La presente es una investigación de tipo descriptivo, observacional, retrospectivo y longitudinal, que tiene como universo de investigación la población ecuatoriana 2002 - 2011. Datos demográficos y epidemiológicos por el MSP (ministerio de salud pública) para la asignación de recursos al Primer Nivel de Atención, en el marco del principio constitucional de la equidad. Se analiza la importancia de la dinámica de la población en el Ecuador y sus proyecciones. Las tendencias generales de migraciones internas y externas, envejecimiento de las poblaciones, padecimiento de enfermedades, tanto infecciosas como crónicas, transiciones demográficas, tasas de natalidad, mortalidad, fecundidad, crecimiento poblacional. La investigación realizada explora, a partir de las tendencias de la sociedad ecuatoriana hacia la justicia y la equidad, así como el análisis económico, situación de las familias ecuatorianas y la eficacia del Estado en su rol redistributivo a partir del ejercicio de políticas públicas. El Gobierno Nacional del Ecuador a través del Ministerio de Salud Pública, ha establecido como uno de los ejes prioritarios , el fortalecimiento del sector salud, lo que se ha expresado en un incremento significativo en el presupuesto de salud, una reestructuración profunda de la institucionalidad pública , se han dado pasos importantes orientados al fortalecimiento de las unidades de salud del Ministerio de Salud Pública, en cuanto a: Infraestructura, Equipamiento, Recursos Humanos; esto sumado a la política de gratuidad progresiva de los servicios públicos, incidieron en un incremento significativo de la demanda de cobertura y afiliación en general. Se evidencia una acumulación epidemiológica, en la que las enfermedades carenciales y transmisibles comparten espacio con las crónico-degenerativas. Los problemas de salud pública más frecuentes son los accidentes de transporte y las agresiones. La evolución política del país en los últimos quince años se ha caracterizado por una gran inestabilidad de las instituciones y alto grado de conflictividad social, entre 1992 y 2006 se han sucedido ocho Gobiernos, lo que ha generado una profunda crisis de gobernabilidad, violencia social e incremento de la corrupción, inestabilidad administrativa y falta de continuidad en la gestión pública. Estos problemas han afectado la dinámica al sector de la salud y sus reformas. El sector salud mantiene un esquema de organización, gestión y financiamiento propio. El subsector público está conformado por los servicios del MSP (Ministerio de Salud Pública), IESS (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social)-SSC (Seguro Social Campesino), ISSFA (Instituto de Seguridad Social de las Fuerzas Armadas) e ISSPOL (Instituto de Seguridad Social de la Policía Nacional) y los servicios de salud de algunos municipios. La Junta de Beneficencia de Guayaquil (JBG), la Sociedad Protectora de la Infancia de Guayaquil, la Sociedad de Lucha Contra el Cáncer (SOLCA) y la Cruz Roja Ecuatoriana son entes privados que actúan dentro del sector público. Uno de los aportes más importantes en el proceso se sustenta en una visión de desarrollo que supera el enfoque economicista, concentrador y excluyente, hacia una visión que pone en el centro de la preocupación al ser humano y articula los diferentes ámbitos de la vida a nivel económico, social, político, cultural, ambiental, en función de la generación de oportunidades y potenciación de las capacidades, para el logro de condiciones de bienestar de toda la población. Por otro lado, recupera la planificación como herramienta fundamental para trazar el horizonte y los caminos a seguir para lograr un país capaz de garantizar los derechos de las y los ciudadanos, de las futuras generaciones. ABSTRACT This research is a descriptive, observational, retrospective and longitudinal type, whose research universe is the Ecuadorian population 2002 - 2011 demographic and epidemiological data from the MSP (Ministry of Public Health) for the allocation of resources to the First Level attention, under the constitutional principle of equality. The importance of population dynamics in Ecuador and projections are analyzed. The general trends of internal and external migration, aging populations, suffering from diseases, both infectious and chronic, demographic transition, birth rates , mortality, fertility and population growth. The research explores trends in Ecuadorian society towards justice and equity, and economic analysis, situation of Ecuadorian families and effectiveness of the state as a redistributive role from the exercise of public policies. The Government of Ecuador through the Ministry of Public Health, has established itself as one of the priorities strengthening the health sector, which has been expressed in a significant increase in the health budget, a profound restructuring of public institutions, also they have taken important steps aimed at strengthening the health units of the Ministry of Public Health, in terms of infrastructure, equipment, human resources; this added to the policy of progressive free public services, influenced in a significant increase in demand for coverage and membership in general. An epidemiológica accumulation , where the deficiency diseases and communicable diseases coexist with chronic degenerative evidenced . The problems of public health are more frequent transport accidents and assaults . The political developments in the country over the last fifteen years has been characterized by great instability of institutions and high degree of social conflict , between 1992 and 2006 there have been eight governments , which has generated a profound crisis of governance , social violence and increased corruption , administrative instability and lack of continuity in governance . These problems have affected the dynamics of the health industry and its The health sector has its organization, management and self- financing. The public subsector consists of the services of the MSP ( Ministry of Health ) , IESS (Ecuadorian Social Security Institute ) -SSC ( Seguro Social Campesino ) , ISSFA ( Social Security Institute of the Armed Forces) and ISSPOL ( Safety Institute office of the National Police ) and the health services of some municipalities. The Guayaquil Welfare Board ( JBG ) , the Humane Society of the Children of Guayaquil , the Society for Fight Against Cancer ( SOLCA ) and the Ecuadorian Red Cross are private entities that operate within the public sector. One of the most important contributions in the process is based on a vision of development that exceeds the economist , concentrator and exclusionary approach toward a vision that puts in the center of concern to human and articulates the different aspects of life at the level economic , social, political , cultural, environmental, in terms of creating opportunities and enhancing capacities for achieving welfare conditions of the entire population. On the other hand , gets planning as a fundamental tool to draw the horizon and the ways forward for a country capable of guaranteeing the rights of citizens and of future Como objetivo general es necesario Conocer la evolución por fases desde 2002 hasta 2011 de los patrones demográficos y epidemiológicos utilizando indicadores de estructura (edad y sexo), distribución (urbana y rural) y de transición (crecimiento poblacional). Como objetivos específicos se Describir la estructura poblacional de los ecuatorianos de acuerdo a su situación geográfica (Costa, Sierra, Galápagos y Amazonia). Identificar los factores que influyen en la evolución de la población a lo largo de los últimos años. Conocer la prevalencia de las enfermedades, según su situación geográfica así como las migraciones internas y externas, envejecimiento de las poblaciones, padecimiento de enfermedades crónicas, transiciones demográficas, tomando en consideración su natalidad, mortalidad, fecundidad, crecimiento poblacional, fenómenos epidemiológicos, enfermedades transmisibles. envejecimiento de las poblaciones, padecimiento de enfermedades crónicas, transiciones demográficas y epidemiológicas. Es un estudio descriptivo, de tipo observacional, retrospectivo y longitudinal, que tiene como universo de investigación la población ecuatoriana desde 2002 hasta 2011. Las variables que fueron estudiadas son: a) la población de acuerdo su número, estructura y composición, b) los fallecidos por las diferentes causas, c) los casos notificados por el sistema estadístico de las enfermedades infectocontagiosas. Con dicha información y con la utilización de fórmulas estadísticas se obtuvieron los indicadores de las tasas de mortalidad general por las diferentes causas y las tasas de morbilidad por las diferentes causas, se determinó la línea de tendencia lineal tanto para las tasas de mortalidad como para la morbilidad. La fuente de obtención del dato primario fueron los estudios, las investigaciones, los informes del Instituto Nacional de Estadística y el Censo Poblacional registrado en el 2010 ( INEC ), los datos del Ministerio de Salud Pública, del Plan Nacional para el Buen Vivir 2009 - 2013, y del Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2007-2010. CONCLUSIONES. 1ª) Según datos preliminares del Censo de Población y Vivienda realizado en el 2010, la población del Ecuador alcanzó los 14, 306,876 habitantes, y se calcula que la densidad demográfica es de 55.80 habitantes por kilómetro cuadrado. Subdivididos en; Mestizos 71.9 % ( 10.417.299), Indígenas ( Indios de la sierra y Amazonia) 7 % ( 1.018.176 ), Blancos 6.1 % ( 882.383 ), Afro-Ecuatorianos ( Negros ) 7.2 % ( 1.041.589 ), Montubios ( Indios de la costa ) 7.4 % ( 1.070.728 ), Otros 0.4 % (53.354). 2ª) La población urbana representa 60,43% del total nacional; 50% de la población habita en la Costa, 45% en la Sierra, 5% en la Amazonía y 0,2% en la Región Insular. El 71,9% de la población se considera mestiza, 6,1% blanca, 6,8% indígena, 7,2% afro ecuatoriana y 7,4% montubia. 3ª) Ecuador tiene actualmente una población aproximada de 13.8 millones de personas y una relación hombres/mujeres prácticamente equilibrada (100 %). Por su perfil etaria, sigue caracterizándose por ser un país eminentemente joven; cerca de un tercio de su población (32%) tiene menos de 15 años de edad y apenas el 6%, más de 65 años. Los hombres predominan entre las personas menores de 15 años, mientras que las mujeres entre las de 65 y más años de edad; el índice de masculinidad en el primer caso es de 100 % y en el segundo de 88%. 4ª) En el período 1990- 2000 la población aumentó a una velocidad promedio anual de 1.8%, durante estos últimos 8 años (2000-2008), lo hizo a un ritmo cercano al 1.4%; así mismo, la población se redujo de 34.5% a 31.2% a la vez que aumentó la de la población de 65 y más años de 5% a 6.1%. 5ª) El tamaño de la población se incrementó en un 12 %, Ecuador tiene 1.5 millones de habitantes más que los que tenía al finalizar el siglo anterior (13.8 millones en 2008 frente a 12.3 millones en el 2000). De este número adicional de personas, 740 mil son hombres y 760 mil son mujeres. 6ª) En el 2006, la población total del país era de 13.408.270 habitantes con una estructura demográfica de población predominantemente joven. En el censo registrado en el 2010 la población de 14´204.900 y en la actualidad 2015 de 16´225.00 habitantes en general, con más del 30% de menores de 15 años y un índice de envejecimiento del 25,97%. 7ª) Ecuador crece 2.5 millones de habitantes cada 10 años. La diferencia entre el censo del 2001 al 2010 fue de 9 años y no 11 años como entre 1990 y el 2001, cuando el Ecuador subió su población de 9.6 millones en 1990 a 12.2 millones en el 2001, Una diferencia de 2.6 millones de habitantes en 11 años, y de 12.1 millones de habitantes en el 2001 a 14.5 millones en el 2010, Una diferencia de 2.4 millones de habitantes en 9 años. 8ª) Se estima que para el próximo censo que sería en el año 2020 la población ecuatoriana sería de 17 a 17.5 millones de habitantes y para el 2030 el Ecuador tendría 21 millones de habitantes. 9ª) La demanda por servicios de salud de la población adulta mayor crecerá a una velocidad significativamente superior a la de la población entre 15 y 64 años (3,8% frente a1, 9%, respectivamente), a la vez que aquellas personas menores de 15 años se tornará negativa (-0,2%). Proyectando que la población de 5 a 14 años empezará a disminuir desde el 2010. 10ª) La educación media de la población ecuatoriana se sitúa entre 15 y 17 años aumentaría su tamaño hasta el año 2015, después de lo cual comenzaría a reducirse numéricamente. A diferencia de la población que potencialmente demandaría educación superior, es decir aquella comprendida entre los 18 y 24 años, incrementará su tamaño durante los próximos 17 años. Pasará de 1'809.000 personas a 1'983.000 entre 2008 y 2025. 11ª) Cada año se integren a la fuerza laboral 170.000 personas. Siendo así, mantener la actual tasa de desempleo alrededor del 7% hacia el año 2025, requerirá crear 154.000 empleos anuales. 12ª) La esperanza de vida al nacer para el 2005–2010 alcanzo´ los 75 años (hombres 72 y mujeres 78 años). La tasa global de fecundidad para el mismo período fue de 2,6 hijos por mujer. La inscripción oportuna de nacidos vivos paso´ de 53,7% en 2006 a 62,3% en 2010. Durante el mismo período la tasa bruta de mortalidad se mantuvo en 4,3 %. 13ª) El presupuesto del sector salud pasó de USD 115,5 millones en el 2000 a USD 561,7 millones en el 2006. El presupuesto del Gobierno Central (PGC) y del PIB, aumentó del 2.7% al 6.6% del PGC y del 0.7% al 1.4% del PIB. La población cubierta por un seguro de salud, alcanzó apenas un 23% en el año 2004. El más pobre es el más desprotegido ya que solo el 12% tenía un seguro de salud. 14ª) El presupuesto asignado para Educación, Salud, Trabajo, Bienestar Social; y, Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda. Representa el 29,2% del total del PGE. Se evidencia un crecimiento importante en los recursos del Estado dirigidos al área social, en el 2011 representaron el 9,4% del PIB y en 2012 pasan a 10,9%. 15ª) En el 2008, los recursos eran de un 43%, mientras que en el 2011 se registró una tasa de crecimiento de 39%, alcanzado el 11,1% del PIB para inversión 5´043.65. La inversión pública aumento del 79%, en 2009 y 92% en el 2011. Un incremento en 2.347,7 millones de dólares en el presente año. 16ª) Los gastos en salud, por año es de U$ 147.93 (Año 2004), este promedio sube a U$ 157.29. Si se considera área urbana, y el área rural, la diferencia entre ellas es de U$ 50. 17ª) Del 16,22% de la población que cuenta con seguro de salud público, el 30% cuenta adicionalmente con un seguro privado de salud. En el 2011 – 2013 se puso el programa de alfabetización para reducir al 2,8%, el analfabetismo que según el Censo de Población 2010, alcanzaba al 6,8% de la población. 18ª) En el sector de la salud, el presupuesto en 2006 fue de 561 millones de dólares, en 2012 fue de U$A 1.774 millones, que representa el 6,8% del presupuesto general del Estado. De ellos, 477 millones se invirtieron en el mejoramiento de infraestructura, equipamiento y dotación de recursos humanos. 19ª) De acuerdo a las proyecciones de población publicadas por el Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (INEC), una persona nacida en el 2010 registra una esperanza de vida de 75 años, mientras que una nacida en el 2020 se esperaría que viva 77,3 años. La expectativa de vida bordearía actualmente los 75.2 - 72.3 años para la población masculina y 78.2 años para la femenina. 