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Tuesday, October 9, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Guest Editorial
Tall Grass Prairie
More than 35 years ago a scientist in Illinois talked to Illinois legislators who agreed that there should be a sizable prairie park in that state, since the nickname for Illinois is "The Prairie State." How ironic it must have been when they could find only 250 acres of virgin prairie land. The lands dismissed. Since then it has been in the minds of hundreds of citizens of Kansas, who realize that this is indeed, where the prairies exist. The Flint Hills area is the last remaining area in the United States where tallgrass prairie land still exists.
There are approximately 440,000 square acres of prairie left in Kansas. An organization called "Save the Tallgrass Prairie, Inc." is trying to make Congressional legislators understand the need for bringing unity "of purpose and action all interests preserved with the movement preserve and save portions of tallgrass prairies for scenic recreational and wildlife conservation purposes." They are asking that only sixty thousand acres be preserved, and that would barely be enough.
The cost, according to Charles Stough, Lawrence attorney and president of the "Save the Tallgrass Prairie" organization, would be between $2 million and $3 million. The national park will contain an entire ecosystem, with elks, bison and antelope grazing in the tallgrass.
It takes 20,000 acres for one pair of golden eagles, almost extinct, to mate. Certainly a wide expanse of land is needed for this ecosystem, but the conservationists think the must have been even settled for thirty thousand acres. However, they will not settle for nothing.
Objections to a Tallgrass Prairie National Park come primarily from the landowners in the Flint Hills area and from people who don't want to pay any more taxes. These people don't seem to understand that there is a proposed solution for these problems. First of all it would be a national park or state park, but Speculations are that Kansas would make a profit of $10 million annually in tourist trade from the proposed park. There then is the problem of motels and billboards
and trash accumulating around the park. The Save the Prairie organization has taken this into account and they include that question in their proposals.
Landowners don't want to give up their land. The government would pay them the considered fair amount for their land. Many of these landowners are cattle herders. It is ironic that they object, because in the long run the livestock industry stands to gain more from the industry from risk effort. Once the boundaries are established, a small contiguous research tract could be established.
The park could serve as an invaluable aid for scientists of all kinds who are trying to discover the measure effects on grazing land.
line question then arises: what are we really getting into when we consider a Tallgrass Prairie National Park? What's the catch? Although some say it is merely the dream of a proverb of spirit of ecology at KU, E. Raymond Hall, there really is no catch. It is said that Hall is interested only in fieldwork for his students. Although Hall has been called the backbone of the "Save the Tallgrass Prairie" organization, there are at least two other board who strongly support the movement, and they have gathered hundreds of supporters.
Too many times Americans have considered the ends and not the means for attaining important goals. Building up energy resources is an honorable end. Wiping out a prairie for that end is not the means to go about it, but the generations who will see little of the natural beauty America once had to offer if we let industrialists take over the Flint Hills area. We must act quickly to preserve the prairie.
the greatest birthday present you could give this country on its 200th birthday would be a Tallgrass Prairie National Park, particularly in the light of its coming from a section of the country much earlier than the history of the nation during its second century—probably more than any other section of the country," said Stough. —C.S. Groom
Pageantry Out... China Reassesses
The Washington Post
By H. D. S. GREENWAY
HONG KONG—Time was when China watchers looked forward to Oct. 1, China's National Day, as the day of great parades and rallies in Peking when you could tell who was really who in China from the list of speakers. At that time, Men Square with Chairman Mae Tse-tung.
In 1971, however, the parade was cancelled on short notice. The absence of the no.2 man in China, Lin Piao, from any of the official functions was noticed and China-watchers speculated that he might be sick or dead from tuberculosis.
It was only later that China revealed that Lin had tried to assassinate Mao and had died in a plane crash along with his wife and several other top leaders trying to defect to the Soviet Union only a few weeks before there has been no more National Day display of China's top leadership atop a rostrum in Tien An Men Square.
THIS YEAR, following the 10th Party Congress in late August, which helped restore some degree of order to China's leadership, it was speculated that perhaps the custom might be revived. But according to New China News Agency (NCNA) reports monitored here, National Day in Peking passed in an atmosphere of "vigor and gaiety" but without the top leadership appearing together with Mao. NCNA reported that while the Communist party and the government were "with the people at gala parties."
