The News-Star from Monroe, Louisiana • Page 4

(ihr Four A Monday, 12, 1975 No More Dominoes? rr It was more than a little disturb ing to see the pro-American cabinet members of the Laos governmen' resign from the coalition government the same week that President Ford promised Asian leaders more would fall. The resignation of the ministers paved the way for a Communist takeover. This means that Laos is the third Asian country in a month's time to surrender to Communists, home-grown variety. Domino No. 1 was Cambodia; No.

2. South Vietnam. No. 3 is Laos. Events are moving much faster than anyone anticipated in the Indochina landscape Some of the region's leaders, led by President Ferdinand Marcos of the lipmes.

are meeting to see what must be done to deal with the new realities in the area. Certainly the Phillippines lost little time in recognizing the new Communist gov ernments of Cambodia and South Vietnam, while blasting away at the United States for not doing more to save them. Marcos reacted in a vindictive malicious way toward the United States and is in the process of reviewing the Filipino U.S. treaty arrangements as well as the military base deal. Clark Air Force Base was used as a jumping off spot for American planes attacking the North Vietnamese and also as a refugee stop en route to California.

The domino theory is working out just as President Eisenhower feared it would. A Commumzod Indochina is gradually taking place, even though it not of a monolithic variety. Peking does not pull the strings, but it is interested in the success of the various Communist insurgents, whether the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the Viet Cong and Hanoi regulars in South Vietnam, or the Pathet Lao in Laos. President Ford is in the process of mi American foreign policy. La.

he mel with ministers from Australia, New Zealand. Great Britian. Singapore, and South Korea. To each one he gave assurances of America's intentions to stand by firm treaty commitments most of them drawn up soon after World War II. The South Koreans warned Ford that a withdrawal of the 38.000 American troops stationed in their would mean that the North Korean Communists would come steamrolling down within six months.

Ford not only reassured them the would fight to save South Korea, but he would take steps to modernize the South Korean armed forces as promised. The sudden alternation of the Indochina picture and the resulting fright displayed by Asian has put Washington on notice that the time is drawing nigh when we must or cut in the murky waters of Asia. We must make up our minds where our priorities really lie No one can argue that the securitv of Japan, Australia. New Zealand, the lippines, and South Korea is not vital to American interests. But what about Singapore, Thailand.

Burma and others? If the great heartland of Asia goes Red. we need to determine quickly if the governments there threaten freedom where our acknowledged interests lie. We may as well face facts. The United States can only help those ho are in a position to help themselves. We guarantee anv freedom that have the leadership and the national desire to fight to the death for it.

Propaganda, Cheap Shots Walter Goodman, assistant editor of the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times Sunday edition. has examined three documentaries produced by private individuals and labeled them all propaganda. They were all made to support a particular point of view in all three cases, anti-American. Or, just pro totalitarian. The films are Shirley Other Half of the Sky: A China Peter and which won as Oscar, and Jane Fonda's to the Goodman comes down hardest on the output of MacLaine and Fonda (and her husband Tom Hayden.) He scores points which any person can understand who knows even a trifle about the manipulation of camera and material.

Shirley film is an account of a three-week visit to China in the spring of 1973. She was accompanied by several others from varied backgrounds. With only one exception. Miss MacLaine seems entireh gratiiied with the way things have been going since a word the actress uses without ironv throughout the film. The sole exception, by the way, occurs when Miss MacLaine asks what would happen if a Michelangelo were to appear the New China.

The resident commissar explained he would have to be reeducated to the service of The People. A look of dismay crossed the face. strongest point againt Miss MacLaine has to do with her obvious hypocrisy. We know, he says, from her public record that if she discovered American children were being by the state, that Ihey were subjected to paramilitary from a very tender age; that their most intimate relation- Death Penalty Still Issue By Jeffrey Hart Bigtibuttd bf Ambassador Martin Victim Of Obvious Malice ships were being manipulated by the State for the state's interests; that they were being taught to worship a man god and to repeat by rote and in unison, tag ends of an ideology which they can scarcely comprehend she would be among the first to protest. Yet what she would condemn in her own country is counted as an achievement when it is done by the Chinese.

Miss Introduction to the F.nemy is an unabashed job on behalf of the Communist government of North Vietnam. It delivers its political line straight from the mouths of party functionaries. Goodman summarizes the film in this telling passage: pictures of beautiful children. bombed-out towns, beautiful children, workers making bicycles out of the remains of an F-104 fighter, and beautiful Get the point beautiful children equals totalitarian benevolence. Goodman observes what a revelation it is to observe how subdued our native firebrands become once they find themselves in a congenial dictatorship.

