FOUR TIMELY BOOKS ON VIETNAM

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP67B00446R000300150014-8
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• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
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• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: May 12, 1965
• Content Type: OPEN

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May 12, 1965 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE
endorsed by a regional development com that is a good thing, for it takes the subject
mission. away from the columnists and the official
Since President Johnson has emphasized press handouts and puts it where the public
his belief that there are many more farm can examine it at greater leisure. Not that
people than farm jobs, industry is taking all those books are good-far from it-or even
are not); but they leave a
th
bi
d
ey
ase
(
another good look at farm States as possi- un
ble sites for factories. more permanent record of certain crucial
The Federal Government has not been events which must be examined if one
helpful' to farm areas in its recent efforts to wishes to understand at least a small part of
remove branches of Government operation the war which now engulfs the "two Viet-
from rural States to urban centers. name."
(South Dakota has seen examples of this The three books under review represent an
in attempts to move Veterans' Administra- interesting "spread" in the field, since they
tion facilities from Sioux Falls to the Twin include an American Pulitzer Prize winning
Cities. And in the proposed law that would journalist, an Australian who does not hide
permit the Secretary of the Treasury to move his Communist sympathies, and a French-
some functions of the Internal Revenue woman who, on the score of Vietnam, ac-
Service office in Aberdeen to llansas City.)
Help rather than hindrance is needed in
meeting the problems of rural communities.
Regional development commisNons could
FOUR TIMELY BOOKS ON VIETNAM
Mr. GftUENING. Mr. President, in
The Nation for May 17, 1965, are reviews
of four recent books on U.S. involvement
in Vietnam.
The reviews themselves are made by
persons with wide knowledge of, and per-
sonal involvement in, that area of the
world. Bernard B. Fall, professor of
government at Howard University, and
the author of books and studies on Indo-
china, has reviewed the book entitled
"The New Face of War," written by Mal-
colm W. Browne, the Associated Press
reporter'in Vietnam; also the book en-
titled "Vietnam: Inside Story of the
Guerrilla War," written by Wilfred G.
Burchett; and the book entitled "Viet-
nam: An Eye-Witness Account," written
by Suzanne Labin.
Charles Mohr, now White House cor-
respondent for the New York Times, who
resigned as correspondent for Time mag-
azine, due to disagreements over Viet-
nam coverage, has reviewed the book
entitled "The Making of a Quagmire,"
written by David Halberstam, New York
Times foreign correspondent.
The reviews are fair, objective, and
well done.
The books themselves should be re-
quired reading for those who wish to
understand what is going on in Vietnam
and what has been going on there.
I ask unanimous consent that these
reviews 'be printed in the RECORD at the
conclusion of my remarks.
Society. Of the three, Browne's book will
probably be the most interesting and the
most disturbing, for he forces the reader to
look unblinkingly into what he calls "the
new face of war," from burning Buddhist
priests to Vietcong suspects being keelhauled
to death behind American armored personnel
carriers. It would be interesting to know
whether Ambassador Lodge, who prefaced
the book, was fully aware of the kind of
photographs which would illustrate it.
Browne is a journalist, and by now proba-
bly the dean of the Saigon press corps. U.S.
division (Newsweek's French reporter Fran-
cois Sully no doubt holding the overall record
with 15 years in the country). This
gives him an authority few can match. He
does not editorialize, nor does he write his-
tory; his book is functionally divided into
such subjects as "Mechanized paddy war,"
or "Vietcong gadgets" or "Our image."
Working for the Associated Press, Browne
writes in the quietly understated style of the
wire-service reporter, which only makes the
facts he cites more impressive. The reader
can, unfortunately, fully believe him when
he affirms that of the thousands of officials
in the Vietnamese administration whom he
meets. "I can think of none who does not
more or less hold the Vietnamese people in
contempt." Or when he tells the story of
the Vietnamese army units who collect
"taxes" in a village and later have it na-
palmed out of existence so as to cover up for
their malfeasance. Or when he cites an
American official in Saigon as saying that the
"only solution to all this is to bomb the hell
out of both Hanoi and Saigon, and start
the whole thing from scratch, working en-
tirely with the peasants." Although Hanoi
may well be bombed before much more of
the year has passed, and Saigon may well be
mortar shelled in return (or vice versa, de-
pending on who is playing retaliation), I am
afraid that is is a bit late for "starting from
scratch." The whole world is stuck with the
Vietnam mess just the way it is and Malcolm
Browne honestly admits there are no good
solutions, let alone quick and easy ones.
