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Fleeson’s TWO CONSEQUENCES Observer Analysis Somber Future Notebook We excerpt, for another national view, this article by syndicated columnist Doris Fleeson.Ed. WASHINGTON, D.C. Washington inevitably interprets Texas politics in terms of Vice-President Lyndon Johnson’s political future. It’s not easy in the light of dispatches from the state only three weeks before the gubernatorial primary. There is even evidence that it won’t be easy for the Vice-President, either, no matter how it comes out. What has happened is that the Vice-President’s close associate John B. Connally Jr., President Kennedy’s first Secretary of the Navy, has shifted his political ground far to the rear of the New Frontier in his effort to be governor. This may be good for Texas, but there is some question that it is not good either for the New Frontier or for a political sponsor whose protege seems so forgetful of past indulgence. It seems to have gone beyond the kind of cajoling and compromising that was to be expected in so factionridden a state party. Latest right-wing recruit to Connally is the Dallas News, an articulate publication whose marriage to Gen. Edwin Walker, it seemed here, was surely made in heaven. The News endorsed Connally for being against so much of the New Frontier program, and it argues he shouldn’t be disqualified as a personal friend of the President and Vice-President. The Dallas News’ publisher, Ted Dealey, long since attracted the President’s attention by rising at a White House luncheon party and reading a prepared speech to him. Its theme was that the country needed a man on horseback, not a boy “riding Caroline’s tricycle.” Much more liberal newspapers also support Connally. But the conservative trend of his campaigning and his business support have attracted wide attention. It has also enabled Gov. Price Daniel, seeking a fourth term after six years in office, to pre-empt the vital center. Daniel saw his chance when Don Yarborough, an avowed liberal, began to move up in primary calculations on a New Frontier program. The governor, no liberal favorite, took up center positions and asserted himself the friend, not of business or labor primarily, but of “the little man.” He may not be able to make inroads on Yarborough’s hard core in the first primary, but if, as seems likely, he meets Connally in the runoff, he expects the liberals to prefer him. Last year Texas liberals preferred sitting on their hands to voting for an arch-conservative Democrat for Senator. The result is Texas Republican Sen. John Tower. Today’s liberals insist that Yarborough has a good chance. An established statewide poll reflects the more common opinion that a close contest between Daniel and Connally, and then a runoff between them, is in prospect. The Vice-President’s relations with Governor Daniel have been friendly, but not so close as with Connally, who managed many state races and his Presidential campaign for him. Connally, attractive and energetic, is running as “a new face.” It has caused all the more comment that it may be “new” but’ apparently not New Frontier. AUSTIN Things are somber enough for the future of the world this week. On Wednesday, our country resumed the massive unleashing, not of Chiang Kai Shek, but of something far more menacing to humanity, radioactive fallout, by a new series of atmospheric tests. A civil defense opinion survey conducted among 500 Austin families by University of Texas sociologists turned up the fact that “the majority of the persons interviewed said they expected the U.S. to be at war within three to five years.” Kennedy goes down to Florida and reviews a simulated Marine beach landing like Nelson or Napoleon. All the talk of peace has yielded no substantial change of the collision course from either Russia or the United States. The middle nations’ reasoned interjection of a proposal that the U.S. relax its insistence on international inspection, since atmospheric tests can be detected by national instruments, has been rejected by this country. The world is in a hell of a shape and seems bent on descending to yet a lower level of the inferno. As Bertrand Russell says in his new book Has Man a Future? there seems to be a death wish at work in the world. The question is simply, can scientific man survive ? Are the evils and foolishnesses of man so great, nothing can save him from wiping himself out now that he has the tools for that grisly experiment? Will it be, as Karl Jaspers suggests in The Question of German Guilt, “In the end, all against all”? THE ASSOCIATED PRESS has a news analyst named J. M. Roberts. On April 18, the Austin American carried his news analysis. Some news. Some analysis. The United States, he said, has made it clear it would launch a nuclear war if it was in danger of being overrun by its enemies unless it did so. Even this dread new step , toward war is not enough for the death wish Mr. Roberts clutches to his heaving breast. Listen to what the greatest of all the news services’ news analyst wrote: “. . . this business of standing around on principle can get you killed. “Under the so-called code of the Old West, before there was law, selfdefense began the moment an enemy reached for his gun. You didn’t have to wait for a shot to absolutely prove intention. “There is now no law in international conflict. So-called surprise attack has become the rule. But few of them have been, really and truly, surprises. “No principled nation can make a pre-emptive attack to avoid aggression merely on the basis of a feeling but there are ways of knowing.” The worst is coming to the worst. We who have been carefully reading the war literature for the last half year or so have detected the appearance therein, of arguments with a new, AUSTIN After the miserable episode of the permanent muzzling of the Daily Texan, friends of the University of Texas administration have been thirsting for some manifestation to restore their confidence in the administration’s steadfastness under pressure. As usual, it’s a little thing, but it’s something. The President’s newsletter for April 16 notes: “It has been a0eed, after faculty discussion, that tape recorders are not to be used by students or visitors menacing ring. Their point is that the first nation that launches a nuclear attack is almost sure to “win” the war, because the flattened nation