April 29, 1965 THE SKIDMORE NEWS Page Five Panel Discusses Policy For Peace In Viet-Nam Editor’s Note: The editorial staff extends its apologies to Ellen Sussman, ’66, whose review of the panel on Vietnam in our last issue was cut substantially in order that we might include the story on Dr. Palamountain which was a late release to the NEWS. In all fairness to Miss Sussman, we have reprinted her article below. By ELLEN SUSSMAN '66 The crucial question of United States presence in Viet-Nam was the subject of a panel discussion in the Rec Center on April 14. The panel included two members of the Skidmore faculty: Robert Smith, Associate Professor of Government and Eduard Zeigenhagen, Instructor of Government. Additional viewpoints were offered by William Meyer, former Democratic Congressman from Vermont, and Russell Stetler, a student at Haverford College and author of War and Atrocity in Viet-Nam. Introductory remarks by Edward Reagen, Associate Professor of Economics, set the tone for a probe into the costs and conditions of continued United States action in Viet-Nam vis a vis the risk of escalating the war into a nuclear showdown. While Mr. Stetler criticized what he termed “American intervention in a nationalistic war rather than a threat of Communist infiltration,” Mr. Meyer called U. S. support of South Viet-Nam “illegal, immoral, and impractical.” Present policy, he feels, defies the tenets of the Geneva Convention, ignores our ideological constructs of sovereignty and is doomed to failure at unwarranted costs of manpower and equipment. On this basis, committing the nation to the defense of South Viet-Nam, Meyer stated, was sufficient grounds for the impeachment of President Johnson. Both Meyer and Stetler implied that refusal to immediately with draw would precipitate Soviet assistance on behalf of North Viet-Nam and, finally, a war escalated into nuclear annihilation. Mr. Smith offered the probability of Sino-Soviet differences precluding direct Soviet intervention and thus, the maintenance of the war within bounds both reasonable and consistent with American national interest. Although the discussion produced no pat formula for peace in South-East Asia, it succeeded in at least underlining the complexity of United States involvement and the multiple aspects of either withdrawing or augmenting American support of South Viet-Nam. Ai, Foskett Plan Graduate Studies Two Skidmore College seniors, Cynthia Ai and Nancy Foskett, have been awarded fellowships to begin graduate study at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii next fall and to pursue foreign travel related to their studies. The awards, announced recently by Edwin M. Moseley, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, offer the recipients 18-month fellowships, including round-trip travel allowances between the mainland and Hawaii, full tuition, lodging and board, foreign travel relevant to study areas and cash stipends of $150 per month. Cynthia Ai, a philosophy major from Honolulu, Hawaii, plans to study Chinese philosophy. She is an honors student and was Vice-President of the International Relations Club during the past academic year. Last February, at the University Model United Nations held in Montreal, she was selected as “Best Delegate” from among 280 student delegates representing nearly 100 American and Canadian colleges and universities. Nancy Foskett, a history major from Lexington, Massachusetts, will pursue Japanese studies at the University. She has received honorable mention for her academic achievements and served as President of her residence hall last year. Shriver Cites Loan Program Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver recently announced the initiation of a new loan fund to be available to college juniors who wish to use the summer before their senior year to prepare for post-graduation Peace Corps service. The loan program is the product of an agreement between the United Student Aid Fund, Inc. and the Peace Corps Volunteers Fund. It will enable students in the Junior Year Advanced Program to borrow up to $600 to help finance their senior year school expenses. The loan repayment may be deferred until after completion of the final Peace Corps service. This will allow many students, who ordinarily would have had to work during the summer months, to participate in the program. The Peace Corps Advanced Training Program is a two-phase plan that provides an intensive 8-week training session during the summer between the junior and senior years and another 8-week session following graduation from college. Following the first 8-week period, Advanced Training participants return to their regular college where they may continue language study on an individual basis. No specific course requirements are made. After graduation, participants return to a training center for the second training session. Those successfully completing this final program will then begin their work abroad as regular Peace Corps Volunteers. Selection for the Advanced Program is the same as that used for all Peace Corps applicants, based on the evaluation of the candidate’s background as, revealed in the Peace Corps Questionnaire, Placement Test results and character references. Evaluation continues during the summer training program, and final selection is not made until the end of the second stage, following college graduation. BEE NEEDS YOU By Sybil Heitin '66 Where are they? . . . Where are those good intentions you had when you were a kid? . . . When you were growing up you had grand plans of helping the poor, feeding the sick, caring for the injured, being a brave fighter in the causes of your country! Now look at yourself. Remember when you went from door to door collecting pennies for the cancer drive? Remember when you used to bring little toys for the Red Cross boxes at school—for poor kids overseas? And Now? What happened to that Peace Corps application? . . . and that flyer to help with the Easter Seals Drive? Ah, the curses of a busy life; the trampled ideals of noble youth. Wait! No lamentations, please. Campus NSA will give you opportunities to redeem your high ideals. USNSA legislated policies at its 17th National Student Congress last August, covering a host of subjects under “Human Relations” which just fits the prescription to rejuvenate tired humanitarian dreams. As a subsidiary member of USNSA, Skidmore supports these policies and has direct contact with a host of smaller agencies which need your assistance and the energies motivated by your wanting to help. The opportunity: BEE — Books for Equal Educations is one such agency which lends us the opportunity to “do something” BEE