Having said that the book is excellent and
were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, should be read by every concerned person,
as follows: I can only regret that even as sensitive a
THE MESS: THREE ViEws journalist as Mr. Browne apparently never
"The New Face of War," by Malcolm W. bothered to pick up a modicum of Vietnam's
background, Browne, preface by Henry Cabot Lodge. The not even for the past two
Merrill Co., 284 pages, $5. decades: the Hoa-Hao sect was not led by a
Boobs-
"Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerrilla "Chrmad-llooking man named Ba-Cut" but
War," by Wilfred G. Burchett. International by a mad-looking prophet named Huynh Phu
Publishers, 253 pages, $4.95. So. Ba-Cut merely was one of the Hoa-Hao
war lords. Trinh Minh The did not lead
"Vietnam: An Eyewitness Account, by the Cae-Dai forces (he was but one of several
Suzanne Labin. Crestwood Books, 100 pages, war lords and most of the time hostile to his
$1.50 paper. own religious leaders); General de Castries
(By Bernard B. Fall) atDienbienphu did not command a "brigade"
(NOTE.-Bernard B. Fall, professor of gov- but a 15,000-man force; and France's-flag, in
ernment at Howard University, is the author French, is not the "tricouleur"-logical as
of "Street Without Joy," "The "Two Viet- this may sound to American ears-but the
9969
country's military embracing'such theories
as a psychological substitute for true polit-
ical reforms this reviewer hopes that the
United States can do better than that.
Burchett's book is literally the opposite
story for he has, over the past 10 years, ob-
served the Vietnam scene from the other
side of the fence; either from Hanoi or from
inside South Vietnam itself, but on the
Vietcong side. To dismiss Burchett's book
simply as "Communist propoganda" would
be too easy. Of course, it contains Com-
munist propaganda, but it contains a great
number of important truths as well. In
fact, Burchett's story is a bit like the Rus-
sians' more recent publications on space;
enough successes allow them to play at least
part of the story straight. There is, for ex-
ample, no doubt that Burchett repeatedly
traveled inside "our" Vietnam (as a cor-
pulent white man, the way I remember him
from personal acquaintance) without being
picked up by "our" Vietnamese, even though
he had been photographed together with
some of the American prisoners held by
the Vietcong-not one of whom has thus far
been liberated by initiatives from our side.
This is a good indication of how good Viet-
cong control over the civilian population is.
Some of the descriptions of life in the
"liberated zones" have an evident ring of
truth and are fully corroborated by what line-
crossers or deserters tell us, and perhaps one
of the most tragic-comical lines of the book
occurs when the author describes the pass-
age of a column of Communist regulars with
rucksacks fashioned from American-donated
flour bags, each marked with the U.S. Seal
and the inscription: "Gift of the People of
the U.S.A." And he adds that the American
"clasped hands of friendship" symbol was
more in evidence in the Vietcong zone "than
their own yellow-starred red and blue flag."
(There is, however, a good reason for the dis-
cretion about the latter: it draws the unwel-
come attention of Vietnamese and American
jet bombers.)
The best part of the book, and thus far
unequaled in any other publication, is Bur-
chett's description of the organization and
structure of the National Liberation Front
of South Vietnam (NLFSV). After reading
it, it is difficult to dismiss the guerrillas as
"gooks anonymous." They are men with
known backgrounds, with photogenic faces,
and with precise political aspirations. Of
course, they are "connected" with Hanoi, as
were all the West European underground
movements affiliated with Special Operations
Executive in London during World War II;
this did not mean that their political ob-
jectives were similar to those of their exile
regimes in London even when they received
military orders, parachuted equipment, and
OSS teams from the outside. In the long
run, the "internal" resistance movements
largely imposed their stamp on the post-
war European liberation regimes. One
may well wonder (and Burchett, of course,
does not offer a satisfactory answer to this)
whether the very harshness of the war is not
doing the same thing for the Vietcong.
In his final chapter, Burchett makes the
often overlooked point that the NLFSV in
1962 threatened to appeal to North Vietnam
for help; and in an epilog, dated January
1965, he quotes Nguyen Huu Tho, the chair-
man of the Liberation Front, on Gen. Max-
well Taylor's tactics. I wonder whether
Taylor ever read it, for it is a frightening
symptom of the whole Vietnam mess that
Tho and Taylor to all appearances; fully
agree.
"He has brought nothing new [from
Washington). ;A few hundred more U.S. "ad-
hi
na -
he second 1 oc
covered by the American public now that this era of revolutionary warfare, "can put But it is not bombs and artillery that win
American servicemen are being committed in Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Glap to work for it, wars; it is infantry that can occupy terri-
it in ever-increasing numbers, and books on without embracing communism itself." As tory. And here they are in a real im-
Vietnanl are flooding the bookshelves. And a Frenchman who has seen some of his own e c: * ? Above all, it is morale that.