On the whole, the editorial dealt in broad generalities, repeating the themes put forward at the 10th Party Congress. Save for repeating that China should be on guard against an outbreak of "imperialist world attacks" by "social imperialism"-China's term for Soviet imperialism--very little was said about foreign affairs.
The customary joint editorial of the "People's Daily," "Red Flag," and the newspaper "Liberal Democrat" with Republican Party Congress and the need to study its documents in order to understand the "correctness or incorrectness" of the "political stance" and to avoid a "capitalist restoration."
THIS WAS IN CONSTRAST to last year's National Day editorial, which stressed four core issues.
This year's National Day editorial said that the struggle against Lin Pao and Liu Shao-chi, the former No. 2 man in China who was disgraced during the Cultural Revolution for allegedly trying to restore capitalism, "boils down to the question of whether to uphold the party's basic line or change it."
This emphasis on studying the documents of the 10th Party Congress has led some China-watchers to conceive a new approach. Chou En-lai's moderate approach and the ideals of the Cultural Revolution may need further explaining before it is fully understood and understood.
"We must study the party's basic line constantly and repeatedly and must never abandon it."
IT COULD BE that some of the worker-peasant soldiers are confused over just what the Cultural Revolution accomplished, why it was necessary and how a man so close to the top as Lin Piao could commit treason.
According to the Editorial, Mao Tse-tung himself recently suggested that it would be necessary "to run study classes for worker-saint-pardon cadres . . . with classes lasting a term of three months and with four terms a year."
This is seen by some experts here as being an effort to end the political feuds that have arisen as a result of recent political convulsions.
Congress Abdicated on War Power
The editorial also stresses that full use should be made of Lin Piao as a "teacher by negative example" in order to educate the children. The teacher already is being done in the countryside.
Indeed, there are reports that the study of Lin as a negative example is having the same beneficial effect on production as have the thoughts of Mao. For example, in distant Tibet, the East Wind chrome ore mined surpassed its 1973 production target in September and reached August, according to regional radio reports. The increase in production was brought about by "reputating Lin Piao and his counter-revolutionary revisionist line."
The editorial stressed that there was a distinction to be made between crimes such as that committed by Lin Piao, and errors of judgement which could be rectified.
By ERIC MEYER
American involvement in two undeclared wars—Korea and Vietnam—has intensified the conflict between Congress and the Presidency over the power to make war.
Kansan Staff Reporter
The latest development in the conflict was the agreement last Thursday of Senate and House conferences on a compromise War budget, but it is not indicated be will, yet any war-power bills.
To prevent someone or some group from dominating the United States through the acquisition of power, the Constitution stipulates that power could not be diffused, abolished or limited.
Power and politics are inseparable. Where there is power, decisions are made, funds are appropriated, programs are initiated and trends are established.
"THEER CAN BE but one supreme power which is the Legislature, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate," John Locke wrote in his "Second Treatise," a book that had a profound impact on America's founding fathers.
The men who wrote the Constitution considered Congress to be the most important branch of government. It alone was given the power to decarse war. It alone was given the power to approve government expenditures.
In "The Federalist Papers," James Madison said, "in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this; you must first enable the government to control them in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Thus developed America's systems of governmental checks and balances.
But today, Congress will increasingly is being ignored or superseded by executive action. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the traditional authority of Congress being ignored relates to the power to declare war.
During the Johnson Administration, when more and more American soldiers were being sent to Vietnam, Nicholas Katzenbach, then an undersecretary of state, told Congress that the United States was "clearly at war."
K扎chtenach told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Congress had authorized Johnson to "use the armed forces of the United States in whatever way was necessary," when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964.
HOWEVER, KATZENBACH defended
them and to seek a formal
definition of war.
"It authorized the United States," Katzbench said, "as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed forces, to assist any member of protocol states of the Southeast Asia region to defend its interests in defense of its freedom.
Johnson later said Congress could rescind the Gulf of Tonkin Hesitation by by doing so, and he said that it would not
Did Congress still have the right to declare war and exercise its prerogatives in 2015?
"IN 1873, the founding fathers resolved that it could not be." Merlo Pusey wrote in "The Way We Go to War." "In recent years, however, the president has been exercising the power to make war—with alarming consistency."
Since the development of nuclear weapons, the President has had at his command more power than any other man in the world. But he also made decisions he have become more prominent.
The controversy centers on these sections of the Constitution:
Article II, Section 2: "The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of . . . the United States, and of the militia of the several states. . .."