Hearts and Minds won an Oscar, and the recipient Bert Schneider hailed the liberation of South Vietnam. The film is reputed to be rich in powerful images, unsettling, and loaded with cheap shots unbecoming to a supposed objective There is crudity expressed in a football field and Vietnam war analogy. You know, the A documentary producer should be extremely careful if he or she expects to persuade. Manipulation of subject matter and taking their audience for suckers are fatal mistakes. The readers of the New York Times may have been shocked at failure to kneel before the propaganda espoused by the above.

Of all the generous helpings of recrimination being served out in It wake of the debacle in Vie nam. perhaps the rottenest of them all are being reserved for Graham Martin, our ambassador to Saigon, who commanded the final evacuation of Americans and South Vietnamese, climaxed bv the helicopter a i r- lift on April 29-30. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight and very obvious make, Martin is being accused of a number of contradictory things. It is said that on his return to Vietnam from medical treatment in the United States at the end of March, he failed to grasp to what extent the military position of the Saigon forces had deteriorated. It is said that he deliberately endangered American lives by delaying the beginning of evacuation as long as possible, that he failed to bring enough on President Nguyen Van Thieu to resign, that he sent inaccurate figures to Washington on the total number of American citizens in Vietnam, that he held up the departure of Americans in order to get out more Actual Timing Indeed, some of his loyal subordinates have been quoted blaming Martin for the only By Crosby Noyes casualties from enemy action durifeg the evacuation: the two Marines killed by the enemy shelling of Tan Son Nhut Airport on the morning of the 29th.

lor being the last of the civilians to leave the embassy compound at 4:45 a.m. on the 30th, he is accused of grandstanding and wanting go down Tlifre are some, to be sure, who share in this assessment of failures and shortcomings. Indeed, there are some who believe that undo extraordinarily, dangerous circumstances, he carried out his assignment in a manner deserving the highest commendation. I or one thing, the decisions were not entirely up to him to make. The actual timing and rate of the evacuation were controlled from Washington; order for the final heli- coptef operation was given by President Ford on the evening of April 28.

As secretary of State i s- singetf explained it: got out with all of the pcgsomel that were there, without panic and without the substantial casualties that could ha lie eurred if civil order had totally broken down. We also maJhaged to save 56,000 people i I whose lives were in the most severe jeopardy. (More than twice that number managed to get away altogether.) had to make a judgment every day how many people we thought we could safely remove at the same time be able to carry out our. functions. think these objectives were achieved, and they were carried out successfully.

Therefore I do not believe that there was an undue delay because an evacuation has been going on for two Of course, Graham real sin the eyes of many of his fellow Americans was that he was guilty of believing in his mission in Vietnam long after many, including most of the Congress, had made up ther minds to pull the plug on our Southeast Asian allies. And vo now these same people are determined to pull the plug on him. But not everyone. Says Kissinger: for Ambassador Martin, he was in a very difficult position. He felt a moral obligation to the people with whom he has been associated, and he attempted to save as many of those as possible.

That is not the worst fault that a man can No one who has witnessed an execution, no one who has envisioned one through the narratives of Albert of Truman Capote can have unmixed feelings about the death penalty. Yet the issue is a profound one. Vnd now the Supreme Court once again is addressing itself to it Though the untimate Constitutional issue could this time be sidestepped once again, the court now seems likely to decide definitively whether capital punishment is, or is not. Constitutional. Concern that the court will now indeed decide against capital punishment explains the unusual amicus curae role being played by the Justice Department in the person of Solicitor General Robert Bork in the present case, Jesse Thurman Fowler vs.

the State of North Carolina. Atomey General Edward Levi is known to favor capital punishment in the case of certain crimes. Bork has argued that the court ought to leave the whole Issue up to the various state legislatures, where it would be resolved by the deliberate sense of the people as reflected in their representatives, than try to settle it on grounds of broad Constitutional principle. The arguments for and against capital punishment have been around for so long that they have grown hoary. For the most eloquent statement in opposition, I refer you to the famous say on the subject by Albert Camus.

Yet the case in favor has not to my knowledge been as forcefully put. Utilitarian arguments are largely beside the point. The entire argument over the deterrent value of the death penalty is inconclusive. Statistics can br on both sides. Sociologist Thorstein Sellin can argue that his statistics demonstrate that capital punishment fails to deter.