20ª) La mortalidad infantil de niños nacidos de madres indígenas (41 por mil) es 50% más elevada que la de madres mestizas (28 por mil). Para madres sin instrucción y mujeres indígenas, el parto institucional representa solamente el 36,7% y 30,1% respectivamente. 21ª) La encuesta Demográfica y de Salud Materna e Infantil, señala que los hogares más pobres gastan el 13,3% más del 30% del gasto total de consumo en servicios de salud, en los hogares más rico el 4,7%, es decir que estos hogares tiende menos a enfermarse. 22ª) Según las Tasas Globales de Fecundidad proyectadas desde 1995 a 2025 varían según sus provincias es decir; en Pichincha desde 1995 a 2000 su T.G.F. fue del 2,62 %, en el 2010 hasta el 2015 del 2,22 y proyecciones futuras del 2020 al 2025 descenderá al 2,05 %, de igual manera para el Resto de la Sierra empezando con el 3,46 % en 1995 y 2000, el 2,56 % en 2010 al 2015 y del 2020 al 2025 el 2,19, en Guayas y Galápagos entre 1995 al 2000 el 2,87 %, 2010 al 2015 el 2,05 % y su proyección para el 2020 al 2025 el 1,88 %, en el Resto de la Costa en el 1995 al 2000 el 4,86 % , en 2010 al 2015 el 2,53 % y en 2020 al 2025 del 2,18 % y en la Amazonia en 1995 al 2000 del 4,86 %, en 2010 al 2015 de 3,21 % y su proyección para el 2020 al 2025 el 2,46 %, su evolución en el período de proyección, para cada una de las Provincias varia demográficamente, además, que la TGF llegaría a converger con el promedio nacional (1,85 hijos por mujer) en el período quinquenal 2040-2045. 23ª) En 1.995 tuvimos una tasa de mortalidad general de 4,46 para incrementarse en el 2000 a 4,59, y presentar variaciones de 4,26 en 2007 y 4,35 en 2008. Ecuador para en 1.965 – 1970 la esperanza de vida al nacer era de 57,4 años, mientras que para el 2010 está calculada en 75 años, aumento de la longevidad y la expectativa de vida. 24ª) Según las tasas de mortalidad más altas se generan en el año 2001 y 2002 alcanzando tasas de 4,42 y 4,24 respectivamente. El año 2003, presenta un de crecimiento hasta 4,02. Mientras tanto, el año 2011 muestra un decrecimiento llegando a 4,08 respecto al año 2010 con una tasa de 4,11. 25ª) El mayor porcentaje de muertes ocurre a una edad adulta desde los 65 años en adelante alcanzando el 62,08% para el caso de las mujeres y el 50,47% para el caso de los hombres. Desde los 50 hasta los 64 años de edad, la ocurrencia de muertes es del 14,40% para el caso de las mujeres y del 15,72% para el caso de los hombres. 26ª) La tasa bruta de natalidad más alta es del 25,66 %, que se registra en el año 1990, mientras que la tasa más baja 18,42 % se registra en el año 2005. De la misma manera en el 2013, la tasa bruta de mortalidad 4 % disminuyó, siendo esta la más baja del periodo en comparación con el año 1991, 5,08 %. Con respecto a la razón de mortalidad infantil del 8,64 % se presenta en el año 2013, mientras que la más alta 21,84% se registra en el año 1990. 27ª) La población ecuatoriana sale del país por diferentes motivos como negocios, capacitación, etc.; 35% lo hace por turismo, 9% porque tienen su residencia en otro país y apenas un 1,4% lo hace por estudios. El principal puerto de salida es Quito y de los que migran; 26 000 declararon ser estudiantes, 18 000 amas de casa, 12 000 eran comerciantes, 8000 ingenieros ,4 000 jubilados, entre otros. 28ª) Entre 1997 y enero de 2000 la moneda se devaluó más de 80% respecto del dólar americano. En diciembre de 2000 la inflación cerró en 96%. El desempleo urbano aumentó de 9% en 1998 a 17% en 1999. En diciembre 2000 bajó a 9%, En 1999, la población en condición de pobreza llegó a 69% (55% de la población urbana; 88% de la rural).
The Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) was concluded among the countries of Southeastern Europe with the aim to promote further trade integration. The agreement states the objective to 'expand trade in goods and services and foster investment by means of fair, clear, stable and predictable rules.' While recent literature on trade in the CEFTA region has focused on analyzing trade in goods, the purpose of the paper is to identify the remaining barriers to trade in services among the CEFTA countries. The paper presents: (i) the economic and trade importance of the service sector in CE
Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) Accounting and Auditing (A&A) assess accounting and auditing practices in participating countries. They form part of a joint initiative that is implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to review the quality of implementation of twelve internationally recognized core standards (the ROSC program). These standards and their related codes are relevant to economic stability and private and financial sector development. The program was developed at the end of the 1990s, in the wake of financial crises that affected many countries in several regions of the world. Since its inception in early 2000, the ROSC A&A program has concluded evaluations of the A&A environment in more than one hundred countries around the world. ROSC A&A reports have been produced for all countries of the Europe and Central Asia Region, except Russia. Initiatives to reassure investors about the quality of financial reporting of public interest entities, including listed companies, banks and insurance companies will also be essential.
Doing business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 10 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. In a series of annual reports doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. This economy profile presents the doing business indicators for Italy. To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2011 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January December 2010).
This paper makes the case for why safety nets are an important tool for managing the risk of natural hazards. The use of safety nets is advocated both ex ante, to prevent and mitigate the impact of natural disaster and ex post, to cope with the impacts of natural shocks. Firstly, the paper explores the implications of contextual factors to be taken into account in the design of an effective safety net system to respond to the needs generated by natural disasters. Learning from the responses to a number of recent natural disasters, a typology of the different types of natural hazards which require different approaches to reduce their risk is introduced. Secondly, the paper considers some 'guidelines' for improving the design and implementation of safety nets either to prevent and/or to recover from natural disasters. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations for more effective safety net and suggestions for addressing key issues are outlined.
The penetration level of the insurance and pension sectors in Malawi is low, but it seems adequate as compared with other countries in similar stages of development. Concentration and costs are high, the regulatory framework is outdated or inexistent and supervision is weak. An innovative pilot experience of weather micro-insurance is a good example of private-public partnership to reduce vulnerability and extend benefits, but the coverage is still low. The project faces several challenges, one of them being the need to invest in weather technology. Cost benefit analysis of public projects in this area should take into consideration the possible positive social benefits of income security for vulnerable rural population. The analysis needs to take into account that possibilities to increase micro-insurance penetration may be affected by the level of education of farmers, as well as their specific knowledge of insurance products and their confidence in insurance companies. Life insurance and private pension plans have an acceptable level of development as substitute of the non-existing mandatory pensions for private sector workers, but they need a stronger supervision and regulation to enhance their benefits. Rules should seek to promote portfolio diversification, higher portability of pensions and old age income security through well defined benefit rules.
The Mercury December, 1908 HEEP THOSE WHO HEEP US. The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume. Cotrell & Leonard, ALBANY, N. Y. 2**£™°I CAPS AND GOWNS TII Gettysburg College. Lafayette, Lchigh. Dickinson, State College, Univ. of Penn s> Ivani i. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr and the others. Class Contracts a Specialty. Correct Hoods _»»■ Degrees. The College Man's Opportunity. We offer the Surest Means of finding your right place. Hundreds of good positions open in business, in teaching and in technical work. Offices in 12 cities. Write us to-day. TUB JYMTJOJVJZ, OB»^JVIZJlTIOJV Of BXAIJV BHOXBJtS. Commonwealth Trust Building, Philadelphia, Pa. HOTEL GETTYSBURG, Headquarters for BANQUETS. Electric Lights, Steam Heat, All Conveniences. Free Bus to and from station. Convenient for Commencement Visitors. BATES $2.00 PEB DAY. £iver-y Cttad-ied. Jotin P. M^tifl- Proprietor. DEALERS IN All kinds of Fresh and Smoked Meats Chambersburg St., Gettysburg, Pa. 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Prices Always Right Itje Lutheran Mlieirtloji Society No 1424 Arch Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA Acknowledged Headquarters for anything and everything in the way of Books for Churches, Colleges, Families and Schools, and literature for Sunday Schools. PLEASE REMEMBER That by sending your orders to us you help build up and develop one of the church in-stitutions with pecuniary ad-vantage to yourself. Address HENRY 8. BONER, Supt, THE KAERCURV The Literary Journal of Gettysburg College. VOL. XVI GETTYSBURG, PA., DECEMBER, 1908 No. 7 CONTENTS. A CHRISTMAS POEM 2 E. J. BOWMAN, '11. JUSTIFICATION OP THE BOYCOTT 3 E. E. SNTDER, '09. CONSTITUTION OP THE KEYSTONE DEBATING LEAGUE 7 IS THE GOVERNMENT COSTING US TOO MUCH?. 9 P. S. DENGLER, '09. OUR LITERARY SOCIETIES II.—PHRENA 11 WHY IS GETTYSBURG NOT WEALTHY? 13 ST. G. PHILLIPY, '09. THE JUNIOR "PROM" SOCIALLY CONSIDERED. .15 BIOGRAPHY OF SCHILLER 17 MISS BAUSCH, '11. CULTURE'S DISTRESSING FOE 20 G. E. WOLF, '09. THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE LINCOLN ROAD.22 G. L. KIEFFER, '09. THE "INDIAN STEPS." 23 E. C. STOUFFER, '11. THE INVESTIGATION OF THE FARMER; WHAT IS IT LIKELY TO BE WORTH? 25 MISS HELEN H. BRENNEMAN, '08. EDITORIALS 27 BOOK REVIEWS 29 EXCHANGES 30 THE MERCURY A CHRISTMAS POEM. E. J. BOWMAN, '11. .Behold the earth in solemn stillness lies! Again, his course traversed, the king of day Has sunk beneath the distant mountain tops. No longer glows in radiance the sky, But silent night enshrouds the wearied earth. No sound of man or beast comes forth to break The charm that over all has cast its spell. And far above from out the folds of heaven's Aetherial dome, the stars innumerable and Sublime are smiling on the earth below. All nature bows her head in reverence, thus- The God of Peace to laud and magnify. 'Twas such a night when from far Eastern lands, O'er mountains high, through valleys deep, Wise Men? Their way were tracing, guided by a star Outshining all the innumerable host That spangled all the heaven's majestic dome- When lo o'er Judah's city, Bethlehem, It stopped, and there, within a lowly hut, Behold, asleep within a manger lay The Holy One, the Buler of the Wise, By seers announced and prophets long before- 'Twas such a night when on the rolling hills O'erlooking David's City, Bethlehem, The humble shepherds, holy and devout, Their flocks were guarding from the hostile foe That roamed o'er hill and plain in quest of prey- When lo, the glory of the living God Around them shown, and, standing in their midst They saw the form of One divine in robe Of heavenly light, and in a tender voice The Messenger addressed the shepherds thus: "Fear not, I bring you tidings of great joy, THE MERCURY. To you, I bring them and to all mankind: In yonder Bethlehem is born this day A child, who is your Saviour and your Lord." Then while the shepherds filled with awe, o'er this Mysterious scene were meditating deep, Their gaze beheld a heavenly host in robes Of shining white around the Messenger Of love. Then forth upon the hallowed night The mellow strains of heavenly music broke, And there alone by God's own chosen few "Was heard the anthem of the Christmas-tide: "To God on high be glory evermore And upon earth goodwill and peace to men." JUSTIFICATION OF THE BOYCOTT. E. E. SNYDER, '09. JHE justification of the boycott is by no means an easy task. Its practice and its underlying principle have always been questioned and in view of the advanced and radical ground taken by both its advocates and its opponents, a careful study of the boycott, its history, its develop-ment, its modern forms, and its ultimate object, is necessary to enable us to pass judgment upon it, either favorable or unfavor-able. The term originated in 1880 when Captain Boycott, an Eng-lishman, who was the agent of Lord Barne in the Connemara district of Ireland, became so obnoxious because of his harsh treatment of the tenants, that they retaliated by inducing the people for miles around to have nothing whatever to do with him. They would neither speak to him, work for him; buy from him, sell to him, or in any way connect themselves with him. More than this they resorted to violence and even blood-shed, to prevent others from doing so. But this was not the ori-gin of the practice although it gave rise to the term. The prac- 4 THE MERCURY. tice extends almost as far back as history itself. In 1327 the citizens of Canterbury, England, boycotted the monks of Christ's Church. They refused to inhabit the houses of the prior, and passed an ordinance that no one should buy, sell, or exchange drink or victuals with the monastery. A severe punishment was provided against the disobedience of the order. The first use of the boycott in America was during the period just preceding the Eevolution, when the colonists boycotted several articles of British make. This culminated in the Boston Tea Part}', which was advocated and supported by our best and most patriotic citizens. Thus the advocates of the boycott claim that it was born in the cradle of American liberty. It was a great weapon, used by the Abolutionists against slavery, and it has often been used by ministers and others prominent in the social world against intemperance, immorality and other social evils. It has been used by the Manufacturer's Association against the work-ingmen, but here it is known as the "black list," and in this form it has ruined thousands of poor laborers. It has also been used by the laborers, in retaliation against the capitalists and it is this use which represents what we today recognize as the boy-cott. Thus from its history we might define boycott in its original usage, as meaning a combination of many to cause loss to one person by refusing to have any relations with him and by influ-encing and coercing others to treat him in like manner. In re-taliation for some wrong either real or imaginary, they withdraw from the victim all beneficial intercourse and even resort to force, in order to persuade others to do likewise. Today the term boy-cott means a combination of many usually organized working-men against an individual or a combination, through which they seek by withdrawing their support and services