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9970 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE
counts; it is the human factor that is de-
cisive."
Apparently, both Taylor and Washington
have bought Nguyen Huu Tho's estimate,
and now preparations are underway to beef
up the Vietnamese Army and to transform
the U.S. advisers into an enlarged battle
force. And bombing North Vietnam is ex-
pected to provide the closest approximation
to better morale for the South Vietnamese-
and it may just work. It Is going to be a
long war, the way Burchett and The see it.
And perhaps that is the way General Taylor
sees it, too.
Mme. Labin's book differs from Burchett's
in that Burchett, over the years, has become
more sophisticated and thinks that the soft
sell is on the whole more successful than the
ultrahard shell. Not so Mme. Labin. Her
book has, on the average, at least two fully
capitalized lines per page, complete with
exclamation points, not to speak of italic
and such subdued titles as "The American
Incitement" or "The Wall of Blood." Her
line is simple: the weak-kneed, Communist-
loving United States sold out the Ngo Dinh
Diem regime because it was "winning the
war" against the Communists. And she has
no hesitation about naming her chief target:
"the junto [sic] in the State Department"
whose "grim game * ? * was fully disclosed
to me by the late Counselor [Ngo Dinh]
Nhu and President Diem ? * ? " Since there
is no doubt that this line will become the
piece de resistance of a future investigation
into what went wrong in Vietnam, it would
be well if it could be laid to rest quietly.
There may be much wrong with the way the
State Department handled Vietnam over
the years, but lack of anticommunism was
not a part of it.
The rest of Mme. Labin's arguments are
mostly based on a lack of information about
Vietnamese affairs, which she shares with
many people of her persuasion, whether
French or American. To prove that the Bud-
dhists are unimportant, she, adduces some
pretty fantastic statistics, in which she dis-
misses the Hae-Hao and Cao-Dai Buddhists
as non-Buddhists and estimates the tiny
(perhaps 15,000) Vietnamese Protestant com-
munity at half a million. And to prove that
the Diem regime was above financial re-
proach, she states that a "1958 investigation
by a U.S. Senate committee cleared him of
asserted misuse of American aid." The joke
Is that, strictly speaking, she is almost right.
The "investigation" took place in July 1959,
and did indeed involve charges of corruption
in Vietnam. The aid agency, then known
as ICA, submitted to the bemused committee
an audit that, if submitted to the Internal
Revenue, would surely have landed Its author
in a Federal penitentiary. The report blandly
stated that 147 million piasters had been
destroyed by fire as per affidavit of a Viet-
namese bailiff, while another 82 million had
been allegedly burnt by fire without proper
affidavit. Accounts for another 33 million
were still not available 3 years later. That
amounts to the tidy equivalent of about $9
million-all of which disappeared at a crucial
moment when several Vietnamese generals
threw their support to Diem In another little
civil war.
Mme. Labin blandly denies that tortures
ever took place in Vietnam (no doubt those
color spreads in Life were all staged by USIA
to Improve the American Image abroad) and
finally compares the wily Ngo Dinh Nhu (who
incidentally, in 1953 ran a highly left-wing
and neutralist labor movement in Saigon,
and during the last days of his life, accord-
ing to his own wife, Mme. Nhu, had contacts
with the Liberation Front) with Thomas
Jefferson. But in the final paragraph of her
treatise, my compatriot finally relents and
admits that some reforms were, after all,
needed-in official Washington.
THE Was ONLY Less A Lrm' n&$
"The Making of a Guagmire," by David
Halberstam, Random House, 323 pages, $5.95.
(By Charles Mohr)
(No'rz.-Charles Mohr is the White House
correspondent for the New York Times. He
resigned as Hong gong bureau chief for Time
in 1963 due to disagreements over Vietnam
coverage.)
In late 1962 and throughout 1963, the deei-
aive drama of Vietnam was tragically played
out. The Vietcong guerrillas, who might at
that time have been defeated or contained
militarily were allowed to breathe and pros-
per. They captured many thousands of
weapons and grew into the formidable mili-
tary force they are today. The population,
which might have been persuaded to oppose
the conquest of the countryside by the Viet-
cong, was driven into the arms of the guerril-
las by policies which failed to protect them or
to inspire their loyalty. The American estab-
lishment In Saigon, which just might have
prevented these irretrievable calamities, failed
even to recognize that they were taking place.
