Iowa City Press-Citizen from Iowa City, Iowa • Page 4

'All in Favor Raise Your Middle East Peace Serves U.S. Russia it can't afford to get mired down in the Middle East in a race with American Phantoms and Israeli fighting skills and then find China acting up on its long Asian frontier. It would be a China, moreover, that would be strengthened by. the Maoist trend among the Arab guerrilla movement. Thus, while it is the last chance the Arabs and Israelis may have for avoiding another war, it is even more truly the last chance the Russians and Americans may have for avoiding a fateful confrontation with each other in the Middle East.

There is still a long haul ahead before the Arabs and Israelis can lay down the sword and explore a peace, however uneasy. Nasser will have to face down the angers of the guerrilla leaders, who see the peace plan as undercutting their basic premise that Israel can and must be destroyed and as eroding their support by making them appear like the foolish fanatics they are. Both sides will have to agree on a surveillance system for the standstill (the Israeli open-sky plan makes the most sense), on starting the cease-fire and the peace talks simultaneously and on the point at which the Rhodes formula for indirect talks becomes one for direct talks. But the start is there. Statistically, the chances are still against it, but the odds are narrowing, not lengthening.

If it works, it will help everyone the Israelis, the Arabs, the Russians, the Americans everyone except the Arab and Israeli diehards, everyone except the ravens. And it will be an important test of the capacity of the Great Powers to get out of a mess that their blindness, folly and power- hungers got them into. By, MAX LERNER NEW YORK If peace comes at last in the Middle East, it will be because the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are frightened of each other. There is an incredible amount of nonsense being written about the "courage" Gamal AbdeU Nasser showed in accepting the cease-fire. Granted that he stirred up the anguished cries of Yasser Arafat and the other Palestinian guerrilla leaders and had to ban some of their Cairo broadcasts and that he has had to rebuke his Syrian and Iraqi allies.

But once the 'Russians applied their pressures on him in those fateful, prolonged meetings in Moscow, what choice had he? The Nasser of today is the creature of the Russians. It is they who gave him, and flew, the MIGs and installed the SAM missiles that brought dpwn the Israeli flyers and planes. It is they who saved his throne as president of the UAR and king of all the Arabs. What the lord god in Moscow has given, the lord god in Moscow can take away. Thus endeth the lesson, and Nasser understood it.

Having given him a sword that saved him, the Russians gave him an olive branch under penalty of taking the sword away. He must embrace the olive branch, even at the risk of being branded traitor by the brotherhood of fanatics. And the Israelis? After thousands of years of exile they have wanted peace on the land they reclaimed, but perforce have had to live by the sword. Once Nasser and King Hussein had accepted, the pressure from the United States was too strong to resist. Even Moshe Dayan and the doughty Grandma Moses had no choice.

True, Israel's military strength was displayed in three wars, without massive American planes. But a carefully slowed-up delivery of the remaining Phantoms would have put Israel at the mercy of the Russians and Arabs, and the Israelis knew it. Much has been written about the powerlessness of the Great Powers. In a war of its own, a Great Power feels helpless. America finds it hard to wind up its war in Indochina, and Russia doesn't quite dare take one on with China.

But when lesser nations come to depend on the Great Powers for weapons, as in the Middle East, that dependence gives the Great Powers their leverage power if they wish to use it. What made them willing to use their power in this case? The answer on America's side Is clear enough: Engaged in one messy war, the United States couldn't afford to get entangled in a second power struggle, however different. The real question is about the Russians: Since things seemed to be going their way in the Middle East, what made them put their bets on a ceasefire? One answer has been given by Nasser's official newspaper, El Ahram, that the Arabs have nothing to lose by a cease-fire, and everything to gain, and that even if nothing comes of it they will have a stronger military position. (One wonders here about Richard Nixon's assurances to Golda Meir that the cease-fire will also be a standstill and that the Russians won't keep adding to Nasser's SAMs.) The deeper answer is that there is a limit to Russian adventurism, that while America has its Vietnam, it is also true that Russia has its China, that Republicans Eye But Campaign Labor, Falters His own conviction on this score is the reason the sizable delegation of "hard hat" workers made it to the White House for a meeting with him in late IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN Editorial Page Friday, August 7, 1971 Of Rights, and Wrong With President Nixon's performance as a friend, the cause of law and order would appear to be in no pressing need of enemies for the time being. Apart from whatever effect it ultimately may have on the Los Angeles trial directly, the President's comment on the Manson case is certain to be around as a public topic for some time.