to secure redress for some infringement upon their rights. It,is this use that we would attempt to justify. The boycott, as has been mentioned, is but another name for the "black list," although it is usually practiced with a nobler end in view. The boycott usually seeks redress for wrongs, while the "black list" disregards the justice of its object and seeks only additional advantages by this coercive means. Yet the capital-ists raise a great cry of injustice when the boycott appears,, and shall be defined by the college that submits the question. THE MERCURY. lose no time in making their appeal to the courts for injunction and protection, although they are daily and yearly practicing the same principle against the laborer who can seek justice through no other means. But in this case it is the poor man's ox, that is gored instead of the rich man's, and if he would resist or seek redress, he is pointed out as dangerously affected by socialistic principles, and often suffers for trying to maintain a right guar-anteed to all by our Constitution. In practice, also, the boycott has changed, and few of the ob-noxious and injurious characteristics of the ancient boycott re-main. The boycott, as practiced at present, as has been stated, is simply the ostracism of an individual or organization, by an organization in order to secure, what they believe to be their rights. It may result in great pecuniary loss to the victim and because of this fact has often been restrained by injunction, but ■no violence attaches to it; no personal harm or injury, and in many cases individual bitterness has been eliminated. No force or coercion is used outside the obligations of membership in the contending organization, although, this fact is often changed, .and it is true that many organizations do take up the fight in sympathy. It is, when rightly used, but an effective weapon in the hands of the laborer by the use of which he is able to secure consideration and justice, when other means have failed, and as such its use is justifiable. From the laborer's standpoint its use possesses considerable economic importance, for it is only by its use, through the me-dium of his organization that he can battle, with any degree of success against the oftimes higher intelligence and more perfect organization of his employers, the capitalists. In this age, the tendency of each class, seems to be to gain wealth regardless of the loss, they may occasion. To the laborers, the boycott, is one of the few barriers that stand between him and a lower standard of living, which would be the inevitable result, were these barriers removed. Our eco-nomic welfare depends upon progress in every class. If the laborer is to share this progress he must advance and not recede. He must raise his standard of living, his culture and his edu- •cation instead of lowering them. To do this he must be in con-tinual conflict with the capitalist, who is his superior in educa- THE MERCURY. tion, and had an additional advantage because of his capital. The boycott has proved to be one of the few things which the •capitalists have not been able to overcome, and as its use enables the laborers to maintain his ground in the conflict for advance-ment, it is certainly justifiable. The boycott can also be regarded, as simply the practice of the right guaranteed to each citizen by our government, to say, write, or publish, anything he wishes, on his own responsibility. This is what the laborer claims for the boycott. He certainly has the right to govern his own words and dealings and to use his influence with others so long as he advocates a just cause and uses no coercive measures to secure adherents. This represents the workingman's idea of the boycott, and while it must be ad-mitted that it is here pictured in its most favorable form, and •that it is seldom practiced within the prescribed limits, yet the argument is founded upon a basis of justice and many decisions of higher courts have recognized this fact. As a last claim, we would advance the boycott, as the only ef-fective weapon against the "black list." No man has a right to work permanent ruin to another because of individual difference of opinion nor has an organization a similar right, and since the employer often uses this means against the employee, the laborer has a right to defend himself by the boycott. It is a hard and bitter solution to the problem. It is the Old Testament dispen-sation, "An eye for an eye." but when we consider that the con- 'ditions, from an ethical standpoint are far from normal, we must be satisfied if they do require abnormal means. Thus would we justify the boycott, from an economical view-point, but when we turn on our question the light of an ethical culture, we find it again questionable and we are compelled to ask ourselves the question, "Is there in the business activity of today, as represented by the masses on both sides, a point where ;an individual can retain pure ethical ideals and secure true eco-nomic good?" Perhaps in the masses there is not, but it is pleasing to note that here and there in the great business hustle of our age, we see sturdy advocates of a higher principle emerg-ing from the ranks of both contestants and when these shall have gained a majority the justification of the boycott will be impos-sible, but not until then. THE MERCURY. 7 CONSTITUTION OF THE KEYSTONE DEBATING LEAGUE. ARTICLE I. NAME AND MEMBERSHIP. This organization shall be known as the Keystone Inter-Colle-giate Debating League and shall have the following members: Bueknell, Lafayette and Gettysburg Colleges. ARTICLE II. PURPOSE. The purpose of this organization shall be to increase interest in debating in each of the colleges represented and to encourage inter-collegiate debating. ARTICLE III. ORGANIZATION. The executive committee shall consist of one undergraduate from each college represented and shall meet annually at the time and place of the final debate to transact all business of the League. ARTICLE IV. CONTESTANTS. Each college shall send to the contest in which it participates three representatives. Contestants shall be regularly enrolled students in the collegiate department taking at least ten hours of recitation or lecture work per week. The names of the de-baters and alternate shall be submitted to the opposing team at least ten days before the debate. No college shall protest the-eligibility of a debater later than five days before the debate. ARTICLE V. SELECTION OF QUESTION. The question for debate shall be submitted not later than six weeks and returned not later than five weeks before the debate is to be held. The college that receives the question shall select sides. No college shall submit the question to the other college twice in succession. Terms in the question, if not understood. THE MERCURY. ARTICLE VI. JUDGES. The college at which the debate is held shall submit to the visiting team at least four weeks before the debate the names of prospective judges. The visiting team may strike from the list any of "the names and shall return the remainder within one week designating the order of preference. No personal friend of any contestant and no one having had student of official relations with either of the colleges involved, shall be eligible for appoint-ment as judges. At the close of the contest, without conference-with his associates, each of the three judges, deciding for him-self, shall give his vote duly signed and sealed to the presiding officer who shall announce the decision. The judges shall base their decision on argument and composition and delivery; argu-ment to count sixty per cent., composition and delivery forty per cent. ARTICLE VII. CONTEST. The college at which the debate is held shall select the presid-ing officer. Each debater shall have fifteen minutes; ten min-utes for his opening speech and five minutes for rebuttal. The first speech in rebuttal shall be made by the negative, and the-affirmative shall close the debate. The order of speakers in re-buttal shall be left to the discretion of the respective teams. No> new material shall be introduced in rebuttal speeches. ARTICLE VIII. EXPENSES. At the annual meeting of the Executive Committee, each col-lege shall present an itemized statement of its expenses necessary for the year. This expense shall be born equally by the colleges-of the League. TIIE MERCURY. IS THE GOVERNMENT COSTING US TOO MUCH. F. S. DEX3LER, '09. F wo except the most active period of the Civil War, the total drafts upon the Treasury of the U. S. during the past Congresshavebeengreater than at any period in our history. The total appropriations made by Congress dur-ing the Civil War were $1,309,000,000 of which $1,030,000,000 was spent upon the army. The appropriations for the fiscal year 1909 reached a total of $1,007,000,000. In these days, when private fortunes sometimes run up to a hundred million dollars we are liable not to realize how large a sum a billion dol-lars really is. It would take an expert counter, working eight hours a day, over one hundred years to count a billion silver ■dollars. A billion dollars in twenty dollar bills would make a pile 13,750 feet high. What is all this money used for? The expenditures may be classed under three general heads: Postal Service, $225,000,000. Military Service, $500,000,000. Other Government Service, $225,000,000. The largest appropriation for a single department was that for the post office. The postal service is one of the greatest utilities which the government gives to the people and one which the peo-ple can appreciate every day. The post offices scattered all over the land turn into the postal department a large revenue each year but it is not sufficient to run the service. The quarter of a billion dollars is disbursed through many channels. The sal-aries of postmasters, clerks, carriers and messengers total in the millions. The railroads come in for a large amount for carrying the mail. The rural delivery was established in recent years at a cost of about $25,000,000. A bill was proposed at the last Congress to establish a rural parcels post, but it was not passed. The most significant feature of the appropriations during the year is the great amount of attention that has been given to the building up of the military branch of the government. The ex-penditures for the army and navy, if we leave out of account the years when the country was engaged in war, have been the larg-est in the history of the country. The army was granted $95,- 10 THE MERCURY. 000,000; the navy, $123,000,000; the amount $163,000,000 for pensions should be included. The remainder of the half billion dollars is spent for fortifications, military and naval academies, soldiers' homes, arsenals, armories,'navy yards and numerous other things of a similar nature. The total expenditures for military purposes, direct or indirect, is truly a colossal sum when we bear in mind that our standing army today is not over 70,000. The sending of our fleet around the world is an event in history—an event which cannot fail to have a good influence. While we may be a peaceful nation, it will show that we have strength enough to protect ourselves in time of trouble. Some people think that our navy is too large. They say that our ships have nothing to do and then they get into trouble as in the cap-turing of the Philippine Islands. The remaining quarter of a billion dollars goes for a great number of things. The Agricultural Department, the Diplo-matic and Consular service, the Indian Bill, the different bu-reaus and public works are all included. We have seen where the money goes. Now, where does it come from? The revenues of the government amount to about $800,000,000 and this will leave a deficit of about $200,000,000. The treasury has a surplus of $250,000,000 to meet this. If this is not sufficient bonds can be sold. The Speaker of the House and the House itself keep restrain-ing hands on the extravagant tendencies of the varioifs commit-tees. The tendency of Congress to spend money is increasing at an appalling rate. The money appropriated by last Congress would have run the government during the decade ending 1896. These periods are both far enough removed from the Spanish War not to be materially affected by it. The world has advanced and moved forward since 1896, but not to such an extent as to warrant the rate of increase of running the government. There seems to be a leakage somewhere. Congress should remember that even a million dollars does not flow into the treasury of its own accord but it is pushed in and that as a result of the sweat of many brows. This does not mean that a narrow-minded policy should be adopted. The American people are willing to pay well to keep their country in the front ranks of the army of THE MEKCUEY. 11 progress. The last Congress has made a record in appropriating, public money and it is up to Congress to make a record in the-spending of it. OUR LITERARY SOCIETIES II—PHRENA. N the account of Philo which was published last month we find much that is very similar to the history of" Phrena The Phrenakosmian Literary Society was founded Feb. 4th, 1831, in Linwood Hall. At the second regular meet-ing a constitution and by-laws were presented and adopted. We are fortunate in having the original copy in an excellent state of preservation. Although frequently modified and amended, this historic document retains its original and noble spirit. The whole aim of its authors and zealous defenders is admirably ex-pressed by this, the motto of the Society: Kocr/m T/iv peva. There also exists the minutes of all the meetings that have been held since the Society was organized. These also have been well cared for and may be found among the treasures of the li-brary. As for Phrena's library, it can be said that it contains 5,845 volumes, which are the results of the energetic exertions of our members. Various catalogues of these books have been made for the use of our members, but most of them are not suitable for reference work. The Society is now indebted to George Heintz. '09 for a complete card index of the library. This not only en-hances the value of the present, collection of books but insures to us the proper recognition, care, and usefulness of any works we may add. Other property of value has accrued to the Society. In 1837r when Phrena was given a large and convenient room in the new college building (Old Dorm.), efforts were immediately made to secure suitable furniture. Here again the characteristic as-siduity of Phrena's members was triumphant. Improvements have been made from year to year, and the present beautiful ap-pearance of our hall furnishes sufficient evidence of the energy 12 THE MERCURY. as well as the taste of those by whom it was accomplished. The-present apartment in Eecitation Hall is elegantly furnished. Busts of Franklin, Webster, Cicero and Demosthenes have appro-priate places on the walls. The walls are also decorated with portraits of those Phrenakosmians who have done honor to their Alma Mater by becoming capable to hold professorships in our college. The Society has helped men individually, and has contributed much to the health of college spirit. A literary contest in which much spirit is shown, is held each year, with our sister society, Philo. Formerly it was the custom of the two societies to join at commencement time and be addressed by an honorary mem-ber of each society, alternately. In earlier years, of those be-longing to Phrena, and Eev. E. J. Breckenridge, D.D. officiated in 1842, Eev. T. H. Stockton, D.D. in 1844, and Eev. George B. Cheener, D.D. Much time and labor could be spent in arranging the inter-esting events of Phrena's history, but the space on these pages-does not permit the presentation in detail of very much con-tained in the Society's records. Suffice it to say, the work of those who have gone before should be gratifying to us as presag-ing that like privileges and honors are in store for their succes-sors. With the same noble aspirations and unalterable determi-nation let us be true to our literary societies as were those who have gained so much by supporting them. At present, Phrena is wide awake, doing excellent work and living true to the spirit of her fathers. THE MEECUEY. 