could not decisively retaliate. Two consequences are spun off from this apprehension : One, we must be ready to strike the first blow as soon as we believe the other side is getting ready to do it. Two, we should strike first whether the enemy is getting ready to do so or not. The arguments have now materialized like dark clouds to support the first of these contentions. How long will it be before the Kennedy Administration makes it official that if we believe the enemy is ready to attack us, we will attack them? For once that becomes official doctrine, the war lovers will advance to the next rooftop in the Old West town called civilization and brandishing their missiles cry out : “Attack!” John Hersey has written a frightening book called The War Lover. It is the story of a bomber pilot and his co-pilot during the bomber raids on Germany. The narrator, the co-pilot, is a sensitive sort and scruples to kill so many people from the air. He resolves to keep on flying but to take no part in the mechanisms directly related to the killingan absurdity, of course, but at least good-hearted. The pilot is a different sort. He is full of hate and braggadocio and pride and fear that he is not a man in bed. And he is not, he makes love to himself, says the agreeable co-pilot’s girl. Because he loves, not women, but war. He loves to kill. When he goes in on his final run and drops those bombs he screams with orgasmic excitement ; he is weak in his loins. There are people like that all over the world in every nation and a lot of them make their ways into police and military forces. Haven’t you ever had the feeling that some of those brass-laden boys feel like they can’t fulfill their calls in life without a war? There is a big sign on one of the tanks at Bergstrom Air Force Base outside of Austin : “Peace,” it declares, “Is Our Profession.” That we hope is what most of them think. Oh, but the glory; oh, but the power of killing. Please dear Kennedy do not let the wrong men get into the planes or the control rooms where the buttons are. Meanwhile, mothers and fathers, accept, accept, the secret consequences of our testing, and their testing, and our testing, and their testing, because we have not yet learned that there are evil, that is, there are destructive strengths in us all, and in some of us in every nation they get the better of us, cornered, unloved, we feel the rat rising in us until we tear at our selves or worse at others, and this happened in Russia in the ’30’s and Germany and Japan in the ’40’s and what nation is immune in the ’60’s? As the mushrooms ascend to the polluted heavens we shall have to wait and see and each of us one way or another join the Peace Corps of the world. R.D. in University classrooms or laboratories except upon specific permission of the instructor involved.” This, despite the national administration’s and Bobby Kennedy’s bill to legalize wiretapping on a broad scale and fundamentally violate the right of privacy without which personal life has no sanctity. There was a Herblock cartoon in Washington the other day: Bobby Kennedy’s picture hanging on the wall, a man talking on a telephone, and the caption: “Little Brother is Watching You.” AUSTIN PEOPLE IN CORPUS, the CallerTimes reports, are somewhat shocked by Land Commissioner Sadler’s recent statements on Padre Island \(see edisays his views are “screwy.” Mayor Pro Tem Tom Swanter says Sadler’s stand is “roundhouse” and “for political purposes.” Mayor Ben F. McDonald comments: “He’s misinformed on the issues and the facts. If he had gone to Washington, as many of us have, he would have found all matters thoroughly gone into.” Sadler charges, rather mysteriously, that Texas schoolchildren will be “shortchanged” under the bill and has urged the Texas delegation in the House to oppose it. The plain truth of the matter is, as proponents have stated time and again, Texas school children won’t be “shortchanged” at all. Both the Senate and the House versions, as the Caller-Times again said this week, “specifically reserve to the state or to private owners the mineral rights in the water and on land . . . The permanent school fund will not be diminished in the slightest by transfer of jurisdiction.” A VIGNETTE from H. M. Baggarly of the Tulia Herald: “Speaking of Don Yarborough’s feeling for the old people, Mrs. W. F. Griffin, an old-time Tulia Democrat, 88-years-old and bedfast, is an example. She still maintains a lively interest in politics and she had made up her mind to support Yarborough for governor. “When she heard that Yarborough was to be here, she had Mrs. Doyle Tirey, who cares for her, to call to see if it would be possible for Mrs. Tirey to come down and meet him. Mrs. Griffin’s reasoning was that since she was physically unable to come down, the next best thing would be to have the report of Mrs. Tirey. “Don got off the radio at 1:15 and was due at Dimmitt at 1:45. A number of people had gathered at the radio station to meet him, so he was somewhat rushed. Nevertheless, when we told him about Mrs. Griffin he insisted on meeting her. “Mrs. Griffin probably won’t be able to vote, much less help his campaign appreciably. But that didn’t matter to Don. Because she liked him, he wanted to express his appreciation. “How can you refuse to support a man like that?” WINSTON BODIE, Houston Chronicle Austin staffer, telephoned Texas iconoclast Stanley Walker at his Lampasas County ranch this week for comment on the reaction to his recent Saturday Evening Post article titled: “What’s Texas Got to Brag About?” Gov. Price Daniel called the Walker article a “hodge podge of the old hokum about Texas bragging too much, the state government being broke, Texas not having ski slopes, enough liquor or gambling and horse racing . . . and Texas taking a lot of federal aid.” Bodie read the governor’s statement and the Baron of Black Sheep’s Retreat retorted : “All I can say is Daniel is a hodge podgea walking hodge podge.” Bodie’s article continued : “As for Daniel’s charge that the Post article was the sort of thing written to get more circulation, Walkeronce city editor of the New York Herald Tribuneanswered, ‘Well, why not?’ ” Then Walker told Bodie: “I’m fond of Texas. I just don’t like the ballyhoo about it, the unnecessary superlatives. It makes me sick. As a matter of fact, with all the scandals we’ve had, I let the state off light.” Watching You