Into this doomed and acrimonious atmos-
phere stepped a few young, relatively inex-
perienced American reporters. They were the
only element in the country, other than the
Vietcong, which President Ngo Dinh Diem and
his family could not control or intimidate.
At times it seemed they were the only Amer-
leans on either side of the Pacific whom Rob-
ert S. McNamara and other American offi-
cials could neither silence nor delude. They
distinguished themselves as journalists and
men-partly by having the innocence to see
what was under their noses, but mainly by
having the honor, the guts, and the simple
honesty to write the truth in the face of
abuse and near slander directed at them from
their own Government, and by other Amer-
ican journalists who did not bother to cover
the war, much less understand it.
In "The Making of a Quagmire," David
Halberstam retells the story of that period.
it is a sensitive and brilliant book but, above
all, it is an enormously sad one. Like most
Americans who have ever spent much time
there, Halberstam loved Vietnam and the
Vietnamese. The Idea of Its conquest by the
Communists was repugnant to him. His book
is a chronicle of lost chances and of official
self-delusion.
When Halberstam first arrived In Vietnam
in September of 1962, it was possible to be
optimistic-but not for long. Frederick G.
Nolting, the U.S. Ambassador, once said in
exasperation, "You are always looking for
the hole in the doughnut, Mr. Halberstam."
The holes in American policy were not hard
to find. The Ngo Dinh family wanted Amer-
lean arms and money, but did not want
American advice. Politically, the govern-
ment had alienated a large part of the popu
lation and administration was a nightmare
of confused incompetence. Militarily, the
army was being led disastrously by generals
appointed not for merit but for political
loyalty to the Ngo Dinh family. The Ameri-
can officials could not correct-or even ac-
knowledge-these defects because in the
words of another great foreign correspondent,
Homer Bigart, they had chosen to "sink
or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.
"Having failed to get reforms," writes Hal-
berstam, "our officials said that these re-
forms were taking place; having failed to
improve the demoralized state of the Viet-
namese Army, the Americans talked about
a new enthusiasm in the army, having failed
to change the tactics of the military, they
talked about bold new tactics which were
allegedly driving the Communists back. The
essence of our policy was: There is no place
else to go."
Halberstam and the other reporters dis-
covered this in the simplest way possible.
May 12, 1965
They became the trusted friends of brilliant
young American military officers assigned to
advise Vietnamese combat units who turned
in frustration to the reporters when their
own reports on the downward spiral of the
war were ignored, blocked or bottled up in
Saigon. They also learned by going into the
field to watch the pillow-punching military
operations which consistently let the Viet-
cong escape destruction and by witnessing
the cruelly corrosive effect of the war on the
Vietnamese population. With growing cyni-
cism and disgust they watched the antics of
men like Huynh -Van Cao, the worst general
In the Vietnamese Army, whom Diem had
given the most vital assignments in the Me-
kong Delta area. Cao's major talent was
flattering visiting American brass. Halber-
stam recalls how, when U.S. Marine Com-
mandant Gen. David Shoup arrived to visit
Can's headquarters, "he was greeted by the
7th Division band playing the 'Marine
Hymn,' and by a huge sign reading,: 'The
U.S. Marine Corps: From the Halls of Monte-
zuma to the Banks of the Mekong River.'
Shoup was duly impressed." Cao's forte was
not fighting. It was an' open secret that
Diem had told him to stop taking American
advice and to avoid casualties. In 14 di-
vision operations from October until Decem-
ber 22, 1962, when he was promoted by the
President, Cao's troops suffered only four
men killed. At the same time the paramil-
itary units manning overextended static de-
fense posts were being overrun every night
and losing American weapons to the
guerrillas.
From the American officers Halberstam
learned of some other major problems. The
Government forces would not fight at night
and they would not patrol. A U.S. captain
told Halberstam cynically one day. "They go
out at night, walk down the path, take a
leak, and then call it a night patrol."
"Although none of us fully realized it
then, this was the decisive time in the delta,"
writes Halberstam.
"A guerrilla war is seen first-hand by the
local population; for this reason, not only
must a successful force in such a war prove
that it has political benefits to offer the
peasantry, but It must also prove that it can
protect them. In such a military and politi-
cal situation there is sometimes a crucial mo-
ment of truth, which Is often unperceived
by fairly knowledgeable observers: the mo-
ment when the local population senses which
side is winning.* ? * One side has the
momentum and the other doesn't-it is just
that simple-and the first people to be aware
of this momentum are the peasants."