13 WHY IS GETTYSBURG NOT WEALTHY ? N. G. PHILLIPY, '09. N" treating this question we will consider the people as a whole, taking as broad a view as possible under the cir-cumstances. According to Webster, wealth means large possessions, opulence, riches. Of course we could not compare Gettysburg with a large city and expect the same amount of wealth, but should more properly compare it with smaller towns of its own size. One of the foremost reasons why Gettysburg is not wealthy is the lack of industries conducted on a large scale. We find no shops or anything of a like nature whereby the owners or entre-preneur can amass a fortune. The ordinary workman cannot collect a fortune as nearly all his wages are used to support his: family. As a rule where there are no large enterprises located we find little wealth. It is true the location of the town geo-graphically may be accountable for the lack of industries, but this does not demand consideration under the present question. The lack of employment for men accounts for the slow in-crease in population. An increase in the value of land and property depends largely upon an increase in population and as the values of each remain nearly the same from year to year, speculation and investments in this line are unprofitable and unremunerative in Gettysburg. The country surrounding the town is not so very fertile and agriculture is not as productive as we find in many other locali-ties. Very few agricultural products are put on the market by the farmers near the town in any great quantity. We do not find minerals profitable for mining in the neighboring localities so very little shipping is carried on. 'Eailroads depend on freight for their profits and when there is little transportation railroad facilities are usually poor. Being located inland the people have not the opportunity to carry on markets or any other pursuit which water affords. The people themselves, have a great influence on any town. If we make a careful study of the people and their pursuits we have partly, at least, the solution of our problem. In our study 14 THE MERCURY. we must take into account their likes and dislikes, their desires,, their ambitions and their doings. The people as a whole are of a retiring nature. There seems: to be little greed for money and little ambition to amass a great, fortune. Each individual is actuated by a desire to live com-, fortably and save enough to keep himself and family during old age. Judging from appearances everybody is contented and happy, a condition which is proof of the statement that the de-sire for riches is lacking. We find the population as a body, industrious, being em-ployed at different occupations. An unusual number are en-gaged in educational work who labor more for knowledge and the pleasure afforded thereby, than for the money received for their work. It is natural in a college town to have cultured people. Peo-ple of culture and refinement have their surroundings fashioned after their ideas and influence the whole community. This class has certainly added much to the community. The battlefield also attracts many well-to-do people who come here to. live a retired life and to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. In Gettysburg, if a man is not engaged in educational work, he is in sympathy with it and usually formulates his opinions accord-ingly. In conclusion, the people are interested in their personal welfare, mentally as well as physically, and do not have the de-. sire for great wealth as their sole ambition. THE JIEUCURY. 15 THE JUNIOR "PROM" SOCIALLY CONSIDERED. CLL consideration of the social significance of the Junior Prom naturally involves a taking into account the general social life of the college community. For it is obvious that the character and tone of this annual function must, to a large extent, be determined by the social life as it is developed throughout the year. And since the Junior Prom is just in its infancy,—in its formative period,—this pa-per shall be both critical and suggestive. The social life of our college seems to be the characteristic so-cial life of colleges in general. It is very different from the so-cial life that existed in earlier years of the college. New condi-tions in the social structure at large, together with the increased number of students, have all contributed to the existent social status in the college community. The present exclusive tenden-cies in modern family life, unknown to our forefathers, cannot fail to produce like tendencies among a body of students; the social product developed in our college is, in short, but an out-growth of the existing trend of home life. Though the number of students in any one college is really small, when compared with the number enrolled in a modern university, yet it has grown so that no longer can the authorities of even the small college boast that theirs is the privilege of easily acting in loco parentis, and of forming with the student body a well regulated family. Instead of one united family, thoroughly democratic in its workings and with a reasonably common purpose and as-piration, the student body has been organized by the fraternity into many little families, each with its distinctive membership making of paramount importance the promotion of its own inter-ests and those of its individual members. The college authori-ties have, in other words, failed to meet new conditions by their failure to provide a sane and invigorating college family atmos-phere for the student to grow in, and it should not be surprising, therefore, that the students have themselves provided their own substitute, inferior though it may be. The fraternity is not lacking in provsions for the diversion of 16 THE MERCURY. its members. Numerous social events are held during the year, and occasionally an inter-fraternity function is arranged. Be-tween the members of this organized portion of the student body, who are thus frequently brought together, there naturally is formed a rather strong attachment. But how about the unorga-nized portion, which is comprised, for any one of several reasons, of the men whom the fraternity has not attracted? The social opportunities of most of these men are not only more limited, they are also more individualistic. That there should be a cer-tain divergence, therefore, between the fraternity and non-fra-ternity element is not to be wondered at. The Junior Prom is a step in the direction of preventing this divergence. Every element in the student body is to be repre-sented as far as possible on a common basis. The possibilities of general good fellowship are on this occasion to be fully pre-sented and fostered. Men who are seldom to be found in com-pany of their fellows in a purely social way are to find in the Junior Prom an opportunity of seeing what such commingling means for a man and for the community. Men to whom this is not a new experience are to find pleasure in assisting the unini-tiated over the stony places. The realization of all this could not, of course, be expected in the two times in which the Junior Prom has been held. Indeed it may require several more years to accomplish the desired re-sults. It seems very apparent, however, that tendencies point in the right direction. Last year's Prom marked an improvement over the first, in that dancing was not the exclusive feature of the occasion. Provision was made, though not of a sufficiently definite and attractive character, for those who do not dance. This is not passing judgment upon dancing as a means of di-version; it does mean to imply, however, that to allow dancing or any other form of diversion to become the exclusive feature of a social event indicates a distortion that cannot fail to prove exceedingly narrowing. It implies, too, that it is altogether un-fair to expect those who do not dance to attend an affair which provides definitely only for those who do dance, and which gives dancing such predominant or exclusive place that real com-mingling is impossible. Dancing has become such a mighty factor in the social life of young people everywhere that it is not THE MERCUttY. 17 surprising that it has gained a considerable foothold in our col-leges, but to permit it to have the ascendency at an event, such as the Junior Prom, which contemplates the presence of a large number who do not dance, shows great inconsiderateness and means the blasting of the real significance of the Prom. The far-reaching influence of the Junior Prom, properly regu-lated, can hardly be appreciated at this early stage in its evolu-tion, but to behold its possibilities along the lines indicated should be sufficient to impel us to assist in its proper develop-ment. A. ± A BIOGRAPHY OF SCHILLER. MISS- MARY BAUSCH, '11. JOHANJST Christoph Frederick Schiller was born at Mar-bach, in Wurtemburg, Germany, Nov. 10, 1759. He was the only son of Johann Casper Schiller, an officer in the Wurtemburg army, who held an inferior position in the Duke of Wurtemburg's household. The elder Schiller is was a man of great strength of character. To him Schiller is indebted for his firm and positive traits. His mother, Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweis, the daughter of an innkeeper at Marbach, was just the opposite of her husband in temperament, of strong yet gentle demeanor, full of simple charm and wisdom. We can see deep traces of this mother's sweetness and gentleness in the life of the gifted poet. Schiller did not find it easy to choose a profession. He first attended school at the village of Loech, where influenced by Par-son Moser, his teacher, he prepared himself for the clerical pro-fession. These plans were thwarted by the Duke of Wurtem-burg. He next entered the public school at Ludwigsburg. At the age of fourteen, he became a student at the military academy near Solitude Park, Ludwigsburg, the Duke wishing to have his services for the state. There he pursued the study of law, which was very repugnant to him. After two years had passed he 18 THE MERC PET. gave this up, and began the study of medicine, and was subse-quently appointed regimental surgeon. During this time, however, he was engaged in. the study of lit- 'erature. He was especially fond of the classics and became very proficient in Greek. His knowledge of Greek philosophy is ap-parent in his writings. His first work of note, "The Eobbers," he completed before he was twenty-two years old. Schiller pro-tested in this work against the restraints which he felt the Duke had unjustly forced upon him. Fearing the Duke whose wrath he had thus kindled, he fled to Mannheim. There he passed through many hardships, one reverse of fortune followed an-other. But still he continued to write. Schiller's first play in verse was "Don Carlos,'"' which was pre-sented at Hamburg in August, 1787. The Duke of Weimar, whose interest had been aroused in the young poet, made him one of the counsellors of his court. Upon his arrival at Weimar, Schiller was introduced to Goethe. This acquaintance subse-quently ripened into a close friendship. Early in December, 1788, Schiller's "History of the Eevolt of the Netherlands" was published. This work brought the best results, financially, which he had yet received. It not only had a rapid sale but it aroused the attention of the intellectual world. Through the influence of Goethe, he was offered a professorship in history at the University of Jena which after some hesitation he accepted. On Feb. 22, 1790, he was married to Charlotte von Lengefeld, a most admirable woman who aided him greatly in his life work. A very busy life opened to Schiller while at Jena. It was not unusual for him to spend fourteen hours daily in lecturing and writing. But the strain of such heavy work was too great for a man so delicately constituted as Schiller. A dangerous pulmonary dis-ease overtook him so that he was forced to give up his position as instructor in the university. Then through a generous gift he was enabled to revisit Wurtemburg, where he remained almost a year. In May 1794, he returned to Jena much improved in health although never again entirely well. The period between 1796 and 1800 was especially rich in lyrical productions, of which "Der Taucher," and "Das Leid von THE MERCURY. 1$ der Glocke " aTe prominent. The latter has been considered the best known of Schiller's poems. It deals with the most dra-matic events in the life of man. His great works, "Wallenstein" and "Maria Stuart" followed in close succession. Next came "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" in 1801, "Die Brant von Messina" in 1803, and "Wilhelm Tell," the last and perhaps greatest of his works, in 1801:. In this last great tragedy, Schil-ler portrays with wonderful power the Swiss resistance to tyr-anny. He causes the leader, Wilhelm Tell to stand elevated as a national hero. In all his writings, Schiller's love of liberty and hatred of despotism is manifest, but in none so much as in Wilhelm Tell. Schiller had now reached the zenith of his glory. His man-ners and appearance had improved. The timidity and conscious-ness of youth was replaced by the dignity and ease of more ma-ture years. He was overwhelmed with public honors and enthu-siastically received everywhere he went. But alas, when prosperity and fame seemed permanently se-cured to him, the dread disease which had undermined his health again overtook him. He endured this last trouble with great fortitude; though he had to pass through many trials yet his spirit seemed as it were to soar above them all. He continued to work until at last, his weakened powers being overcome, he passed away on May 9,, 1805, at the age of forty-five. The news, of his death brought universal grief to Germany. 