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RAYCROMLEY
Will Ho Follow
Pueblo Pattern?
By RAY CROMLEY
NEA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NEA)
In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh’s advisers have long believed
they have a strong negotiating item in the hundreds of
U.S. Air Force and Navy fliers they hold in North Vietnam
prison compounds and the Army and Marine Corps men
they hold in the south.
This is known from references in captured documents.
The terms of the U.S.-North Korean agreement on the
release of the Pueblo crewmen gives proof to Hanoi on
this point. In fact, Ho may have asked the North Koreans
to test American will as a guide for his own bargaining.
If Ho finds it impossible to gain his way on the kind of
government he wants in South Vietnam or on the with
drawal of U.S. troops, he may now be expected to drive a
very hard bargain indeed for the release of these Ameri
can prisoners.
For it is now abundantly clear to Ho—as a result of the
strong, sincere feelings aroused in the United States for
release of the Pueblo crew—exactly how much value
Americans place on freeing American prisoners.
Ho, however, may follow another tack. Master psycholo
gist that he is, and knowing to the jot and title the strength
of American feelings on American prisoners of war, Ho
could offer to release the fliers as a “gesture of good will”
at a crucial time in the Paris negotiations. This action
would be aimed at causing a swell of U.S. public gratitude
strong enough to force the U.S. government to agree to
Hanoi’s peace terms. (Ho’s men would reason that some
American would say U.S. fliers were worth almost any
£rice; others would say that a government that will re
>ase prisoners of war can’t be all bad.)
Whichever route Ho takes, it is a certainty that he will
attempt to sell the freedom of the American fliers for a
dear price at a crucial moment.
No one is certain exactly how many prisoners are held
by Ho in the north and the Viet Cong'in the south.
It is known that 13.3 naval personnel are captured (or
Interned in Red China) and 115 missing. Most of these are
fliers.
It is known that 139 men of the Air Force are captured
•r interned and 538 missing.
There are 46 Army men captured and 174 missing, 19
Marines captured and 87 missing.
It is assumed that considerable numbers of the missing
Air Force nad Navy personnel are prisoners.
Little is known about these captured and missing men
or their treatment. Six pilots have been returned from
North Vietnam, nine Army men and one Marine have been
released in South Vietnam by the Viet Cong. Two Navy
men, two Marines and one Army man have escaped They
have, in general, reported that they were for the most part
kept isolated from other prisoners.
But the Communists, in their internal communications
have made it abundantly clear that prisoners must be cap!
tured whenever possible for use in attaining the sort of
war settlement they want.
BRUCE BIOSSAT
Today's World Just Too
Tough for Young Radicals
By BRUCE BIOSSAT
NEA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NEA)
Possibly the most significant thing to say about the young
leftist radicals is that the world they find themselves in is
just too tough \for them.
At least the most militant of them think of themselves
as brave and determined, but they—like all the others—are
essentially failures. They confuse noise and motion with
action. Actually, they are either unable or unwilling to
cope with the real world.
Unhappy reaction to the Imperfections of human society
is the natural and nearly inevitable imperative of youth.
So, too, is impatience for some kind of milennium in which
these imperfections would be largely eliminated.
Maturity comes to many young folk when the fact of hu
man frailty and the inescapability of human conflict at all
levels of living are accepted. But for some - humans that
time never comes. Their need for the certainty of seeming
perfection is so compelling that they cannot accept the un
settling facts of error and conflict and change.
The radicals of both left and right fall within this range.
Fundamentally they remain children, sometimes into and
through the entirety of their adult lives.
As a phenomenon of human behavior, this is as > old as
life. What is new is that a vastly more complex society
today provides far more room for the play of conflict and
error—and there are so many more young people in the
■world that their natural cries for something better not only
Ting with greater force but have become institutionalized in
now quite standard forms of protest like street marches,
“confrontations,” sit-ins and vandalizing.