It is instructive to recall what the top offi-
cials were saying at that time. In April 1963,
McNamara authorized his press spokesman,
Arthur Sylvester, to proclaim, "We have
turned the corner in Vietnam." In that same
month Gen. Paul D. Harkins, the U.S. com-
mander In Vietnam, predicted in all serious-
ness that the war would be won "within a
year." By the summer and fall of 1963, a
full-scaleattempt was underway to discredit
the reporting of Halberstam and his col-
leagues. This campaign was joined by Time
magazine and by Miss Marguerite Higgins,
then of the New York Herald Tribune. Hal-
berstam ungallantly quotes from one of the
stories which Miss Higgins wrote at the time,
stories which said the war was going re-
markably well:
"As of the moment, General Harkins and
his staff flatly contradict published reports
that South Vietnam's U.S.-backed fight
against the Communists-particularly in the
rice-rich delta--is deteriorating and that a
Vietcong buildup is taking place to the point
where the Communists will be able to con-
duct mobile warfare with battalions as well
equipped as the Government's. 'What is
-Mobility?' interjected one of the general's
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May 12, 1965
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD- SENATE
corps advisers. 'Mobility means vehicles and
aircraft. You have seen the way our Viet-
namese units are armed-50 radios, 30 or 40
vehicles, rockets and mortars and airplanes.
The Vietcong have no vehicles and'no air-
planes. How can they be mobile?'"
The brainless lack of simple respect for a
formidable enemy led to painful results. The
Vietcong were fighting in battalion size units
even when Miss Higgins wrote: they are
fighting in regiment size units today.
Halberstam's plodding, painfully honest
work in the field gave him a different view of
the enemy. His descriptions of military op-
erations have the sharp quality of snap-
shots-this is, indeed, the way it was. "Mov-
ing in a rice paddy," writes Halberstam, "is
a bit like trying to run in one of your own
dreams-slowly, your feet stuck, feeling ex-
posed and all alone." He notes that for many
years the Vietcong "had fought constantly
against an enemy which had superior equip-
ment and air power. By necessity they had
learned to be careful and shrewd, and how
best to exploit their limited resources. In
order to survive they had to be wily; to be
careless, sloppy, or indifferent meant sure
death. They could never rely on an air
strike or armored personnel carriers to bail
them out of trouble; rather, there would be
air strikes to wipe them out and APC's to
crush them. They had to be elusive. 'Their
commanders,' an American captain once told
me, 'have a sixth sense about their flanks.
It is almost impossible to surround them ' "
Those who read this book will find that the
author of this review is mentioned often.
Normally I could not review a book by a man
with whom I was so closely associated, but if
I can be accused of being a prejudiced wit-
ness, it must be admitted that I was a wit-
ness. And there were precious few of those.
One of the great stories of the postwar era
was left to a handful of men to cover. And
only that handful can give testimony as to
how wise and true this book is.
The war in Vietnam will not be won by
air strikes on North Vietnam, and certainly
not by optimistic press conferences. It will
last as long as the incredibly patient, uncom-
plaining Vietnamese can endure it, and no
one saw this more clearly than Halberstam.
On his first combat mission moving with a
battalion of troops into a delta village he
wrote :
"About a hundred yards away we came
upon a dead peasant lying in the yard of his
hut with a poncho spread over him. Two
huts further on, a desperately frightened old
man of 80 years was genuflecting in front
of the American and Vietnamese officers and
telling them he had never heard of the Viet-
cong. How many times had this old man
had to tell Government troops that he knew
no Vietcong? How many times had he had to
tell the Vietcong that he knew no Govern-
ment troops? 'The war,' a young Vietnamese
said to me bitterly later, 'only lasts a life-
time.' '
MEANINGFUL STATISTICS ON THE
FARM SITUATION
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. President, few
segments of American life are more com-
pletely analyzed and reported, by
the statisticians than is our agri-
culture. The Department of Agriculture
issues store? of regular statistical reports
on crops,marketings, acreages, produc-
tion, livestock numbers, prices, costs-
every detail of farming.
The statistics are so voluminous that
sometimes we fall into disagreement
about their meaning and the interpreta-
tions which should be put on them.
No. $5-12
I have just received from the Lemmon,
S. Dak., Chamber of Commerce a copy of
some agricultural statistics and an in-
terpretation of their meaning that can
readily be understood. They are con-
tained in a statement sent to our agri-
culture committees; and they are so clear
and understandable that I wish to share
them with readers of the CONGRESSIONAL
RECORD and with the press.
The Lemmon Chamber of Commerce
statement shows that in 1963, there were
42 farm-auction sales in the trade area
of this town of 2,500 population; and in
1964, there were 51 selling-out auctions.