Isaac Ehrlich of the University of Chicago subjects work to searching criticism, and produces his own statistics on the other side. Interesting items keen turning up It may be significant, for example, that sim the abolition ef the death penalty in New York, not only have murders increased but the numbers of murders committed by strangers have risen from a fifth to about half of the total. Murder by a stranger is considered less likely to be an act of passion or. and more a matter of calculation, and therefore more, responsive to deterrence. In New York, after abolition of the deterrent, murder has become In a sense more But these facts can be explained by any of a number of variables.

Economic, political, moral, and ethnic changes could be as significant as the abolition of capital punishment in explaining the increase. The argument from deterrence is likely to be favored moot, if only ause it is so difficult to prove a negative. How can you prove that a crime that was not committed was not committed because of the. deterrent value of capital punishment? Or you can make the negative point in connection with statistics. If the number of murders committed in Denmark did not change after the death penalty was abolished, how can you demonstrate that the number would not have declined If the death penalty had been retained? The argument about the poor and or the blacks being cuted more frequently than those better off seems equally empty, though well calculated to ap-( peal to sentiment.

The only pertinent question here, as Professor Ernest van den Haag has argued, is whether the guilty poor and nr black are exeuted more often then the guilty murderer from the micl-( die or upper class. An ugly man may be more likely to commit rape than a handsome fellow, but none of this means that rape should not be punish-, ed. For that matter, more men than women commit rape. Punishing them does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment ft seems to me that the profound case for capital punishment is a moral one. In executing a criminal, a society makes a kind of declaration.

It says in effect that some crimes are so heinous that they demand' the maximum response. Shifting Auto Demands By Kevin Phillips Strangely Appeal ing Things Uttered By Democrats By John Chamberlain Conservatives, looking for something more to their taste than anything offered by Ford Rockefeller Republican Party, have been waiting for a more than tentative signal from Ronald Reagan that he is ready to embark on a crusade in their behalf either inside or outside the traditional Republican structure. There is a bare chance, however, that the conservatives might get a better deal from the Democrats than from a late starting Reagan or from a George Wallace Two things would have to come together to accomplish the seeming miracle of turning the Democratic Party into a conservative vehicle. But the idea is not as farfetched as one might think. There have been astonishing reports from California that Democratic successor in the office, Edmund G.

(Jerry) Brown is carrying on in a most conservative way. Although he was elected as a liberal, young Jer- rv Brown has refused to emulate his father, former Gov. Pat Brown, who spread money around like confetti in the gaudy pre Reagan days. Has Liberals Wondering Jerry Brown has been Reagamsiu, holding the line on tax increases, refusing to approve inflationary salary lumps for university administrators and, in general, practicing a frugality that has had all his old liberal friends scratching their heads in perplexity. Where Reagan used a limousine and a leased private jet, Jerry Brown rides in a Plymouth and takes commercial planes.

If the Democratic Party, seeking new blood and a fiscally responsible image, were to turn to Jerry Brown as a sqitable compromise candidate for President after n. Henry Jackson, Gov. George Wallace. Congressman Morris more closely with conservative doctrine than anything provided by the Republicans. Chaired by former Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow of the Yale Law School, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority has actually put forth a program that rejects any simple minded trust in The Rostow group, which includes such bona fide Democratic luminaries as Max Kampel- inan, former Counsel to Vice President Hubert Humphrey; Mayor Don Irwin of Norwalk, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO; Professor Paul Seabury of the Cniv ersitv of California at Berkeley; Norman Podhoretz.

editor of and it tboiiiaii mui to tuilul umlllclilctl a II CdalU Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and former Secretary of the Treas- niher eably favorites had knocked out. the conservatives would be halfway to their desired dream. What is not known, of course, is Gov. line on foreign policy.

But an influential group of Democrats, banded together in something called the Coalition for a Democratie Majority, has had a task force at wqrk shaping up a foreign policy agenda that accords ury Henry Fowler, has reached the conclusion" that our defenses are in almost total disarray. Agreement Scored The Coalition thinks the "Nixon Ford foreign oolicy has misled the country th rough an unwise pre-SALT II at Vladivostok and through evasion about the weaknesses of a that is more rhetoric than substance. THE SMALL SOCIETY-by Brickmon Tkte POLITICIAN'S Wo AMP Wgo'Pe. TALFIM6, CtoM'T iCfdoW- 5-H Although a record percentage of Americans now plan to buy imported rather than manufactured automobiles, the big winter consumer trend to imported autos appears to be reaching its peak. These and other public attitudes towards buying new cars emerged in a nation wide Phillips Sindlinger telephone poll of 4.065 persons taken between Mar.