Much more revealing, and self-indicting, is the radicals’
stress upon their goal of “bringing down” this imperfect,
society. When urged to say what they would put in its
place, they beg off. That, they say, is for someone else to
worry.over. They have no proposals and no programs.
Worse still, in their grossly misguided concept of living,
they profess to believe that one of the ways to bring down
an imperfect society is not only to imitate but to exagger
ate and ridicule the flawed institutions of society and the
mistakes of men.
To the extent that there is any discussion of another so
ciety to come, it emerges as an* incredible conglomeration
of warmed-over, discredited Marxism, empty sloganeering,
peremptory demands for delivering the impossible tomor
row, the grossest oversimplifications since the primitive
age of mankind.
The cruel truth is that if by some miracle they gained to
morrow the power they profess to hate, thev would have to
rely for real action upon the same kinds o‘s imperfect hu
man beings, the same varieties of human organization,
which exist now or have existed in earlier civilizations.
The complexities of 1969 would not yield more easily but
far more slowly to the protesters themselves, who have tu
tored their own clan mostly in the emptiness of destruction
and hardly at all in the constructive assault upon the
[problems of the real world in inescapable conflict.
GRIFFIN LAUNDRY
WILL BE CLOSED
ALL DAY WEDNESDAY
JANUARY Ist
In observance of New Year's Day.
We, At Griffin Laundry
Wish For You A
Happy New Year
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AN ARCTIC FIRST is the Plamenny mercury mine in Chukotka. According to an
official Soviet source, this is part of the mine’s complex which includes a metallur
gical shop, electric power stations and a chemical laboratory.
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/AFULIX
MAIN OFFICE SERV CEI McINTOSH ROAD BRANCH
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Moving Toward a Century of Service
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Inflation Easing Off
WASHINGTON (UPD—There
is evidence of an easing off of
inflation which threatens to
cause the biggest year-long cost
of living increase in 17 years,
according to Treasury Secretary
Joseph W. Barr.
He cited, among other things,
the current balance in the
nation’s budget and President
Johnson's hope that a small
surplus might be shown in the
fiscal year starting next July 1.
Asked about the spiral in
prices, Barr said: “I think
there are some signs that it is
easing off. Certainly we in the
federal government are moving
appropriately . . . We are not
going to be adding to any
demands on the economy that it
can’t fulfill.’’
The secretary, filling out the
term of Henry H. Fowler who
has resigned, discussed the
economic outlook on a joint
television interview Sunday with
Labor Secretary W. Willard
Wirtz.
Griffin Daily News
Wirtz expressed concern that
there might be some slackening
in the drive to keep down the
jobless rate as an expedient to
ease inflationary pressures.
Barr discounted this possibili
ty, saying that a Social Security
Tax increase early ne*t vear
will take about $3 billion owe of
circulation, and that another $4
billion will be absorbed in April
due to delayed effects of the 10
per cent income tax surcharge.
“So I think,” he said, “There
is a gradual move to take a
little of the steam out of the
economy without getting the
unemployment effects that con
cern secretary Wirtz.”
“Unemployment need not go
up,” Wirtz said, “It is not
inevitable that it go up, it just
must not go up.”
Wirtz conceded that “the
inflation question is a very real
one,” but added:
“We don’t have low unem
ployment now because we have
12
Monday, Dec. 30, 1968 <
an inflationary economy. We
have low unemployment now
because we have set ourselves •
to see to it that unemployment
is low as a matter of
priorities.”
Meantime, the Johnson Admi- *
nistration continued during the
weekend its efforts to persuade
the incoming policy makers of
Richard M. Nixon to continue *
stressing self-imposed price and
profit restraints to fight infla
tion.
<
INVITE ASTRONAUTS
BAYREUTH, Germany (UPI)
—The city of Bayreuth Sunday .
invited the three Apollo 3
astronauts and rocket scientist
Wernher von Braun to a
performance of Richard Wagn- *
er’s opera “The Flying Dutch
man” at next year’s Bayreuth
Festival. ,