The elimination from agriculture of
this many farmers and their families is
estimated to result in a $911,547 loss in
trade volume. This estimate might be
disputed; but there is no disputing the
next statistic offered-the closure of 11
business establishments, including hard-
ware stores, implement dealerships, gro-
ceries, and a furniture store.
These figures present as clear a picture
of the situation in the farm country in
America as can be found in volumes of
statistics from the Department of Agri-
culture-indisputable proof of the con-
tention of the Lemmon Chamber of Com-
merce that "the present inequitable farm
parity program is crushing the economy
of the rural area. It is disastrous not
only to the farmer-rancher but also to
the towns, cities, countries, States, and
individuals."
I ask unanimous consent to have
printed in the RECORD the Lemmon
Chamber of Commerce statement and the
text of a typical farm-auction sale bill
which was enclosed with the statement.
There being no objection, the state-
ment and the bill were ordered to be
printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A STATEMENT TO THE AGRICULTURAL COMMIT-
TEES OF THE U.S. CONGRESS, WASHING-
TON, D.C.
(By the Lemmon Chamber of Commerce,
Lemmon, S. Dak.)
Honorable Chairman and gentlemen, you,
the gentlemen of the U.S. Congress, have
been informed of the difficulties of the
farmer-rancher and at this time especially
of those in the northern Plains States.
We, the Lemmon Chamber of Commerce,
wish to present to you some thoughts of
the disastrous side effects of the farmer-
rancher problem. The elimination of people
from the land; the elimination of business
dependent on and of assistance to the
farmer-rancher; and the potential financial
straits of all people in the rural Northern
Plains agricultural area.
The low parity of farm product prices and
subsequently low income of the farmer-
rancher compared to the increasing costs of
operation has compelled the average farmer-
rancher to either expand his operation or
dispose of his properties on which he is un-
able to earn a living income. This is shown
through auction sales of farm equipment and
personal belongings and the farmer-rancher
moving to some other place to attempt to
make a living with the result we have fewer
and larger farms and less people.
As an example, farm auction sales in the
Lemmon, S. Dak., trade area in 1963 and
1964 were as follows: Penfield Auction Serv-
ice held 42 farm auction sales in 1963 and
34 farm auction sales in 1964. Francis Haley
held 17 farm auction sales in 1964.
This total of 93 farm auction sales equaled
9971
93 less farm families in the area. The aver
age size of the farms and ranches was in-
creased but the area population was de-
creased. A farm auction sales bill of such a
sale is attached to show what is generally
disposed of-a lifetime of savings at a forced
liquidation price of a few cents on the dollar
valuation.
The dire effect of this outmigration of
farm families is shown in a survey conducted
whereby the first 10 farm accounts of an
accountant's file were checked as to the ex-
penditures for farm-ranch operations ex-
penses. These expenses totaled $100,170, or
an average of $10,017, spent by each farmer-
rancher.
On this average basis it is shown that the
loss to business from the 91 liquidated
farms-ranches and eliminated farm family
expenditures in this area total $911,547.
This, plus the unrecorded personal expendi-
tures would be far in excess of a million dol-
lars annually, a loss to_ the small business
of the area which has had a dire effect on
the towns of the area of this western North
and South Dakota area.
During the past 2 years many business
firms have been liquidated and we note these
so that you will recognize that many types
of services and assistance are removed.
These not only affect the local community
but show the lessening distribution to these
points by industries of other portions of the
United States.
These liquidations by auctions and other
means are: Gambles Hardware Store; Fin-
sand's Hardware; Davison's Case Farm Imple-
ments; Red Owl Grocery; City Market Gro-
cery, all of.Lemmon, S. Dak. Erz Hardware
& Implements, Watauga, S. Dak.; Oberlander
Farm Implements; Sack Service Hardware;
Reeder Furniture, all of Reeder, N. Dak. Co-
operative Grocery, Scranton, N. Dak; Car-
sterns-Zempel Hardware, Bowman, N. Dak.
These 11 firms are no longer an economic
factor in these communities and have les-
sened the capabilities of main street to be of
assistance to the farmer-rancher in his pro-
duction and to assist him in combating the
inequities that the present below-parity farm
program places on the area farmer-rancher.
Lemmon, S. Dak., although a city of only
2,500 people, is proud of being a financial
center for the area farmer-ranchers. Its
banks are highly rated in that only banks
in the 11 major cities of South Dakota have
greater deposits. These deposits as of Jan-
uary 1, 1965, in Lemmon's two banks totaled
$13,547,275; but, sorry to say, that is only
part of the story. If the people of the area
had this money unencumbered it would show
a prosperous rural economy. What must al-
so be shown are the debts of the area and in
this Instance, the above-noted banks, with
the Northwest South Dakota Production
Credit Association and the Federal Land
Bank Association of Lemmon, S. Dak., show,
as of January 1, 1965, loans totaling $18,119,-
000. Too, this does not show loans made by
Federal agencies. A financial situation
fraught with danger for the Individual
farmer-rancher.