16 and April 16. The questions are part of an ongoing 20 year survey of consumer automobile buying intentions. Here are the principal findings: number of households planning to buy new cars in the next six months has risen from 2.884 million in November, 1974 to 4.065 million as of April, 1973. percentage of persons planning to buy an imported car rose from 9-2 pnr cent in November to 27.3 in April, while the raw number of imported car purchase plans rose from 243,000 in November to 1,042,000 in April. the percentage of those planning to buy medium sized cars (Mereurys, Pnntiacs, Oldsmobiles.

etc.) declined from 27.1 per cent in November to 16.4 per cent in April. This is the demand component most affected by the current financial squeeze on the middle class. To measure auto buying plans, Sindlinger interviewers have for many years asked U.S. households a series of questions. First, people are asked, you or any other member of your household have any plans to buy a new or used ear within the next six Responses are then projected on a national household basis.

Over 4 Million hv April Last November, a projected 2.884 million households had firm plans to buy new cars By December, only 2.312 million The Vladivostok agreement, according to the recent freezes, great missile throw-weight advantage of the More conventionally, Moscow has been deploying a supersonic medium bomber, the Backfire, which is not covered in a SALT limitation agreement. Meanwhile we dawdle with our B-l, which is needed to replace the aging B-52. The Coalition for a Democratic Majority is concerned particularly about the growing might of the new' Soviet blue water navy. The Russians now come close to matching the U.S. fleet in surface combat ships, and they have more than three times our number of conventional submarines.

Moreover, the interim SALT agreement allows 62 Soviet nuclear- missile launching subs to 44 for the U.S. A mile Soviet missile launched from a sub still in the port of mansk could reach any U.S. East Coast target. households had firm new rar- buying intenlions, and in January, only 2.292 million households were so inclined. By February, our mteri lewers found 3.479 million households staling concrete intentions to buy a new car.

By March, the number had risen to 4.033 million, and by April, the figure had climbed to 4.065 million. Within this projected group, several hundred thousand had, no idea of their specific intentions, but the great majority had a definite i lea of the and model of car they wanted. Back in November, the largest group of respondents (27.1 per cent) planned to buy medium sized American made cars. These are the Mereurys, Pontiaes, Oldsmobiles and similar models. Another 16.3 per cent planned to buy standard models (Fords, Chevrolets, Plymouth Furys, Meanwhile, 12.2 per cent planned to buy intermediates (Fairlanes, Chevel- les, Cutlasses et al) and 10.7 per cent said they planned to buy compact models.

Only 9.2 per cent talked of buying imports, and 97 per cent said they wanted luxury models. The Tax Rebate During late we found several definite trends. First, the number of new car buying plans rose sharply, spurred by tax rebate expectations, reaching 4.033 million in Marrh and 4.065 million in April. The sharpest rise came in plans to buy imports. In November, there were 243,000 firm plans to buy imoorted cars; in December, in January, in February.

in March, 991 000, and in April, 1,042,000. During this time, imports climbed from 9,2 cent of the planned new- ear r- rhases to 27.3 per cent (as of April 15. Ihr John D. Ewing Publisher 1929 1938 Wilson Ewmg, Publisher 193? 1952 Robert Ewing Chairman W'lliam H. B-onsnn, Publisher 1952 1972 Published every afternoon except Sat day and Sunday by the World Publishing Corporation, North Oh and Olive Streets, Monroe, whose officers and directors are: Chairman of 'he Board, Robert Ewing Brown; Vice 'vesiaent and Director, Mildred Hunt Ewing; Vice President and Director Edmund Graves Brown Vice President tnd Director, Robert Ewing III; Secretary and Director, Patricia Ewing Hendrick; Treasurer and Director, Esther Ewing Jensen.

Other directors are Kon' nath C. Barranger, Toulmin Hunter Brown, John D. Ewinq Paula Wray Ewing, Helen Clav Hall, John A. Hendrick. Second Class postage oaid at Monroe, La.

Zip Code 71201. Telephone No. 322-5161. feoard General Manager "Robert Ewing Brown JacK S. Campbell Edmund G.

Brown Asst. General Manager Executive Edito 'ack c. Gates William C. Hardin Oland Silk City Editor Editorial Writer Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press Is inclusively entitled to the use for reproduction of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited and also the local news herein. "the Branham-Moloney Company natlon- al advertising representatives.

Offices in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Boston. Miami. The Monroe News-Star is an Independent newspaper. It prints the news Impartially, It supp rts what it believes to be right.

It opposes what it believes to be wrong without regard to party politics..