asks that we contribute books for less fortunate students. Many of us store, throw away or sell for pennies, books that “are desperately needed in the South and other areas.” One would have to be depraved to take such action when he could be helping some deprived student. Collection boxes will be placed in the mailroom later this year —around the time you usually pack, sell, throw away or burn books. Don’t let these boxes go empty. If your textbooks or supplementary reading books are not too badly marked or tearsoaked by the end of late May and early June put them in the properly marked containers. (We’ll show you, Gaylord that dreams can come true.) Rubin Mitchell Trio Presents NAACP Benefit Performance By JILL SCHUKER '66 “The Golden Hands of Rubin Mitchell and Trio" will make their first appearance in Saratoga Springs on Monday, May 3, at 7 p.m. in College Hall. At this time the Trio will give a benefit performance for the N.A.A.C.P. Contributions are greatly needed for the N.A.A.C.P. National Fund, and any donations will be appreciated. All the Trios musical numbers but one have been specially arranged for the group by Rubin Mitchell, the head of the Trio. Mr. Mitchell grew up in the West Indies and in the South. His musical training includes study at the Julliard School of Music. Prior to 1956 when the Trio was formed, Mr. Mitchell played solo. At the Flamingo Club in Las Vegas, he shared bandstands with such top music personalities as Count Basie and Harry James. He has also accompanied Judy Garland, Jack Benny and Ray Bolger on the piano. Chris Rouse, the Trio’s bassist, has been with the Trio since its inception and has “played with the best.” He has played for and with such recording artists as Tommy Edwards. Joe Belardino, the third member of the group, joined the Trio in March of 1964. He has played the drum with the Les Elgart Orchestra and was a regular member of Richard Heyman’s Orchestra which is well-known for the “Ruby” theme in the movie Elmer Gantry. When in New York City, the Trio usually appears at Basin Street East with such leading entertainers as Duke Ellington and Keely Smith. The Trio has appeared in this area regularly since 1962 and are currently at the Jamaica Inn in Latham. They have also given a number of benefit performances including one on behalf of the Cerebral Palsey Fund Drive. The Trio plays mostly jazz arrangements. Their selections include such pieces as “I Remember April,” “Watermelon Man,” “Limbo Rock,” and “How High the Moon.” Both the public and the students are invited to this benefit performance sponsored by the Skidmore Chapter of the National Student Association. As there is another lecture that evening, there will be an intermission at 7:25 p.m. for those who would like to enjoy part of the Trio’s performance as well as attend the lecture. Dr. Harry Zohn Probes Zweig's Paradoxical Life By LORE SORG '65 Fame and fortune were the lot of Stefan Zweig, renowned author, translator, dramatist and novelist. Hardships suffered by most men of letters were spared him. Yet this life drove Zweig to suicide. Harry Zohn, professor at Brandeis University, solved this paradox of “the rise and fall of a great European,” on Monday, April 12, in the Language Center. The lecturer introduced the unacquainted to Stefan Zweig by means of his lucid analysis of Zweig’s fate. By revealing Zweig’s ideals as encountered in his works, he also stimulated old and new appreciation of Zweig’s bequest to the world of today. In World of Yesterday, an autobiography of a European, Zweig divided his life and times into three temporal stages. During his lecture, Dr. Zohn aptly employed this typology of “the golden ‘world of security’ before the 1st World War, the turbulent yet fruitful decade that followed in its wake, and the Hitler era up to the outbreak of the 2nd World War, when Zweig’s story ends.” As noted by Dr. Zohn, Zweig enjoyed a placid youth in Vienna. With poetry published at the age of twenty, Zweig travelled extensively through Europe, North America and India and studied at the University of Vienna. Dr. Zohn characterized the great influence on Zweig of Emile Verhaeren, “Walt Whitman of Europe,” and Romain Rolland, crusader for European unification. Ironically, Zweig was granted special permission to produce his strongly pacifist play, Jeremiah, in neutral Switzerland, while he worked in the Austrian War Archives in Vienna. At the close of the war, Zweig moved to Salzburg, Austria. There he began work on “the intellectual unification of Europe.” Dr. Zohn depicted these promising times, when the cultural elite gathered at Zweig’s home and Zweig began his international collection of “first drafts of masterpieces” by former notables. As cited by Dr. Zohn, the bestiality of Nazism toppled Zyreig’s formerly impervious idealism. His books burned, his house searched, and immorrality rampant, Zweig emigrated in 1934. Even as imigrant, Zweig felt no material want or decline in literary recognition. However, he imagined himself a modern Erasmus, cognizant of the world situation, yet powerless to stem its momentum. To characterize Zweig’s dejection, Dr. Zohn mentioned the plot of Zweig’s last work, The Royal Game. A game of chess symbolized a future “age of increasing specialization and dehumanization, a world in which the man of the spirit will be checkmated.” In 1942, “Stefan and Lotte Zweig chose to emulate this suicide of Europe.” Zweig’s favorite theme was that of “the spiritual superiority of the vanquished.” As Dr. Zohn emphasized in his analysis of Zweig’s Master Builder's of the World, “he was not concerned with the titans of action who moved empires, but with the unheroic moral leaders of mankind who have furnished us with enduring examples even though they themselves were crushed by force and iniquity.” “With this went Zweig’s lifelong desire to . . . ‘translate’ in a wider and higher sense” above artificial preju- (Continued on page eight) “Les Enfants du Paradis,” a French film sponsored by the Drama Department, will be shown on Thursday, April 29, at 7 p.m. The movie, a lengthy epic often referred to as France’s answer to “Gone With the Wind,” is a revival of the mid-nineteenth century mime tradition. Jean-Louis Barrault, an internationally known French actor, depicts the life of Charles Debureau, his predecessor in the mime theater. In addition to the re-enactment of several of Debureau’s more famous productions, the plot of the film involves a somewhat fictionalized portrayal of his life. The film was made during World War II and the occupation of Paris and reflects the fiercely proud sentiments of the French people concerning the glory that had been France.