In summary: The present inequitable farm
parity program, with constantly forced re-
duction in cash Income crops acreage, is
crushing the economy of the rural area of
these Dakotas. It is not only disastrous to
the farmer-rancher but to the towns, cities,
counties, States, and individuals.
We, the Lemmon Chamber of Commerce,
request that you, the Congress of the United
States, give heed to this situation and evolve
a program of farm product price parity in
income that will tend to correct the present
situation of lessening income and higher
costs of farm-ranch product production.
ARTHUR SvzseoBY,
Manager, Lemmon Chamber of Commerce.
LEMMON, S. DAN., May 1,.1965.
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9972
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE May 12, 1965
FARM AUCTION
Having decided to quit farming and leave
the State we are selling at auction our per-
sonal property and livestock at the place 2
miles north and 1 mile west of White Butte,
Friday, November 8. Sale time 10 o'clock.
Lunch served by Ladies Club.
LIVESTOCK:
Eight milk cows, one just fresh and one to
freshen soon.
Seven calves.
Eight yearling Hereford heifers.
One registered Hereford bull, 6 years old.
Ten registered Hereford cows.
Eight Hereford cows, not registered.
Fifty-five 1-year-old laying hens.
HOUSEHOLD GOODS
One bottle gas apartment-size stove.
One Maytag washing machine.
One No. 618 DeLaval e:iectric cream sepa-
rator.
One bottle gas heater, four-room size.
One bottle gas tank, 250 gallon.
One large cabinet heater.
Three steel cabinets.
Two wardrobes.
Two base cabinets.
One bed with spring.
One day bed.
One dining table and chairs.
One chest of drawers.
TOOLS
One garden seeder.
One garden rake.
Two garden hoes.
One garden cultivator.
Two log chains.
Three oil barrels, 30-gallon.
Four grease guns, oil and grease.
Two scoop shovels,
Two forks.
One new hay knife.
One lariat rope.
FARM MACH:[NERY
One 1957 12-foot S.P. Allis Chalmers com-
bine with pickup.
One 1957 Allis Chalmers forage harvester.
One 1956 Massey Harris side delivery rake.
One 1955 John Deere dump rake.
One 1954 John Deere power mower, 7 foot.
Two 10-foot John Deere discs.
One 9-foot John Deere one way.
One 14-ince John Deere three-bottom plow.
One 1952 16-inch four-bottom plow.
One 1952 WD-9 International tractor.
One 1942 H International tractor.
One 1956 Ford 1-ton truck.
One 1952 11-foot International drill.
One Farmhand with haybasket and grap-
ple fork.
One hayrack with trailer.
One hayrack, with steel wagon.
One 10-inch International feed grinder.
Two gas engines-one 5 horsepower and
one 11% horsepower.
One grain elevator.
One sickle grinder.
One vise and stand.
One post drill.
Four gas barrels.
One 300-gallon gas tank with hose.
One 240-gallon gas tank with hose.
One barrel pump.
One tank heater.
Four 1-inch well pipes.
Three hog troughs.
One feed bunk.
One Clipper fanning mill.
One grindstone.
One pump Jack.
Two sets good harness, one set nearly new.
One stack silabe, about 100 tons.
About 150 tons of hay.
Scrap iron.
Other articles too-numerous to mention.
Terms: Cash.
No property to be removed till settled for,
or see clerk before sale.
Steve Braun, owner. Bob and Earl Pen-
field, auctioneers; license Nos. 117 and 166.
Bank of Lemmon, clerk.
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC RE-
PORTS ON ALASKA'S "MARINE
HIGHWAY"
Mr. GRUENING. Mr. President, the
June 1965, issue of the National Geo-
graphic magazine contains a magnifi-
cent, illustrated article entitled "Alas-
ka's Marine Highway." The author-
photographer, W. E. Garrett, took his
wife, Lucille, and their sons-Michael,
12; and Kenneth, 11-to Alaska, last
summer.
The Garretts drove north to the 49th
State in the National Geographic So-
ciety's Dodge Motor Home. Their ad-
ventures, starting from Prince Rupert,
British Columbia, when they drove
aboard the Malaspina, one of the new
year-around ferries which serve as a
vital link in Alaska's marine highway,
have been vividly recaptured in Mr.
Garrett's article.