Editorialists will see to that. And delivered in the context of a critique of the press, it or the flak raised is not going to improve his relations with the media. But apart from the press and jurists, a distinct minority, hand wringing over the widely advertised presidential gaffe is likely to be limited. The vast majority of the public is more likely merely puzzled by the fuss, or ignoring the business altogether. To those uninformed on the fine points of the law, concern over Manson's rights to trial free of prejudgment may seem exaggerated and the Nixon slip must appear a natural enough reaction to what may superficially appear an open-and-shut case.

All of which prompts some thought on other events, unrelated but also concerning rights and majorities. In Cleveland, two young men have been cleared of charges of double murder during a holdup. Evidence, including identification by a witness, had appeared to make it an open-and-shut case until a much-later arrested suspect revealed others as the true killers. The two youths were promptly set free after a year in prison. The point is that for all the built-in guarantees of the rights of the accused, our legal procedures aro not infallible.

There may well never be a case so open and shut that a tragic mistake cannot result. Another of those periodic street-corner polls recently revealed that the citizens in the street overwhelmingly reject the basic concepts of the Bill of Rights. The majority reaction to the constitutional guarantees, as paraphrased, was that they were undesirable, unnecessary, possibly even dangerously subversive. The only thing really surprising about this is that it should be found surprising. The majority ha3 no great interest in or need for the rights in question.

The majority conforms, which is why it is the majority. It is the minority, the rare individuals, who want and exercise the right to be different. Freedom could, in fact, be defined as the majority's guarantee of the minority's right to be different. At another point in his law-and-order comments, President Nixon mentioned a recent viewing of a Western movie and ascribed continuing popularity of Westerns to public desire to see "the good guys out ahead; the bad guys lose." Undoubtedly true. Moviemakers, of course, are well aware of this public taste and tailor their scripts to satisfy it.

Life, unfortunately not so easily scripted. Good and evil are not always outlined clearly in blacks and whites; good guys and bad guys are not easily distinguished. It is only human, of course, to wish that it were otherwise. And for all their awesome powers and responsibilities, presidents, of are only human. On Horseback Too Dune buggies couldn't do it.

Nor motorcycles. Nor four-wheel drive vehicles. So back to that old reliable mode of transportation the horse have gone the Marines of Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego, where 15,000 rugged acres of land must be patrolled. Marines began their horseback patrols this summer, restoring a role that was phased out in the 1930s. All that's needed now is to find a Capt.

Jenks to command the patrol. Young Act Like the Old-After Some Experience By BRUCE BIOSSAT WASHINGTON President Nixon is keenly aware that big chunks of U.S. labor are up for political grabs. Yet neither he nor the Republican Party manages to do very much about drawing these people into his slill severely limited basic voting constituency. Quite properly, the political specialists see millions of American workers today as "free-floating voters" who no longer have the kind of firm allegiance to the Democratic party that lias been traditional since the days of Franklin D.

Roosevelt. Until fairly recently, only a few key Democrats (like National Chairman Lawrence O'Brien) have appeared to grasp what is happening. Now, with the exception of some rather ardent liberal types like the laughable John Kenneth Galbraith, the older party, too, is waking up. By now, with a host of blue-collar worker studies and reports, everybody knows what's eating at these people. They see the blacks as threatening; they detest students who disrupt colleges they themselves never got to but want their own children to attend: They are hanging on to the lower rungs of affluence by the weakest of grips.

Nixon, wanting a real majority for himself and his party, never forgets the stark fact that his support was frozen in 1968 at a barely triumphant 43 per cent. The natural place, the easiest place, for him to turn for enlargement is to disgruntled By RAY CROMLEY WASHINGTON Over the past several years, this reporter has had the interesting experience of helping put quite young people in positions of responsibility normally reserved for older men and women. This has been in a fairly wide variety of civic activities. The young people were chosen, incidentally, because they were needed, because showed considerable ability and because they were in many cases highly critical of the effectiveness of the way things were being run. It is to be noted that, after these young people had held their posts long enough to acquire experience and a feel for what they were doing: Most did technically highly credible jobs.