20 TKE MEKCURY. CULTURE'S DISTRESSING FOE. G. E. WOLFE, '09. UST as men err in making happiness a distinct end, so do they err by putting culture in a similar position. And just as they deceive themselves by trying to pro-cure happiness as they would some commodity, so they deceive themselves by like attempts to gain culture. Life would indeed be a barren thing, if it were not enriched by our capacity for happiness and culture, but it is worse than barren where there is a false conception of these enrichments. That culture should be perverted to such an extent that men would make it a fad, seems almost inconceivable, yet that is what the intellectually curious and the socially idle made it some twenty years ago. What abhorrence must have been aroused in all who possessed true cultural instincts! For a fad is always a sham—a gross perversion—and a sham in the world of art ox-literature begets a peculiar offensiveness and hatred. The short-cut, superficial methods employed in pursuing this culture fad must have been entirely detestable to all serious-minded and sin-cere people. Could it be otherwise, with genuine culture possess-ing the rich qualities of ripeness and maturity in taste, intellect and culture ? How crude and defective the sham in the presence of the real! But this perversion, while more pronounced at certain periods, lias not been confined to one or two decades. Haste and arti-ficiality have always been employed by men, in their eagerness to possess the charming ripeness and greatness of soul which mark the truly cultured man. Recent years, however, have de-veloped a new condition, the recognition of which requires no unusual insight. There has developed a foe to culture which is distressing, not simply because it is aiming at culture by per-verse methods, but because it is entirely at variance with true cul-ture and lias so widely disseminated its influence that one may rightly inquire whether the true cultural instinct will not even-tually be quenched on account of it. "Smartness" is not a modern product by any means, but never has it captivated a people as it has the present generation; never THE MERCURY 21 has it held such predominant sway. Strictly speaking this spirit belongs to the world of mediocrity, but so important has it be-come that it claims recognition as the "real thing" from alL We have our so-called "smart sets," but the spirit of smartness in these days finds fruitful soil among all classes—as well among the wealthy as among the not-rich, as well among the intelligent as among the unlettered. And it is this, we believe, that today constitutes culture's distressing foe: it is this that makes impera-tive the loud calls, "Let Us Go Back"—in the direction of "The Simple Life." Not that there are no more who possess true culture, or who are eager to possess it. There are such indeed, but so effectually has the "sporty" microbe been doing its work in the rising gen-eration, that quiet people have well-nigh been driven to despera-tion, those with undeveloped cultural instincts have been tainted or entirely diverted and others never get a desire for cultural pursuit at all. One does not have to be a pessimist to be conscious of the fact that it is the fashion for everybody to be gay; that we are all called upon to persevere in a gala atmosphere. From the ex-treme solemnity of bearing that characterized our forefathers we have swung clear to the opposite extreme. It is impossible not to come in contact constantly with the cheap jargon that is everywhere afloat; with the lightness, cyni-cism and insinuation of immoral sentiment which marks the con-versation of popular young people. Fashionable clothes and jaunty manners never played as prominent a role as today. Plain, unassuming people, to whom this pertness and super-, ciliousness is extremely repulsive, are wondering when there will \ be a reaction toward the sane and rational. Surely the reaction-must come, and parents and educators have no more important duty before them than to seek to obliterate this spirit of sm^rt-. ness. THE MEECUEY. THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE LINCOLN ROAD. G. L. KIEFFEK, '09. JJST order to consider this subject properly, we must first inquire into the nature of the proposed "road." There-fore, briefly, "The Lincoln Eoad" is a proposed na-tional memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The "road" is to be a grand boulevard joining Washington, D. C, with Gettysburg, Pa. Its two hundred feet of width are to be occupied by green-sward plots, hedges, and trees, a speedway for automobiles, a driveway for carriages and wagons, two double-tracked electric railways, the one for express trains and the other for local trains. The very nature of the proposed "road" declares that it shall be equally open to both the rich and the poor. This being true it will be the means of bringing to Gettysburg, for at least a day, many of the hundreds of thousands of tourists that annually visit Washington. Hence with all this traffic, the very "road" itself might become an economic asset to the United States gov-ernment. To accommodate these people appropriate hotels would have to be maintained in Gettysburg. The present hotels and restau-rants would have to be renovated and enlarged. New ones also would have to be erected. A higher standard would be the order of the day for all Gettysburg hotels when official Washing-ton would be in the habit of paying them a visit at almost any hour. To meet this increase of business occasioned by the influx of people, Gettysburg herself would have to grow and increase the number of and enlarge all her business places in whatever line they might be. Naturally all property in Gettysburg would increase in value as would also all the property along the "road" from Washington to Gettysburg. To compete with the travelling facilities which would be af-forded by the proposed "road," the facilities of the present rail-roads would have to be bettered and new roads would be built— both electric and steam. All eyes would naturally be turned towards Gettysburg, which THE MERCURY. 23 with its historic surroundings, beautiful scenery, and medicinal springs, would naturally be expected to become the greatest sum-mer resort in the United States. The character and number of tourists would necessitate gov-ernment control of all guides. Thereby would undoubtedly be obliterated the blot of blots found upon the world. With gov-ernment control of all guides the tourists would be guaranteed just and equal treatment. For the guides themselves, better days would result. To Gettysburg's educational institutions would come greater publicity and a better appreciation of these institutions' rare sur-roundings. The result would naturally be manifested by an in-crease in the student bodies and an enlargement of the institu-tions themselves. All this resulting from the proposed "Lincoln Way?" Yes, more. With it connected to Gov. Stuart's proposed highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, "The Lincoln Way" naturally would become the backbone of a national highway system extend-ing all over the country. Then would all roads lead to Gettys-burg, which would be, in fact, the shrine of American patriotism, the Mecca for all Americans. THE "INDIAN STEPS." E. C. STOUFFER, '11. HE immense dam of McCalPs Ferry Power Company is nearing completion. As a result the slowly rising waters of the Susquehanna river are gradually cover-ing up one of the oldest and most noted landmarks of south-eastern Pennsylvania. The old "Indian Steps" are artificial shelves, cut no doubt, by means of stone hatchets into the face of a large round-pointed rock, which juts out from the west bank of the Susquehanna river. They were cut by the North American Indians possibly centuries before the discovery of America. These steps were used by the dusky inhabitants as a place on which to stand and dip the shad as they crossed the rapids on their annual journey 24 THE MERCURY. to the spawning grounds in the upper Susquehanna. Since the settlement of the country the white man has for generations used them for the same purpose. So far-famed were these steps that the Indians from the North, South, East and West came here to fish. Only the strong, vigorous and daring could fish from this rock for only such were able to endure the chill damp night winds which frequent the lower Susquehanna. As each contestant ap-peared a chalk mark or number was placed on his hat to desig-nate his turn. When his name was called he took his place, tied himself to a ring in the rock and cast the net. Each one was ■compelled to take his catch and be content. If there were a goodly number of shad, all was well; but if it proved to be a small catch he had to go away heavy hearted and take his place in the waiting line again. Year after year from these rocks hundreds of these daintiest ■of all fishes have been caught, some to grace the humble board of ■a poor riverman, some to please the fastidious taste of a city epicurean. The land around the "Indian Steps" was originally occupied by the Conestoga Indians and was preserved for them by the first proprietors of the state. Even Maryland, which was attempting to push her lines farther and farther north, respected the rights of the natives and made no attempt to appropriate this section. 'The land was held for the Indians until August 26, 1786, when a deed was granted to Joseph Eeed on condition that the "Indian Steps" should be preserved for a fishing place for the poor of the community. This charge has been faithfully kept until now. A few months more and the old landmark will have passed away and forever this curious specimen of Indian art will be lost to Pennsylvania. THE MERCURY. 25 THE INVESTIGATION OF THE FARMER; WHAT IT IS LIKELY TO BE WORTH. MISS HELEN H. BRENNEMAN, '08. EVEEAL months ago when President Roosevelt ap-pointed a committee to investigate the condition of the farmers throughout the country, it provoked quite a little amusement on the part of some people, while on the part of others it aroused sarcasm and anger. Many people regarded the President as a "busy-body" and failed to recognize the real aim in his interest in the farmers' condition. Never before has there been a man at the head of the nation with such broad and liberal views and one who has put forth such strenuous efforts in behalf of all kinds and classes of peo-ple. And it was such a motive that prompted him to take this action. The scope of this committee's work is not to ascertain the technical methods of farming and to inquire into personal matters, but to find out what are the general sanitary, social, educational and economic conditions of country life, to find out what is needed, what improvements can be effected, and in what way the government can help them. The commission was confronted with a task not only wide in its scope but comprising a large territory, and many people were to be dealt with. The President suggested that the farmers be called together in convenient meeting places for discussions, and that the members of the commission try to get in the closest touch possible with them and find out their needs. The commission has sent out circulars to professional men, business men, farmers and many others. These circulars con-tain a list of twelve questions with respect to the public schools in the vicinity and their efficiency; whether the farmers get rea-sonable returns from the sale of their products; whether they have good railroads, highway, telephone and rural postal service-accommodations ; whether there is a sufficient supply of labor in the neighborhood. These questions show what the commission are seeking to find out. It is their desire not only to ascertain the conditions but to get opinions and suggestions as to what needs to be done. Now the question arises, "What is the investigation likely to 26 THE MERCURY. be worth ?" In the first place it is very evident that almost the entire success depends upon the attitude of the people. If they continue to take it as a joke or with a feeling of animosity, cer-tainly the progress of the commisison's work is going to be checked and its ultimate success doubtful. However Dr. Bailey of Cornell University, the chairman of the commission, says that the public interest is increasing as the people come to under-stand the commission and its work. These words are encourag-ing and indicative of a very likely success. If this investigation is going to amount to anything, there must be co-operation of the people, especially of the farmers for whose benefit these efforts are being exerted. In a recent mes-sage to the commission the President said, "It is esssential that the farmers, the men who live on the soil should feel a sense of the ownership in this commisison, should feel that you gentle-men in very truth represent them and are responsive to their de-sires, no less than to their needs." If this committee receives the support of the people, it should effect some good results. There is a larger percentage of per-sons engaged in agricultural pursuits than in any other occupa-tion and it is only just that more attention should be given to their needs. The demands for better highways, better railway and trolley service are being universally agitated, and surely the commis-sion will concentrate, its efforts towards their accomplishment thus increasing the facilities of the farmer for better profits. At the Farmers' Convention held in Madison last October scientific crop raising and the need of teaching agriculture in the schools were among the principal topics approved by that orga-nization. It is just as essential that agriculture be taught in the rural schools as manual training and trades in the city schools. Here again if such a desire could be met by the gov-ernment it would not only benefit the farmers economically but the nation also. It remains to be seen just what this investigation will amount to, but nevertheless we can surmise that the educational advant-ages in some districts will be improved, that there will be bet-ter facilities for the transaction of business and that the social, educational and economic conditions will be bettered. T H E HERCURV Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class Matter. VOL. XVI GETTYSBURG, PA., DECEMBER, 1908 No. 7 Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor P. F. BLOOMHARDT, '09 CHARLES F. V. HESSE, '09 Exchange Editor Associate Editors H. REY WOLF, '09 SAMUEL FAUSOLD, '10 Business Manager EDWARD N. FRYE, '10 CHABLES L. KOPP, '09 Advisory Board Ass't Bus. Managers PROF. C. F. SANDERS, A. M. G. U. KNIPPLE, '10 PROF. P. M. BIKLE, PH.D. PAUL S. MILLER, '10 PROF. C. J. GRIMM, PH. D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance ; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending THE MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contri-bute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Business Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. such is often the case. EDITORIALS. THE question has often been asked how a small college, with a limited number of students and a corresponding limitation of tal-ent can successfully conduct nearly as many student enter-prises as the larger univeristies— and conduct them, too, in such a way that they frequently rival similar organizations in their larger sister institutions. But Our own college may be taken as suffici- "28 THE MERCURY. ent proof. Our five varieties of athletic teams, our three publi-cations, two literary societies, debating and oratorical teams, musical clubs, and dramatic society, etc., have often been re-spected rivals to similar teams of other and larger schools. But the mere fact of the numbers of these enterprises does not neces-sarily have to affect the quality of the results accomplished. We are inclined to think that men with just as great ability and as large capacity for work are to be found in the smaller college as in the larger ones,—not as many, to be sure, but the ratio is about the same. Furthermore, the smaller college offers oppor-tunities to every one of such calibre, while in the larger schools, •only a comparatively few can take part. LAST year Gettysburg was disappointed in not being enter-tained by her dramatic society, the Mask and Wig. Presumably this was due to the lack of time for rehearsals. Nevertheless the loss was felt. This year it has been decided that no musical club trip will be taken. It has been suggested that the time, talent, and energ}', usually devoted to this organization be turned into another channel; that is, into the perfecting of a good play or minstrel show which might be allowed to take a trip, similar to the Triangle Club of Princeton. IN a few days the first term of the present collegiate year will be closed. After an arduous week's work in examinations, the Christmas vacation will be the more appreciated and enjoyed. Its rest and pleasure has been anticipated by all, but especially has it been longed for by the Freshmen. Christmas has been written about so often, and from so many different viewpoints, that little that is new is left to say. To the college student it is a joyous season to be looked forward to, but in its actual enjoy-ment, he no longer thinks of college and its surroundings for it is a vacation season at home. So, with its last issue for 1908, the MERCURY wishes all its readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. THE MERCURY-. 