never before known. In some cases, materials and processes have to be invented to fit the names. Just imagine the Little Gem Knife Sharpener was invented because one of our savants coined the term 'cutlass-eferous'." He paused, then said: "You will go in to see the colonel, and I know you will be inspired by his grasp of the importance of making the public military-minded.

Just think such expressions as 'survival technique' and 'strategic con siderations' were dreamed up right here in our own thought factory. We even produced many for the diplomatic serv ice, including 'bilateral' and 'totality of mean I'm sure you will be inspired, and that the people back in your country will be also." "Look, friend," said the newsman. "I have a headache I couldn't survive a bout with the colonel in my condition. Anyway, my dictionary could n't spell half the stuff you told me. "Give the head man my re spects and tell him' I've gone Middle Age Is Perilous, Dr.

Sockman Declares By Dr. Ralph W. Sockman What is life's most dangerous age? In a group of press representatives and church leaders some time ago the question was raised as to what could be done to preps America against the spiritua perils of the hour. Several of those present swung the point of the issue back to the children. Childhood, they maintained, is the key to curing our social ills, train a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it.

Certainly childhood is the most plastic age and the perils which threaten early youth can hardly be exaggerated. Nevertheless, I do not believe childhood is life's most dangerous age. If not childhood, then perhaps life's most dangerous age is the adolescent period when the budding powers of personality are branching out in all directions or the years following when youths are leaving home for college or for work. Certainly that formative time when sons and daughters leave the safeguards of parental guidance is a period fraught with momentous risks and dangers. Yet I hardly believe that is life's most perilous period Problems of Mid-Life The conviction has deepened upon me that life's most dan gerous period is middle age.

It those for whom the race has work of the Boy Scouts, the slowed down from a run to a Girl Scouts, the YMCA and walk, or perhaps those who the YWCA cannot be too high feel the temptation to loosen ly praised as part of our na- the yoke of Christ and let tional defense. I know how down the standards. It seems justifiable to apply to life the words of Ihe Psalmist and say oe-e is "a destruction that waa at noonday." The inability to carry the ideals and expectations of youth through middle age without breaking is one of life's most common phenomena. Insurance actuaries tell us how amazingly few of the young men who are running merrily at 25 pass the 65th milestone with financial coiors flying. And the failure of financial hopes is only one of the minor casualties of maturity.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not minimizing the need of safeguarding the young. The back to use U.S.A.'s great mid- is those in their middle years west to interview a hen that who find their youthful goals lays eggs with three yolks!" still so far from attainment Skoal's Signs of Spring large a proportion of our criminals are young. Flagrant crimes occur with such tragic frequency in youth. Sins of Mind The sins of middle age, on the other hand, are often sins of the mind.

They are more subtle. They do not always land their perpetrators behind bars or even in disgrace. Therein lies part of their added peril. Was that not why our Lord put such emphasis on the sins of the mind, like pride, selfishness and greed, rather than on drunkeness, murder, theft and the like? These latter flagrant sins breed their own resistance through the disgrace they en tail. But the sins of the mind and spirit can go on doing their devilish work without loss of respectability.

Moreover, the sins of'middle age are more socially destructive because by that time men are in places of power Waywardness at the wheel of a high-powered motor is; more dangerous than waywardness on a lad's tricycle. A selfish corrupt person in a place of authority can do more damage than a dozen drunken derelicts. Also, in maturity we are inclined to be so smugly self- assured. Just when we feel safest, just when we are surest of ourselves, that is the time we most need to watch. And who is watching over us in middle age? When I meet the schoolteachers of America, I am heartened by the thought of what good care youth is receiving.

But we grownups have to be our own guardians. Tend to Narrowness It is in the mind that the dangers of middle age often show themselves. It may be a hardening of the arteries of thought which causes a loss of open-mindedness, a toughen ing of opinion into prejudice, preventing the flow of new ideas and the fair facing of unpleasant truths. When Christ confronted the men whose mental arteries had hardened, He set a little child in their midst and said, "Except ye be converted and become as a little child, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Have we lost that open-mindedness and open-heartedness of childhood? Get out an old photograph of yourself at 16 or 18. Look into your own youthful eyes and ask yourself some questions like these: Have I lost some of my dreams? Are my ideals higher or lower? Are my tastes getting more wholesome or more artificial? Do I wink at wrongs which used to shock me? Am I as much of a man as my mother expected me to be? RACINE SUNDAY BULLIT1N Sunday, June 3, 1956 JO; on auto insurance i with State Farm Mutual't New "Stay and Save" Plan AND LOW RENEWAL RATES! Call far Details Today! DIAL ME 2-1151 HARVEY COOKE mm WHAT'S five, and Nancy Lee Keefer, nine, aren't eavesdropping at home in Greenville, S.

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