Evening star., 1962-07-15

eIlIIIely the IrdQlLlOn OF congress
Sional deliberation and create a
new tradition of executive author
lty. Congress already comes in
after the fact. after the troops
For the first time in our his
tory. We operate a garrison econ
omy" in time of peace. Ten per
cent of our gross national product
goes to defense, which also si-
phonS off a higher proportion of
our scientific and engineering
talent. We spend $50 million
year on arms. on military forces,
on military research, all of which
gives us a built-in public works
program creating incomes without
creating consumer products.
The cold war has made high
taxes an inevitable part of 10th
century life. We pay more now
than we ever did, more than dur
ing the hot war. Almost immedi-
ately the cold war was upon us
with its huge appetite for gigantic
military costs and foreign aid.
There was little or no time to
consolidate.
Growth and IdeoIoey
The cold war also has given
new meaning to an old phrase
economic growth. Such growth has
always been necessary to ones
own needs and comfort. Now, we
are told, it is also part of an ideo-
logical struggle, to maintain the
strength of the West, to help and
hopefully win the underdeveloped
countries, to prove that capitalism
can provide better for humanity
than communism.
Despite the high cost Of the cold
war, the average American is bet
ter off economically that he was
at the close of World War II. He
is paying more taxes but he is
earning more and keeping more.
His net real income is up.
While the cold war has made
big government bigger and put
strains on free enterprise, it has
not changed the basic character
OF our economy, in the opinion of
Courtney j. Brown, dean Of the
Columbia University Business
College.
Another eminent economist,
Marcus Nader of New York Uni
versity. thinks that the strength
of our economy and the weakness
OF Russia's may eventually end
the arms race. Both countries
carry huge arms burdens. But be-
cause so per cent of Russia'S pop
ulation is engaged in farming, as
compared to only 8 or 10 per cent
OF ours, Russia has fewer people
to produce consumer goods.
The lntellectuols Problem
Therefore" concludes Prof.
Nader, "the high cost of defense
presses more on their standard of
living than ours. Thus, think
that before 10 years or so. because
of this great pressure for con-
sumner goods, Russia may be gen.
timely interested in disarming. +"
An economist finds some en-
couragement in one phase of the
cold war. The average man, while
aware of the continuing peril and
the lack of real progress toward
peace, may be able to bury his
diSmay in his job or garden or
PTA or power tools or children.
But the American intellectual
generally finds little solace any,
where. He needs consciously to
make order out of chaos, and the
world has never, it seems, made
less sense to him than 1t does
now. He sees life getting better
while death grows bigger. He sees
all the irony and all the danger
and feels futility. 1t is Ameri-
can intellectuals who evidently feel
the greatest dismay about the cold
war.
Most American intellectuals ap-
pear immobilized by a feeling of
loneliness and even helpless
ness" in the phrase of James B.
Reston of the New York Times.
1t is feeling which creeps into
American creative output, into
our literature, music and art which
critics agree, suffers from a loss
of vitality. Thus, in a world which
makes little sense, "the theatef
of the absurd" seeks to catch
up to modern music, which seeks
to catch up to the harsh dis
sonanceS of life.
The Fiction Is Inferior
Thus, today's fiction, notes
critic John Mason Brown, is in
ferior to the non-fiction, as for
example "The Guns of August"
THE Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich" 'The Making of Presi-
dent. "The non-fiction writer who
picks on subject fixed and set
tied in time does better than the
fiction writer trying to deal with
the confusing world around him"
Thus. mucn lower down on the
artistic scale, televiSion writer's
dwell on violence. "The only way,
apparently, to be heard in noisy
world" says Senator Humphrey,
lis to be noiSier."
Thus, Robert Oppenheimer, who
helped usher in the atomic age,
notes its appalling irony.
1--WE live" he said, with an
expansion of knowledge overpow-
eringly beautiful. vast, ramified,
quite unparalleled in the history
of man. We live with a yearly
enrichment of our understanding
of nature. and of man as part
of nature, that doubles every
decade :"
But he added:
I'VE have so largely lost our
ability to talk with one another.
We hunger for nobility: the
rare words and acts that har-
monize simplicity and truth"