Out of Prince Rupert, he writes:
With other passengers we stood at the rail
to watch porpoises and whales run beside
our bow * * ". A land otter scampered up
a bank to escape our wake * * '
Later we were to see glaciers twisting down
from icefields, parting trees and pulverizing
rocks as they crept to the sea to crumble
and melt.
That evening, near Ketchikan, the
Garretts made camp, assisted by hospit-
able Alaskans. Here is part of Mr. Gar-
rett's description of the evening:
We had no need for our kitchen on the
first evening on Alaskan soil. The rain
stopped, and a glowing sunset reddened the
sky and water. Chickens broiled on Bill's
outdoor grill. We interrupted a game of
horseshoes to drink a toast to another of
the ferries as it passed us southbound.
Alaska's marine highway embodies a
vital, new concept in highway develop-
ment. It consists of an impressive ferry
system, composed of three mammoth ves-
sels, operated by the State of Alaska,
which ply daily between Prince Rupert
and all principal southeastern Alaskan
points. The sea highway connects once
more with land highway at Haines-Point
Chilkoot.
The marine highway became a neces-
sity when 11 years ago, the only U.S. car-
rier abolished its passenger service be-
tween the lower 48 States and Alaska.
This left, as the only means of passenger
transportation between the older States
and Alaska, the commercial air services
and travel by automobile over the long,
unpaved Alaska highway through Can-
ada, as well as some "cruise" ships, which
are excellent, but provide only occasional
service.
As long as Alaska was a territory, rem-
edying the situation was impossible. The
restrictive Organic Act-fastened on the
territory in 1912-by which Alaska was
shackled up to the time when statehood
was achieved, forbade the territory to
incur any debt.
Statehood made it possible for Gov-
ernor William Egan to propose a $28 mil-
lion bond issue to establish the two ferry
systems in Alaska. The legislature gave
prompt approval, and the people of the
State ratified the proposal.
Now it is possible to explore hitherto
nearly inaccessible areas of Alaska.
Author Garrett left his mobile home
in Juneau, and flew by helicopter 25 miles
east, "landing near the middle of the
12,000-square-mile Juneau icefield,"
where Dr. Maynard M. Miller is work-
ing-under a National Geographic Soci-
ety research grant-to complete a classic
study of Alaska ice. Author Garrett has
illustrated his visit with spectacular in
ice photographs.
His article is generously supplied with
superb Alaskan views.
I shall not attempt to describe further
the jeweled descriptions of Alaskan
treasures which are to be found in Mr.
Garrett's work. He has combined word
and picture; and the National Geo-
graphic has used its magnificent re-
sources to recapture the beautiful scen-
ery of Alaska, which Mr. Garrett ha.,
photographed in color. In his conclud-
ing paragraph, Mr. Garrett compactly
describes the real value of the marine
highway which connects Alaska's far-
flung empire:
Now the marine highway has opened
new trail to the north. By 1986, Cana.
will have added a ferry link between Van-
couver Island and the Alaska ferry system,
terminus at Prince Rupert. With already
existing service from the State of Washing-
ton to the city of Victoria, on Vancouver'
Island, this will complete the ferry route
through the Inside Passage, a new lifeline
from parent Nation to youthful State, speed-
ing Its great and imminent growth.
I ask unanimous consent that the ful!
text of the article entitled "Alaska's Ma-.
rine Highway," published in the June
1965 issue of the National Geographic
magazine, be printed at this point in the
RECORD.
There being no objection, the article
was ordered to be printed in the RECORD,
as follows:
ALASKA'S MARINE HIGHWAY-FERRY ROUTE TO
THE NORTH
(By W. E. Garrett)
For decades, gold from the Klondike and
Alaska diggings flowed down the inside pas-
sage to the United States-the "Outside" o:
the "South 48," as Alaskans say. Then, no
longer profitable, the gold workings closed.
Now the 49th State has moved to reverso
the flow of wealth with a fleet of fast, far -
ranging ferries to entice tourists and trad
and make the inside passage a marine:
throughway to the north. Three new ves-
sels, each bearing the name of an Alaskan
glacier, have opened seven towns and 1,501)
miles of coastline to cars and trucks. In
their first 2 years of service, the ferries have
carried 187,000 Alaskans and outsiders.
Not since the gold rush of 1898 has south-
eastern Alaska seen so many strangers. But
today they come with their cars and their
truck-campers, in search not of the pot of
gold, but of the rainbow itself-the sceni-,
beauty of Alaska.
For residents of the Alaska coastline, mani
of them cut off from the rest of their Stat:
and the world by water, ice, and lack of roadh
or rails, the new year-round ferries-adde