"He shall have the power by and with the advice and consent of the Senate to make
Article I. Section 8: Congress is granted the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy and to send troops forth of battle for military or palp invasions.
"We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war," Thomas Jefferson said in 1789, "by transferring the power of letting him loose from the executive to the legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay."
THESE POWERS were divided to prevent domination by any one commander.
But presidential power has rapidly expanded in the exercise of foreign policy and the declaration of war. Presidents have used American forces abroad or against foreign nations more than 150 times without a specific declaration of war from Congress.
Sometimes the authority has been a joint resolution of Congress like the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Sometimes it has been in execution of a treaty that envisioned the use of U.S. forces without further authorization like U.S. forces with such authorization as Naval Nations. Sometimes it has been to protect American lives, shipping or investments abroad.
PRESIDENT TRUMAN avoided Congressional action by refusing to call
President Roosevelt, in the opinion of
"DICK,WHAT RAT-FINK PERSON WOULD HALT JUSTICE BY
CALLING IN A BOMB-THREAT TO THE WATERGATE HEARINGS?
some, may have made war inevitable,
leaving the door open for Pearl Harbor and
then forcing Congress, as a secondary
incident, to follow through.
President Eisenhower ordered troops into Lebanon.
Much of the erosion of the Congressional role has resulted from broad, general grants of authority by the Formosna Resolution of 1956, the Middle East Resolution of 1957 and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964.
President Nixon ordered two incursions into Cambodia.
A major factor, then, in Congress' decline has been its own willingness to abdicate authority. In the Tankor resolution, for instance, Mr. Bush said it could do whatever he thought necessary.
ABDICATION OF authority has extended into other areas, too. What was, in effect, an "economics Tonkin resolution" was passed in President Nixon's first term. Through it, Congress yielded its power to set wage and price controls.
The entire idea of delegating authority is dangerous because the "someone else" who will be exercising the power might not exercise it properly. He might exercise it on
To the Editor:
Truth vs. Credibility
of the leadership or "authoritative sources" of this country were honestly and truly beholden to the public, they would let their identities become known. What is the press to do if a source threatens to clam up if his identity is revealed?
Fulbright agreed with Kennedy.
SIMILLAY, BUT on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Sen. J. William Fulbright was one of the leading proponents of the civil rights movement, while President Kennedy was in office.
The problem the press is forced to consider is this: should the press strive for credibility or should the press strive for the comprehensive truth?
Although I share Gibson's concern that the proliferation of the unidentified source is a danger to the press' credibility, I have a strong feeling that the responsibility for this practice does not belong to the press, but that, in fact, it is to be found elsewhere.
In defense of the press, I would like to bring up a point that Gibson realized but did not adequately reflect on. Isn't the primary reason that the press is forced to utilize the unidentified source simply the fact that few journalists willing to sacrifice their anonymity?
Many people evidently are stuck with the impression that the press gets its kicks by having its readership guessing as to the meaning of a particular "unidentified source".
in Bill Gibson's editorial, "Shades of Credibility," a great number of claims are made that culminate in the conclusion that the press, by "indulgent use of unattributed sources," risks sacrificing its own credibility.
But when Lyndon Johnson, a man with whom Fulbright disagreed, became President, Fulbright became an opponent of presidential power.
a partisan, selfish basis. Men in politics often follow policies they believe will assure their re-election, rather than policies that will solve the nation's problems.
This impression is manifested in Gibson's assertions: "the (press) justification that unattributed news is better than no news at all" and "The Associated Press, evidently outdo its competitors, began quoting a source familiar with aweinspiring."
Rep. Philip Crane, a conservative Republican, surprised his fellow members of Congress recently when he voted in favor of the War Powers Bill.
Gibson rightly called the practice of using unidentified sources a "dangerous game." But what we should not do is to undermine which is the truth. Can the real truth of the workings of our government and the activities of our leaders become known without the "source who created it."
Readers Respond
Crane, in explaining his vote, said he had full confidence in President Nixon to exercise the war powers properly. But he added that he was aware of the same confidence in George McGovern.
Would a more credible Press still have the guts to investigate, speculate and print what it deemed truthful? Would Watergate, the Agnew investigation and other instances of potential government corruption have been grown without the undefined source?
Desert Tribe Threatened
Rv WILLIAM TUOHY
They cannot.