Some had brilliant and highly original ideas. There was some overconfidence in the delegation of work and somewhat less persistence in follow through as compared with the older people who had preceded them in the jobs. There was some tendency to discouragement when things didn't work out fairly quickly. There was also a tendency as time went by to shy away from the tedious tasks which form the base for most activities. But these a characteristics not limited to youth.

Most 'dissatisfactions noted by these very capable young people were concerned with the difficulties inherent in persuading other people to go along with ideas they were convinced should be adopted. They were impatient with people who disagreed with them. But their troubles, primarily, were not with the establishment, but with older and younger people among their "peers." (Remember that in their posts they were on a par with, or over, many older people.) Most importantly, this report-' er found that, among the older people involved, there was a general approval (with some strong-minded exceptions) of the work these committee chairmen were attempting. This proval, interestingly enough, came through very strongly from members of the group who were themselves very conserva-, tive. There seems to be great rapport between the quite old and the quite young, regardless of political attitudes.

Most of these young people turned out to be quite conservative in their management and in the regulations they issued, with its deeply etched image as the party of business, has not even begun to convince workers that it can be their next "home." The so-called ethnic groups, who cut a thick swath through the U.S. labor force, are especially suspicious of business, and may be wondering for a long time what kind of real alliance they can build with their ancient enemies. This same Republican argues that his party must go much farther than it has to place candidates of Italian, East European and Puerto Rican heritage on its slates as a first step toward true accommodation. Yet these GOP figures do sot underestimate their opportunity. They think the workers' moorings in the Democratic party are shattered for good, even though millions returned to Hubert Humphrey in 1968 from George Wallace, the easy but temporary repository of their grievances.

With unemployment high and other economic indicators poor, Republican realists feel many workers may once again go Democratic this fall. But, again, they insist the attachment is no longer enduring. These sources say too many workers "don't rest well" in the Democratic party any more, and that the latter party's particular moves toward reform and its special appeals to the young and the black are likely only to drive more and more workers out of the fold. Obviously, though, turning them Republican is a hard job not yet well begun. Tighten Border Sinkiang China's largest and least Chinese province between the Chinese and the native population.

Peking accused the Russians of having inspired wide-spread rioting which took place on May 29, 1962, and ordered Soviet consulates in the province closed. The final break came on March 8, 1963. In a lengthy editorial in People's Daily, official organ of the Chinese Communist party, China revived claims to 1 million square miles of territory held by the Russians. They charged the land had been taken through "unequal treaties" and demanded its return. Since then, periodic armed conflict has flared.

The bloodiest clashes occurred 17 months ago along the Ussuri River that serves as and Russia's eastern boundary. Rumors of a possible preventive war circulated as border talks that began in June 1969 bogged down. The London Economist views the recent agreement to exchange ambassadors as a concession by Peking. The Rus-' sians wanted to start the talks by normalizing the long-frozen relations including the exchange of envoys. The Chinese initially insisted that the resolution of the border question come first.

Even though some of the heat may have gone out of the conflict, relations remain cool enough to make the suspicious powers tighten their tier watches. Capitol Scene spring. Since some hard hats had bloodied some young folk in Wall Street not long before, there was bitter opposition from certain Nixon advisers who argued that he would seem to be endorsing their violence if the meeting came off. Yet some of the President's own men think gestures like that session don't cut very deep. They say flatly that there just is no real program to draw labor their way.

Indeed, one man thinks well-aimed appeals to this vote are almost missing from Republican National Committee literature, while plenty can be found beamed to the young and the blacks voting elements unlikely to move in fresh big numbers toward the GOP fold. Some thoughtful Republicans of influence believe their party does not have the faintest idea how to woo working families. Across the nation, they say, far too many party gatherings look like assemblies of well-heeled country club types. Says one source: "We don't have people who know how to roll up their sleeves, sit down with workers and drink beer with them Do you ever see a steelworker's daughter at one of our affairs?" Another party figure agrees strongly. He thinks the GOP from the Pacific Ocean to the Pamir Mountains is nothing new.