29 BOOK REVIEWS. INDER the Crust, by Thomas Nelson Page, Phrena. This volume is composed of original stories. Each story has a philosophical side. They were evidently written to stimulate thought and the author has succeeded admirably. One of the stories, "A Brother of Diagones" is especially commenda-ble. In this story, great wealth is pointed out as a stumbling block rather than an aid to happiness. The simple life, too, is contrasted to the hustle and bustle of the metropolis. Other stories of the volume effectively contrast altruism and egoism. The Biography of Thomas Jefferson, by John T. Morse, Phrena. This biography is very impartially written. The au-thor gives us the facts indulging in neither unmerited praise nor criticism. He seems to have an insight into the man's very nature and thus vividly portrays the actions of the statesman both at home and in the blaze of public life. The biography not only enumerates the achievements of Mr. Jefferson with their causes and effects but also those of contemporary statesmen. The biographer shows Mr. Jefferson as a visionary, shrewd politician and a far-sighted statesman. The book is very readable and valuable. Tides of Bamegat, by P. Hopkinson Smith, [Philo 11:6.] This is a book which one can scarcely afford not to read. It presents a very impressive picture of life. It is an account of how one member of a noble and respectable family brought shame and disgrace to the family name There is seen the secret sufferings of the sister through false modesty. Her life would have been made happy indeed, if she had only opened her heart to her lover. It shows how one sister may give advantages and culture to another and instead of receiving gratitude, have her head bowed in shame while the other, seemingly soulless, is not af-fected. There is also brought out the yearning and love of a father for his son whom he has driven from home in a fit of anger for the evil he has done when he refuses to do right. The story is somewhat overdrawn, but otherwise one can find no fault. It is nevertheless very instructive. Although somewhat tedious at times it is generally interesting. The language is clear and wholesome. The Brass Bowl, by Louis Joseph Vance, [Philo, 11:8.] The so THE MEECURY. title of the book is somewhat fanciful as the bowl has practically the least connection with the story. Anyone wishing to read a book for entertainment and recreation will find this romance suited to his purpose as it is very interesting, simple and full of action. The thread of the story seldom breaks and the climax is near the end. The reader will be pleased with the happy ter-mination. No characters are used except those which are neces-sary to the plot. The principal parts are played by persons of high social rank, and they seem to be somewhat magnified. There is no place in the book that is tedious. The narration is clear, animated and well balanced. The language is simple and vigorous. The author has handled 'the plot very well. He shows broadmindedness, independence, the possession of a vivid imagination and a pleasant sense of humor. He has an ac-quaintance with high social life. The reader will be very much pleased with "Mad Maitland's" spirit as he makes his wild flights and also with Miss Sylvia Graeme who comes into Mait-land's life in a very peculiar way. EXCHANGES. JE are glad to have with us again most of our old ex-changes. There are a few that have not arrived yet. We trust that all will soon respond. It seems necessary again to call attention to the con-tent of the MERCURY. The MERCURY, we are trying to make a literary journal, and not a paper combining literary, athletic and the other departments of college activities. The "Gettysbur-gian," our weekly publication, contains the news of the various departments of college life. Among the good things in the "College Student" we would call attention to "Lowell's 'Biglow Papers'" and "Eelation of Diction to Character." The former is a critical essay which brings to notice many interesting facts concerning this import-ant contribution to American literature. The latter shows how the ideals and characteristics of the individual are reflected in hie writings. THE MERCURY. 31 We are glad to welcome "The Thielensian" to our exchanges. In the article entitled "Greek and Eoman Influences" the writer reminds us of some of the beauties of Athens and Borne. The beginning of philosophy was in Greece. Then from the Eomans we can learn the lesson of patriotism. Their motto was, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." The Eomans understood mili-tary matters, and we can also learn much from their sculpture and architecture. "Luther in the Eeformation" is also worthy of perusal. The character sketches of Taft and Bryan in the "Otterbein Aegis" are brief but very interesting. We all admire the teachings and doctrines of Socrates, the great Greek philosopher. He busied himself by trying to teach men the truth, and even though he greatly emphasized truth, he was especially eager that men should become happy and useful citizens. To be a good citizen he regarded the "summum bonum" of the individual's life. Indeed in our present age of political corruption, we can not over-emphasize high ideals of citizenship. "Making an American Citizen" in the'Thiloma-thean Monthly" presents this subject in a forceful manner. The writer gives some qualifications of the ideal American citizen. First, he must exercise the right of franchise. It is not only his right, but his duty, to vote. Secondly, he must vote intelligently and not allow himself to be bribed by a paltry farthing. Again, he must be a doer, and not depend upon party leaders. And lastly he must have strong moral convictions. As to the prob-lem of attaining this ideal, the author says, "If I were to offer a solution of this vital problem, it would be: the continual, untir-ing moral and civic training in home and school." All scholars have more or less knowledge of epic poetry. They all know something of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost, but often the epics of less renown are neglected. "The Sketch Book" contains an article entitled "Sita," which tells us of India's epics. The Eamayana and the Mahabharata are India's chief epics. "Sita" is the im-portant character in the Eamayana. She is to the Eamayana what Helen of Troy is to Homer's Ilaid. The article gives a brief summary of the epic and closes with a few ethical com-ments on the character of "Sita." 32 THE MEKCUKT. We wish to comment on two articles in the "Albright Bulle-tin." "The Character of Satan in 'Paradise Lost,'" and "Work; Man's Opportunity." The writer regards Satan as the princi-pal character of the epic, and speaks of him from that stand-point. In the latter essay, we have a very practical exposition on work and its blessings to the individual. Lovers of German literature will find pleasure in reading "Two Representatives of German Epic and Lyric Poetry" in the "Lesbian Herald." Of our High School exchanges, the "Eed and Black" (Read-ing High School) deserves special mention. The departments are well represented and as a whole the paper makes a pleasing appearance. We gratefully acknowledge the usual exchanges. "PXYK iKT2« r>rv. M3VSUT13ER5. There's no pen that gives such all-round satisfaction i Conklin's Self-Filling Fountain Pen. It's the best pen for College Men. When an ordinary fountain pen runs dry in the middle of a word, it means you've got to stop right there, hunt up a rubber squirt gun, fill your pen to overflowing, clean both pen and dropper, wash your hands, and then endeavor as best you can to collect your lost Crescent f'f train of thought. It's different with Filler Jr-l 9 FILLING "THE PEN WITH THE CRESCENT-FILLER" To fill, iust dip it in any ink, press the Crescent-Filler, and the Conklin is filled and ready to write instantly. You can't over-fill it. Hence no inky fingers, no loss of time, no ruffled temper. The feed of the Conklin is No waiting for ink to come—no jerking—no slips, blots. ng dealers handle the Conklin. IE yours does not, order direct. Look tor the Crescent-Filler and refuse substitutes. Prices, $3.00 and up. Send at once (or handsome new catalog. T3E OOHZLIH PEH CO., 31 Itiahattsn Bnildiag, Toledo, Ohio. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. FUfOTTUfjE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames; Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. - Telephone No. 97. 3=3L ZB_ 23eri-d.ex, 37 Baltimore Si., *-tttt/xhurg;, FA EDGAR C. TAWNEY BAKER West Middle Street. J. B. WINEMAN, DEALER IN CHOICE FAMILY GROCERIES, PROVISIONS AND FRUITS, BOARDING CLUBS A SPECIALTY. SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON HELPS AND SUPPLIES, P. ANSTADT & SONS, Publishers, Book and Job Printing of all Kinds ttrtte for Prices. YORK, PA. ■> PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. EMIL ZOTHE ^MEMS ENGRAVER, DESIGNER, AND MANUFACTURING JEWELER 722 Chestnut St., Phila. SPECIALTIES : MASONIC MARKS, SOCIETY BADGES, COLLEGE BUTTONS, PINS, SCARP PINS, STICK PINS AND ATHLETIC PRIZES. All Goods ordered through G. F. Kieffer, CHARLES S. MUMPER, MtKALER MJV TTTTTS "KFTTTTT? 15! PICTURE FRAMES OF ALL SORTS * W *■*" * * *» *fc*Hf REpA|R WORK DONE PROMPTLY I WILL ALSO BUY OR EXCHANGE ANY SECOND-HAND FURNITURE NO. 4 CHAMBERSBURG STREET, GETTYSBURG, PA D. J. SWARTZ DEALER IN COUNTRY PRODUCE, GROCERIES, CIGARS AND TOBACCO. GETTYSBURG. SHOES KEPA1UHI> —BY— 115 Baltimore St., near Court House. GOOD WORK GUARANTEED. -IS-Your Photographer ? If not, why not? 41 BALTIMORE ST., GETTYSBURG, PA. 8EFT0N I FLEMMING'S LIVERY, Baltimore Street, First Square, Gettysburg, -Pa. Competent Guides for all parts of the Battlefield. Arm »» Filbert St. A convenient and homelike place to stay while in the city shopping. An excellent restaurant where good service combines with low prices. ROOMS §1.00 PER DAY AND UP. The only moderate priced hotel of reputation and eonsequenee in > 3Pla.ila.cLe2pla.ISL • » J 1 i SQ *. • • » ,atindry . . OF YORK . . Offers tfte COLLEGE STUDENTS first-dass work; at Special Low Prices. E. C. STOUFEER, Local Agt. C. D. SMITH, Prop. MEANS TASTY WOEK SAEEFULLY DONE. MfcNU CARDS. LETTER HEADS, WINDOW POSTERS ENVELOPES, DANCE CARDS TICKETS, Programs of all kinds. Everything the College Man wants in Paper and Ink. Specially designed work. Latest Effects in Paper, clone in Colors along lines of College Men's Associations. Catalog and Book work. The Gettysburg Compiler will keep old and new students in touch with town and college life. HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume. Cotrell & Leonard, ALBANY, N. Y. ™2li2^! CAPS AND GOWNS To Utttyi-buri? 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Daniel Levine on Hidden Hands, Vocation and Sustainable Critique in International Relations
Daniel Levine is part of a new generation of IR scholars that takes a more pluralist approach to addressing the hard and important questions generated by international politics. While many of those interviewed here display a fairly consistent commitment to a certain position within what is often referred to as 'the debate' in IR, Levine straddles the boundaries of a diverse range of positions and understandings. Time to ask for elaboration.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?
The question I'd like us to be asking more clearly than we are is, 'are we a vocation and, if so, what kind of vocation are we'? This points to a varied set of questions that we, as scholars, gesture to but spend relatively little theoretical time developing or unpacking. There's an assumption that the knowledge we produce is supposed to be put good for something, practical in light of some praiseworthy purpose. Even theorists who perceive themselves to be epistemologically value-free hope, I think, at least on an intuitive level, that some practical good will emerge from what they do. They hope that they are doing 'good work' in the sense that some Christians use this term. But, there is not really a sustained project of thinking through how those works work: how our notions of vocation might be different or even mutually exclusive, and how the differences in our notions of vocation might be bound up in non-obvious ways to our epistemological, methodological, and theoretical choices.
Moreover, except for a few very important and quite heroic (and minoritarian) efforts, we don't really have a way to think systematically about the structure of the profession: how it influences or intervenes or otherwise acts on particular ideas as they percolate through it, and how those ideas get 'taken up' into policy. Brian Schmidt has done work like that, so has Inanna Hamati-Ataya, Ole Waever, Ido Oren, Oded Löwenheim, Elizabeth Dauphinee, Naeem Inayatullah, and Piki Ish-Shalom; and it's good work, but they are doing what they are doing with limited resources, and I think without due appreciation from a big chunk of the field as to why that work is important and what it means.
When I started writing Recovering International Relations, I had wanted to recover the 'view from nowhere' that many social scientists idealize. You know, that methodological conceit where we imagine we are standing on Mars, watching the earth through a telescope, or we're Archimedes standing outside of the world, leveraging it with distance and dispassion. I had worked on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time, was living in Tel Aviv, working for a think tank, and was—am—an Israeli citizen and an American citizen. I had this somewhat shocking discovery right after the Second Intifada broke out. Most of my senior colleagues were deploying their expertise in what seemed to me to be a very tendentious way: to show why the second Intifada was Yassar Arafat's fault or the Palestinian Authority's fault—or, in a few cases, the Israelis' fault. There were some very simplistic political agendas that were driving this research. People were watching the evening news, coming into work the next morning, and then running Ehud Yaari's commentary through their respective fact-values-methods mill. Or if they were well-connected, they were talking to their friends on the 'inside', and doing the same thing.