BY WILLIAM TUOR
The Los Angeles Times
If Congress has no right to delegate its power, how do voters express their anguish and frustration?
Of the more than 20 million people afflicted by the drought in the Sahal zone of
For they have lost control over their government.
AGADEZ, Niger-As a blast-furace wind sweeps off the Sahara they huddle silently around their goat skin tents outside this desert outpost.
Africa the Tauregs are in the most deserate straits.
For months now the Tauregs have watched first their birds and then their children.
These are the Tauregs, the Saharan Desert warrior-nomads of Caucasian stock whom the West African drought has forced to become the world's newest refugee population. They are threatened with extinction as a race. This year's searing dry conditions, coupled with the cattle, sheep and goats, and for a nomad to lose his animals is to lose everything.
There may be as many as a million-and-a-half Tauregs, but nobody really knows because no census has ever been taken, and no accurate estimates exist.
The Tharegs have been making their way from the desert to the cities farther south and to isolated places like this in central Nuer to seek food and water.
They are tall, handsome, aloof men in long blue robes and women of striking beauty and bearing. But their cool, steady gazes are as bleak as their future.
Far worse is the plight of the Turkeys who have been driven from the desert in Mail to Syria.
Because Agadze is a key desert town, relief food supplies have been fumiled in by Belgian and Norwegian government planes organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. They carried their herds to their livelihood—the tUruges have been from starving here.
Without drastic help and change," a food official official here says, "the Tuareg way of life is in grave jeopardy. Modern evangelism even in Africa has passed them by."
one other talked about solution is to convince the Tuaregs that the time has come for them to become more sedentary, with farming skills and settle down in one area.
In the Agadez area several pilot projects have been started both to expand the oasis around here, thereby stopping the march of the Sahara southward and also giving the region access to an irrigation off a lake that briefly fills up during the rainy season.
"They seem to be taking to this last project readily," FAO official Bruno Van de Vandamane says. "It could be that if they were to be paid for Life economically they will adjust to it."
And one Tuareg chiefin here says: "we feel we are in a great danger. We have had nothing to eat and we will adjust to farming if it means staving alive."
"The Tuireaghs, once the masters of the sabara, are now its victims," sums up one of the legends. "Their mother was a
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My answers to the preceding questions, as one might expect, are all emphatic "no's." So, in summary, I have attempted to make two points.
First, the press is not responsible for the practice of attributing news to unidentified sources; the undetected source, himself, is also the force. He forces the press into this practice.
And second, even if the press were responsible for this practice, the absence of news data that must be attributed to the unidentified source would threaten the concept of the press' freedom to publish the whole turt.
Tr
tean
Jam
If it comes down to credibility or truth, I'll choose the term which begins with a "t."
Omaha Sophomore
Injustice Deplored
To the Editor:
I believe quite the contrary, for, regardless of what exact place the United States has in today's world, it is one of power and world influence.
In Elaine Zimmerman's editorial "Carrot and Stick" (Kansan Oct. 3) she says the House Ways and Means Committee's condition that the USSR allow freer emigration of Jews to Israel prior to being granted most rights in the country, U.S. foreign policy. She says that this condition meddles in another country's internal affairs without there being evidence of harm done to the U.S. by those affairs, and that the elimination of this condition would be the easiest "first step in our efforts to reshape from internal affairs of foreign nations."
Most Americans have a sense of justice and I think they would agree that the treatment Soviet Jews have been receiving is definitely unjust. I would hesitate, however, to accuse them of such apathy, such nationalism of such head-in-the-nuts behavior, which it lightens injustice when it is within their power to at least try to right it.
One might ask who are we to judge how
judges should act, saying judges not
must lose or be judged.
I would answer that we are human and our brother's keeper. We aren't self-centered animals concerned only with our own welfare.
It would seem to me that individual freedom is a goal for which people should work, and that we needn't fret much about the feelings of a Russia that fiercely denied Czechoslovakia freedom, nor about those of Palestinian terrorists who can, with threats of murder or danger, cause one of their narrow avenues of freedom for Soviet Jews to be blockaded.
Therefore, while the U.S. should exercise great caution that it doesn't harm more people than it hurts, Soviet Jewry is sufficiently clear-cut that the Ways and Means Committee's action is justified and should be considered a peaceful move for the freedom of Soviet
The world is far from perfect, and for man's sake, we can't turn our backs to it.
Overland Park Junior
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