Running from Manchuria on the Pacific to Mongolia and Sinkiang, the frontier has been Editorial Research Reports the scene of a century-long hot and cold war between China and Russia. Czarist Russia developed an interest in the area as it pushed its frontiers eastward. The border created with the Chinese Empire was artificial, dividing similar peoples from each other. For a century, the primary aim of Russian policy in Central Asia has been to assure a sound geographic frontier a-gainst the day when it might be forced to confront a consolidated Chinese power at short range. When China was weak, the Russians pinched off territory by outright conquest or.

by what the Chinese claim are "unequal treaties." And when China was strong they 'retreated often backing a series of warlords. After the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, both Peking and Moscow referred to their common border as a "frontier of friendship between brotherly socialist countries." But over the next dozen years, sporadic fighting broke out in Frontier Watches Along Sino-Soviet however "radically" they may have talked when they had neither authority nor responsibility. For example, youth leaders of two teen clubs, with which this reporter was involved, adopted rules of decorum and dress which were as "conservative" as those which the most particular parents would approve. Some rules were, in fact, more stringent than those voted for personal conduct within the conservative church this reporter attends. In politics, on local issues with which these young people had first-hand experience, they tended to be somewhat on the conservative side, as compared with their elders.

(Note that this was after they were close to and directly involved in the local problems for some time.) Before taking their posts and the responsibility, they had been, in their talk at least, considerably more radical. On issues with which they had no personal experience, they tended on the whole to have the same wide variety of opinions as their elders. In summary, these young people turned out to be remarkably like the "oldsters" in the range of their beliefs, their strengths and weaknesses. Today In History By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Today is Friday, Aug. 7, the 219th day of 1970.

There are 146 days left in the yeaK Today's highlight in history: On this date in 1789, the U.S. War and Navy departments were established. On this date: In 1804, an American fleet bombarded the Mediterranean port of Tripoli during a campaign against pirates. In 1861, the. organizer of the first balloon corps, Thaddeus S.

C. Lowe, was named official "military aeronaut" of Union forces in the Civil War. In 1912, a Progressive party convention in Chicago nominated Theodore Roosevelt for president. In 1941, in World War II Soviet planes bombed Berlin for the first time. In 1942, the first American offensive in the second World War began as U.S.

Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. By NATHAN MILLER The Sino-Soviet border dispute is heating up again in a manner that suggests the possibility of armed clashes before the summer is out. Red China charged on July 31 that the Soviet Union "greedily eyes Chinese territory" and "has not for a single day relaxed its preparations to attack China." Peking may have been stirred up by evidence that the Soviet Union is embarking on a policy of "island reclamation" in Far Eastern rivers bordering China. Western diplomats reportedly can't help wondering why the Kremlin would choose such a sensitive area for agricultural expansion. The new posturing is the more surprising since the two Communist powers recently completed the preliminaries to their first exchange of ambassadors in four years.

Western analysts say Russia's build-up along the border has long since passed the point of mere ability to defend itself. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Russian spending on Chinese border defense is up 12 per cent this year, compared to a 1 per cent increase in total military outlays. The Chinese also have been reinforcing their military units along the frontier, increasing strength to as many as 2 million men. The uneasiness prevailing a-long a boundary that extends 20 Years Ago Today August 7. ISiO Today, for the first time in its history, Johnson County issued the number 12,000 on an automobile license plate, the recipient: being James Tesar of Solon.

Only 11,337 automobile license plates were issued in the county last year. Prizes totaling about $1,000 will be distributed among boys, girls and clubs submitting winning entries in the 22nd annual Johnson County 4-H achievement show, opening this week. School children in Johnson County benefited to the extent of $4,341 in federal funds used to help finance their noon lunches during the 1949-50 school year, according to County Supt. of Schools Frank Snider. An average of 494 pupils participated daily in the lunch program.

thef'te going to lower skirt lengths, the hast they could do is lower necklines, too!" rr.