It was hard to admit this for a long time, but I was very naïve. I found that very unsettling and quite disillusioning. That's why the view from nowhere was so appealing. I wanted to be able to talk about Israel and Palestine without taking a position on Israel and Palestine—but without eschewing the expertise I had acquired along the way, in part because I was a party to this conflict, and cared about its outcome. I was young, inexperienced, and slightly arrogant to boot—neither yet a scholar, nor an 'expert,' nor really aware of the game I was playing. So my objections were not well received, nor did I pose them especially coherently. To their credit, my senior colleagues did recognize something worthwhile in my diatribes, and they did their best to help me get into graduate school.
As the project developed, and as I started engaging with my mentors in grad school, it appeared that the view from nowhere was essentially impossible to recover. With Hegel and with the poststructuralists, we can't really think from nowhere; the idea of it is this kind of intellectual optical illusion, as though thinking simply happens, without a mind that is conditioned by being in the world. Therefore, there needs to be a process by which we give account of ourselves.
There are a variety of different ways to consider how one might do that. There's what we might call the agentic approach, in which we think through the structure of thought itself: its limitations, our dependence on a certain image of thinking notwithstanding those limits—thought's work on us, on our minds. This is closest to what I do, drawing on Adorno and Kant, and Adorno's account of how concepts work in the mind; how they pull us away from the things we mean to understand even as they give us the words to understand them. And drawing on Jane Bennett, William Connolly, Hannah Arendt, Cornel West, JoanTronto, and JudithButler to think through how one conditions oneself to accept those limitations from a space of love, humility and service. Patrick Jackson's (TheoryTalk #44) Conduct of Research in IR is quite similar to this approach; and so is Colin Wight's Agents, Structures and International Relations; though they use more philosophy of science than I do.
One could also do this more 'structurally.' One could say 'this is how the academy works and this is how the academy interconnects with the larger political community' and then try to trace out those links: I mentioned Hamati-Ataya, Oren, and Ish-Shalom, or you could think of Isaac Kamola, Helen Kinsella, or Srdjan Vucetic.
Any of those approaches—or really, some admixture of them—would be pieces of that project. I would like us to be doing more of that—alongside, not instead of, all the other things we are already doing, from historical institutionalism to formal modeling, to large-N and quantitative approaches, and normative, feminist and critical ones. I would like such self-accounting to be one of the things scholars do, that they take it as seriously as they take methods, epistemology, data, etc. Driving that claim home in our field, as it's presently constituted, is our biggest challenge.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in IR?
I'm 42, so the Cold War was a big deal. I'm American-born, and I was raised in a pretty typical suburb. John Stewart from the Daily Show is probably the most famous product of my hometown, though I didn't know him. My view of history was a liberal and progressive in the Michael Waltzer/Ulrich Beck/Anthony Giddens, vein, but I was definitely influenced by the global circumstances of the time, and by the 'End of History' discourse that was in the air. I thought that the US was a force of good in the world. I was a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey. I really wanted to live in Israel for personal reasons, and the moral challenge of living in Israel after the Intifada seemed to go away with the peace process. So, it seemed to me that it was a kind of golden moment: you could 'render unto Caesar what was due to Caesar', and do the same for the Lord. I could actually be a Jewish-Israeli national and also a political progressive. (That phrase is, of course, drawn from the Gospels, and that may give you some sense of how my stated religious affiliations might have differed from the conceptual and theological structures upon which they actually rested—score one for the necessity of reflexivity. But in any case, those events were important.)
I moved to Israel when I was 22 and was drafted into the military after I took citizenship there. In the IDF, I was a low-level functionary/general laborer—a 'jobnik', someone who probably produces less in utility than they consume in rations. Our job was to provide support for the combatants that patrolled a certain chunk of the West Bank near Nablus—Shechem, as we called it, after the biblical name. I was not a particularly distinguished soldier. But we were cogs in a very large military occupation, and being inside a machine like that, you can see how the gears and pieces of it meshed together, and I started taking notice of this. Sometimes I'd help keep the diary in the operations room. You saw how it all worked, or didn't work; or rather, for whom it worked and for whom it didn't. All that was very sobering and quite fascinating.
I once attended a lecture given by the African politics scholar Scott Straus, and he said the thing about being present right after genocide is that you come across these pits full of dead bodies. It's really shocking and horrific—there they are, just as plain as day. Nothing I saw in the sheer level of violence compares to that in any way—I should stress this. But that sense of it all just being out there, as plain as day, and being shocked by this—that resonated with me. Everyone who cared to look could understand how the occupation worked, or at least how chunks of it worked. So I would say in terms of events, those things were the big pieces that structured my thinking.
Here's two anecdotal examples. Since I was a grade of soldier with very limited skills, I was on guard duty a lot. We had a radio. I could hear the Prime Minister on the radio saying we are going to strike so-and-so in response to an attack on such-and-such, and then I could see helicopters pass overhead to Nablus, and then I could see smoke. Then I could see soldiers come back from going out to do whatever it was the helicopter had provided air support for. I'd see ambulances with red crescents or red Stars of David rush down the main road. It began to occur to me that there was a certain economy of violence in speech and performance. I didn't think about it in specifically theoretical terms before I went back to graduate school, but Israelis had been killed, political outrage had been generated. There was a kind of affective deficit in Israeli politics that demanded a response, and some amount of suffering had to be returned—so the government could say it was doing its job. I found this very depressing. My odd way of experiencing this—neither fully inside nor outside—is certainly not the most important or authentic, and I'm not trying to set myself up as an expert on this basis. I'm only trying to account for how it made me think at the time and how that shows up in what and how I write now.
Later, when I was in the reserves, I was in the same unit with the same guys every year. One year, we were lacing our boots and getting our equipment for our three weeks of duty in a sector of the West Bank near Hebron, I think it was. I remember one guy, one of the more hawkish guys, said 'we'll show 'em this time, we'll show them what's what'. Three weeks later, that same guy said 'Jeez, it's like we're like a thorn in their backside; no wonder they hate us so much.' (He actually used some colorful imagery that I can't share with you.) I remember thinking, 'well, ok, he'll go home and he'll tell his family and his friends; some good will come of this.' The next year, I saw the same guy saying the same thing at the start, 'we'll show those SOBs.' And then three weeks later, 'oh my God, this is so pointless, no wonder they hate us…' So after a few years of this I finally said to him, 'tagid, ma yihiyeh itcha?'—Like, dude, what's your deal? 'We've had this conversation every year! What happens to you in the 48 weeks that you're not here that you forget this?' And I think he looked at me like, 'what are you talking about?'
I thought about that afterwards: we have these moments of experience when we're out of our everyday environment and discourse, the diet of news and fear, PR and political nonsense—that's when these insights become possible. So, when this guy comes in and says 'ok, we'll get those SOBs,' he's carrying with him this discourse that he has from home, from the news and TV, from his 'parliament' with his friends where they get together and talk about politics and war and economics and whatever else—and then a few weeks of occupation duty disrupts all that, makes him see it in a different light, and he has these kinds of fugitive experiences which give him a weirdly acute critical insight. Suddenly, he's this mini-Foucault.
In a few weeks, though, he goes back to his life, there's no space or niche into which that uncomfortable, fugitive insight can really grow, so it just sort of disappears or withers on the vine, its power is dissipated. This is a very real, direct experience of violence and it's covered over by all of this jibber-jabber. So there's a moment where you start to wonder: what exactly happens there? What happens in those 48 weeks? What happens to me during those weeks? You can see how a kind of ongoing critical self-interrogation would evolve out of that. Again, none of those things are exactly what my book's about, but it gives you a sense of how you might find Adorno's kind of critical relentlessness and negativity vital and important and really useful and necessary. You can see how that might inform my thinking.
In terms of books, as an undergraduate, I had read, not very attentively, Said and Foucault, and all of the stuff at the University of Chicago we had to take in what they called the 'Scosh Sequence,' from sociologists like Elijah Anderson and William Julius Wilson to Charles Lindblom and Mancur Olsen: texts from the positive and the interpretive to the post-structural. I had courses with some very smart Israeli and Palestinian profs—Ephraim Yaar, Salim Tamari, Ariela Finkelstein. And of course Rashid Khalidi was there at that time. Once I was in the military, the Foucault and Said suddenly started popping around in my head. Suddenly, this sort of lived experience of being on guard duty made the Panopticon and the notion of discipline go from being a rather complicated, obscure concept to something concrete. 'Oh! That's what discipline is!'
When I went back to graduate school, I was given a pretty steady diet of Waltz, rational deterrence theory, Barry Posen, Stephen Walt (Theory Talk #33), and Robert Jervis (Theory Talk #12). Shai Feldman was a remarkable teacher, so were Ilai Alon in philosophy, Shlomo Shoham in sociology and Aharon Shai in History. Additionally I had colleagues at work who were PhD students at the Hebrew University working with Emanuel Adler; they gave me Wendt (Theory Talk #3), Katzenstein's (TheoryTalk # 15) Culture of National Security, Adler and Barnett, and Jutta Weldes' early article on 'Constructing National Interests' in the EJIR (PDF here). My job was to help them publish their monographs, so I got really into the guts of their arguments, which were fascinating. I am not really an agency-centered theory guy anymore and I am not really a constructivist anymore, but that stuff was fantastic. I saw that one could write from a wholly different viewpoint, perspective, and voice. This is all very mainstream in IR now, but at the time, it felt quite edgy, very novel. Part of the reason why the middle chapters of Recovering IR has these long discussions about different kinds of constructivism is that I wouldn't have had two thoughts to rub together if it was not for those books. I do disagree with them now and strongly, but they were very important to me all the same.
What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
I'd be more comfortable answering that question as someone who was, until relatively recently, a grad student. I've not been productive long enough to say 'Well, here's how to succeed in this business and be a theorist of enduring substance or importance' with any authority. But I can say, 'here's how I'm trying to be one.' There's a famous article by Albert O. Hirschman called 'The Principle of the Hiding Hand,' (PDF here) and in it he says that frequently, the only way one can get through really large or complicated projects is to delude oneself as to how hard the project is actually going to be. He takes as an example these ambitious, massively complicated post-colonial economic projects of the Aswan High Dam variety. The only way such enormous projects ever get off the ground, he says, is if one either denies their true complexity or deludes oneself. Otherwise you despair and you never get it done. From the first day of seminar to dissertation proposal to job—thank God I had no idea what I was in for, or I might have quit.
Also, the job market being what it was, we had to be very, very passionate scholars who wrote and argued for the sheer intellectual rush and love of writing. And yet, we also had to be very practical and almost cynical about the way in which the academic market builds on the prestige of publications and the way in which prestige becomes shorthand for your commodity value. At least in the US, the decline of tenure and the emergence of a kind of new class of academics whose realm of responsibility is specifically to engage in uncomfortable kinds of political and moral critique—but without tenure, and at the mercy of a sometimes feckless dean, an overburdened department chair or fickle colleagues—that's very scary. If you're doing 'normal science', it's a different game and the challenges are different. But if your job is to do critique, in the last ten years, it's a very big deal. Very difficult. I'm very fortunate in that regard; at Alabama I've had great support from my department, my chair, and my college.
I was a Johns Hopkins PhD, and my department was fantastic in terms of giving me support, encouragement, getting out of my way while throwing interesting books at me, reading drafts that were bad and helping me make them good—or at least telling me why they were bad. We did not get particularly good professional training, because I think they did not want us to get professionalized before we found our own voice. I'm really grateful for that, truly. But then there's this period in which you have to figure out how to make your voice into a commodity. That's really tough, it's a little bit disheartening—even to discover that you must be a commodity is dismaying; didn't we go into the academy to avoid this sort of logic? But just like Marx says, commodities have a double life, and so do you. The use-value of your scholarship and its exchange-value do not interlock automatically and without friction. So you spend all this time on the use-value of it—writing a cool, smart, interesting dissertation—thinking that will translate into exchange-value, and it turns out that it sort of does, but a lot of other things translate into exchange-value too that aren't really about how good your work is necessarily. And many of your colleagues, if what you're doing is original, won't really understand what you're doing; the value or the creativity of it won't be apparent to them unless they spend a lot of time sifting through your bad drafts of it, which only a few—but God bless those—will do. So how you create exchange-value for yourself is important. So is finding people who will care about you, your project, your future—and learning when to take their advice, when to ignore it, and how to do so tactfully.
If all that's hard, you're probably doing it right. It's unfortunate that that's how it is, but at all events, that's how it was for me.
Would you elaborate on the concept of vocation and why this is so important to the view from nowhere? It is important to say that the view from nowhere is perhaps difficult. So is vocation, or a kind of Weberian approach, a way to articulate that for you?
