Look to the future in Asia; UN extends a helping hand
By PHIL NEWSOM United Press International
Even as men died in the war in Vietnam, subversion threatens Thailand. Laos exists in a state of unsatisfactory neutrality, and there is heartening proof that other men in Southeast Asia can dream and even build toward the future.
In Vientiane, administrative capital of Laos, 20 nations have just concluded the 31st meeting of the Mekong Co-ordination Committee, beneath whose high-sounding title lie the hopes of the future of 50 million people in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Organizers of the committee under United Nations sponsorship are these four nations. Altogether 21 nations participated in a project budgeted for more than three billion dollars in the next nine years.
The project already has borne fruit.
Holds Ceremonies
In 1966, the King of Thailand presided at ceremonies marking the completion of the second of two projects along Mekong River tributaries. One is the Nam Pung and the other the Nam Pong, both to provide electricity, irrigation and flood control.
This is the Mekong:
Half of the population of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam live in its lower basin which stretches 1,500 miles from the Burmese border to the China Sea.
It is the longest unbridged river in the world and one of the least utilized.
In South Vietnam's Chau Doe Province during the rainy season, lily pads ripped loose from Cambodia swamps drift downstream and foul the propellors of river craft.
As the flood waters rise they bring ruin to rice and sugar cane crops and force peasants from their homes.
For while the Mekong, one of the world's 10 mightiest rivers, is the lifeline of the delta, it also is a destroyer.
Upriver, at Vientiane, in the dry season the Mekong falls 15 feet below the level of its banks and sandbars reach far out toward midstream. In flood time, the river flows through Vientiane streets and gnaws at the foundations of stilted houses.
5 Million Acres
The salty Plain of Reeds stretches from just south of Saigen in South Vietnam northwest into
Cambodia. It encompasses some five million useless acres which, with the help of the Mekong, could be drained and made fertile.
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All these things are part of the dream for harnessing the Mekong which, in spite of war, gradually is coming true.
This is the project to which President Johnson alluded in his Baltimore speech of April 7,1965, when he urged North Vietnam to take part in "unconditional discussions" toward peace and to join in a vast development program to which the U.S. would contribute one billion dollars.
Involved are unfamiliar names such as mainstream projects Pa Mong, Sambor, Tonle Sap. Others are called Nam Ngum and Prek Thnot.
But altogether they add up to millions of new acres under cultivation, new industries and millions of kilowatts of electricity.
And, in spite of war, they are going forward.
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editorial page
Monday, February 13, 1967
Daily Kansan
Others predict a more basic review. Many feel they cannot rely on The Daily for coverage of campus news. At a university with over 30,000 students, The Daily has a circulation of only 8,100. Newly arisen technical problems have led some, including staff members, to call for professional advice to help solve these problems.
At other schools...
But the idea and the tradition behind the Daily demands operational freedom for the student staff. The paper is to exemplify and teach the value of a free press. It is not meant to be an arm of the university.
Maintaining that necessary freedom demands that the university keep its hands off the controls. The initiative for a study like the one proposed should come from within The Daily's staff. If outside studies are made, then they should result in recommendations and not in orders.
(Editorial Editors of any student newspaper—if they've worth their weight in type—ultimately displease either students or faculty. But at the University of Michigan, the campus "Michigan Daily" has displeased not students nor faculty, but administrators. The Michigan State News comments on the possible results.)
BECAUSE THE DAILY'S publisher is a university group, legal and professional control of the paper technically rests with the university. On a professional daily paper, the publisher is the straight boss.
Inherent in the controversy is the traditional conflict of a free press vs. university control.
CHANGES IN THE PAPER'S circulation or business operations could well be initiated by The Daily's Board of Control. Outside non-professionals know very little about the operation of a newspaper. They should let those who are responsible and have the knowledge . . . run the paper.
The U-M Board of Control of Student Publications asked Monday for a review by an "outside" group of The Daily's general structure and relationship to the university. The group will be selected from the university community.
The potential loss of editorial freedom and operational integrity which would result from the proposed investigation is much greater than any possible gain.
The soon-to-be-implemented investigation of The Michigan Daily demonstrates once again one of the most serious problems of on-campus student publications.
THE PURPOSE OF the review is unclear. Some feel that in the end it will result in restrictions on The Daily's editorial freedom. The Daily has published several signed editorials and stories which have drawn fire from both inside and outside the university community.
2
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It seems even England has problems with student journalists. According to the U.S. Student Press Association Bulletin, Howard Moffett, Collegiate Press Service correspondent in Vietnam, found this poem in the Saigon office of Reuters, the British News Service:
You cannot bribe or twist,
Thank God, the student journalist.
But seeing what the chap will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
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