There's a quote in a book from a Brazilian novelist named Machado de Assis. His protagonist is this fellow Bras Cubas, who's writing a posthumous memoir of his own life. He's writing from beyond the grave. From there, he can view his whole life and his entire society from outside; he's finally achieved positivism's view from nowhere. But the thing about this view—and the book means to be a sendup of the Comtean positivism that was fashionable in Brazil in those days—is that it gives him no comfort. He now knows why he lived his life the way he did; how he failed and what was—and what was not—his fault. The absurdity of it all makes sense. But it changes nothing: he has died unfulfilled, unloved, and essentially alone: a minor poet and back-bench politician who was ultimately of little use to anyone nor of much to himself. All he knows is how that happened.
In the end, if we're all playing a role in how a world comes into being and it's in some sense our job simply to accept this, and our job as scholars merely to explain it, this gives us no comfort in the face of suffering, in the face of violence and evil. To some extent as scholars, and to some extent as a discipline, we exist as a response to evil, to suffering, to foolishness, to folly; it's not a coincidence that the first professorship of IR is created in Britain in the wake of WWI, and that it's given to someone like E. H. Carr.
If we don't have a view from nowhere because we've given up anything like a moral sense that can't be reduced to fractional, material, or ideological sensibilities, and if we know that sometimes those 'views from somewhere' can provide cover for terrible kinds of evil or justify awful kinds of suffering, then the notion of vocation seems to come in at that point and say well, 'here's what I hope I'm doing', or 'here's what I wish to be doing', or 'here's what I'd like to think I'm doing', and then allowing others to weigh in and give their two cents. Vocation, in the sense of Weber's lectures, comes out of that. It's Kant for social scientists: What can I know? What should I do? For what may I hope? In other words, what the necessity and obligation of thinking is on the one hand, and on the other what its limitations are.
This is a way to save International Relations from two things: one, from relativism and perspectivism, and the other, from a descent into the technocratic or the managerial. I am trying to stand between the two. My own intellectual background was in security studies at Tel Aviv University in the 1990s: the period immediately after Maastricht, in the period of the Oslo Process, the end of Apartheid. My hope back in the days when the peace process seemed to me to be going well was that I'd be able to have a kind of technocratic job in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Defense. Counting tanks, or something similar. I thought that would be a pretty good job. I would be doing my part to maintain a society that had constructed a stable, long-term deterrent by which to meaningfully address the problem of Jewish statelessness and vulnerability, but without the disenfranchisement of another people. I could sit down and count my tanks with a clear conscience, because the specter of evil was being removed from that work. The problem of the occupation was being be solved. Again, it's somewhat embarrassing to admit this now.
I would say in the US academy, there is definitely a balance in favor of the technocrats. We have enormous machines for the production and consumption of PhDs in this country. The defense establishment is an enormous player. Groups like the Institute for Defense Analysis need a lot of PhDs, the NSF funds a lot of PhDs (for now, at least), and that tips the balance of the profession in a certain way. My ability to use ideas compellingly at ISA won't change that fact all by itself, there's a base-superstructure issue in play there.
In Europe, it's a different story, for a bunch of reasons. The defense establishments of the EU member states aren't as onerous a presence. And, there are more of them; so there's a kind of diversity there and a need to think culturally about how these various institutions interlock and how people learn to talk to each other: the Martha Finnemore-to-Vincent Pouliot-to-Iver Neumann (Theory Talk #52) study of ideas and institutions and officials. Plus, you have universities like the EUI and the CEU, which are not reducible to any particular national interest or education system; creating knowledge, but for a political/state form that's still emergent. No one knows exactly what it is, what its institutions and interests will ultimately be. Because of that, it's hard to imagine the EUI producing scholars with obviously nationally-inflected research programs, like Halford Mackinder, Mahan, Ratzel from a century ago. There will still be reifications and ideologies, but there's more 'give' since the institutions are still in play. And there's fantastically interesting stuff happening in Australia, and in Singapore—think of people like Janice Bialley-Mattern, Tony Burke and Roland Bleiker.
Critique has a long and controversial history in our discipline. Could you perhaps elaborate, as a kind of background or setting, how critique can be used in IR and why you've placed it at the center of your approach to IR theory?
Critique as term of art comes into the profession through Robert Cox (Theory Talk #37) and through the folks that were writing after him in the '90s, including Neufeld, Booth, Wyn-Jones, Rengger, Linklater and Ashley—though pieces of the reflexive practice of critique are present in the field well before. For Cox, the famous line is that theory is always 'for something and for someone.' The question is, if that's true how far down does that problem go? Is it a problem of epistemology and method, or is it a problem of being as such, a problem of ontology? Is it fundamental to the nature of politics?
If the set of processes to which we refer when we speak of 'thinking' is inherently for someone and for something, and that problem harkens back to the idea that all thinking is grounded in one's interests and perspectives, i.e., that all practical or systematic attempts to understand politics are 'virtuous' in the Machiavellian sense (they serve princely interests) but not necessarily in the Christian sense (deriving from transcendent values), then we have a real problem in keeping those two things separate in our minds. Think of Linklater's book Men and Citizens in International Relations as a key node in that argument, though Linklater ultimately believes (at least in that book) that a reconciliation between the two is possible. I'm less convinced.
Now recall the vocation point we discussed before. IR as a discipline has a deep sense of moral calling which goes beyond princely interest. And the traditions on which it draws are as much transcendently normative as anything else. So encoded in our ostensibly practical-Machiavellian analyses is going to be something like a sense of Christian virtue; we'll believe we're not merely correct in our analyses, but really and truly right in some otherworldly, transcendent way. True or not, that sense of conviction will attach itself to our thinking, to the political forces and agendas that we're serving. We'll come to believe that we are citing Machiavelli in the service of something greater: whether that's 'scientific truth' or the national interest, or what have you. Nothing could be more dangerous than that. Critique, as an intervention, comes here: to dispel or chasten those beliefs. Harry Gould, Brent Steele, and especially Ned Lebow (Theory Talk #53) write about prudence and a sense of finitude: these are the close cousins of this kind of critique.
If we take seriously the notion that people sometimes fight and kill in the service of really awful causes while believing they are doing right, and that scholars sometimes help them sustain those convictions rather than disabuse them of them—even if they do not intend this—then critique becomes an awfully big problem and it really threatens to undermine the profession as such. It opens up a whole new level of obligation and responsibility, and it magnifies what might otherwise be staid 'inside baseball'—Intramural scholarly or methodological debates. Part of the reason why the 'great debates' were so great—so hotly fought—had to do with this: our scholarly debates were, in fact, ideological ones.
It undermines the field in another way as well. If we take critique seriously, there's got to be a lot of moral reflection by scholars. That will make it hard to produce scholarship quickly, to be an all-purpose intellectual that can quickly produce thought-product in a policy-appropriate way, because I will want to be thinking from another space, and of course precisely what policy-makers want is that you don't think from some other space; that you present them with 'shovel ready' policy that solves problems without creating new ones.
So you now have not just a kind of theoretical or methodological interruption in the discussion of, say, absolute or relative gains. You now have to give an account of yourself. And for me, that's what critique in IR means. To unpack the definition I gave above, it's the attempt to give an account of what the duties and limits of one's thinking are in the context of politics, given the nature of politics as we understand it. Because IR comes out of the Second World War, we're bound to take the most capacious notions of what political evil and contingency can be; if we are not always in the midst of genocide and ruin, then we are at least potentially so. And so contingency and complexity and all the stuff that we're talking about must face that. I want to hold out that Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau might be right—in ways which neither they, nor I, can completely fathom. Then I have to give accounts of thinking that take a level of responsibility commensurate with that possibility.
In that vein, when I look at accounts of thinking in the context of the political, when I look at what concepts are and how they work and how they do work on the world so that it can be rendered tractable to thought, I realize that what we come up with when we're done doesn't look very much like politics anymore. We have tools which, when applied to politics, change it quite dramatically; they reify or denature it. To be critical in the face of that, you're going to be obliged to an extensive degree of self-interrogation and self-checking, which I call chastening.
That process of chastening reason, is, in effect, what remains of the enlightenment obligation to use practical reason to improve what Bacon called the human estate. What's left of that obligation is to think in terms of the betterment of other human beings as best as you can, knowing you can't do that very well, but that you may still be obliged to try.
That's really hard to do and it's an odd form of silence and non-silence. After all, if I were to look at the Shoah while it was happening, or look at what happened in Rwanda, and say 'well, I don't really have a foundational position on which to stand so I can't analyze or condemn that'—that would not be a morally acceptable position. Price and Reus-Smit (TheoryTalk #27) say this in their 1998 article and they are absolutely right. But then there's the fact that I don't quite know what to say beyond 'stop murdering people!' The world is so easy to break with words, and so hard to put back together with them—assuming anyone cares at all about anything we say. So I am obliged to respond to those kinds of events when I see them, and I am also obliged to acknowledge that I can't respond to them well, because my authority comes from the conceptual tools I have, and they aren't really very good. Essentially, what I'm doing as scholar of IR is the equivalent is using the heel of my shoe to hammer in a nail. (That's a nice line, no? I wish it was mine, but it's Hannah Arendt.) It will probably work, but it will take a while, and the nail won't go in so straight. To chasten one's thinking is to remind oneself that the heel of one's shoe is not yet a hammer; that all we're doing is muddling through—even when we do our work with absolute seriousness and strict attention to detail, context and method—as of course we should.
You discuss IR theory in terms of different reifications. In which was does that also lead you to take a stand against a Weberian understanding of IR?
I think where I depart from Weber is that he has more faith than I do that, at some point, disenchantment produces something better. There is faith or hope on their part that the iron cage that we experience as a result of disenchantment and as a result of the transformation from earlier forms of charismatic and traditional authority to contemporary rational ones won't always be oppressive, not forever. New forms and ways of being will emerge, in which those disenchanted modes actually will fulfill their promise for a kind of improvement in the human estate. If it's a long, complicated process—hence the image of slow boring into hard wood—but faith is still justified, good things can still happen.
For me, the question is how would you manage a society that is liable to go insane or to descend into moments of madness because of the side-effects or intervening effects of disenchantment and modernization, while holding fast to the notion that at some point, this is going to get better for most people? I'm a bit less certain about that than I read Patrick and Weber being. I think that even if they're right, it makes sense morally as scholars, not necessarily as citizens or individuals or people, to dwell in the loss of those who fall along the way.
I find myself thinking about the people who are gone a lot. My ex-wife teaches on slavery, and I think a lot about this terrible thing she once told me. On slave ships, when there was not enough food they would throw the people overboard because ship masters got insurance money if their property went overboard, but not if human beings succumbed on-ship. There's a scene depicting this in Spielberg's film Amistad and it haunts me. I find myself thinking about those people, dragged under with their chains. I wonder what they looked like, what they had to say. I wonder what they might have created or how their great-great grandchildren children would have played with my child. I wonder if my best friend or true love was never born because her or his ancestor died in this way. An enormous number of people perished. I can't quite believe this, even if I know it's true.
Yoram Kaniuk, the recently deceased Israeli novelist, wrote that the Israeli state was built on the ground-up bones of the Jews who couldn't get there because it was founded too late. I wonder about them too. And when I taught course modules on Cambodia, I would find myself looking at the photographs made of the people in Tuol Sleng before they were killed, the photo archives which the prison kept for itself. There is a mother, daughter, father, brother, son, and I find myself drawn into their eyes and faces. I don't want those people to disappear into zeros or statistics. I want somehow to give them some of their dignity back, and I want to dwell in the tragic nature my own feeling because it bears remembering that I cannot ever really do that. If I remember that, I will have some sense of what life's worth is, and I won't speak crassly about interventions or bombings or wars—wherever I might come down on them. I would say that it's almost a religious obligation to attend to the memory of those people. My desire to abide with them makes me very, very suspicious of hope or progress. I want this practice of a kind of mourning or grief to chasten such hope.
There's a problem with that position. Some will point out to me that this will turn into its own kind of Manichean counter-movement, a kind of Nietzschean ressentiment. Or else that dwelling in mourning has a self-congratulatory quality to it. And there are certainly problems with this position at the level of popular or mass politics. We do see a lot of ressentiment in our politics. On the left, there's a lot of angry, self-aggrandizing moral superiority. And you can think about someone like Sarah Palin in the US as a kind of populist rejection of guilt and responsibility from the right.
But as social scientists, we might have space to be the voice for that kind of grief, to take it on and disseminate the ethics that follow from it; to give that grief a voice. That kind of relentless self-chastening is what I'm all about. I think it opens you up to new agendas and possibilities. I think it's a much deeper way to be 'policy relevant' than most of my colleagues understand this term. If we are relentlessly self-critical as scholars, and if we relentlessly resist the appropriation of scholarly narratives to simplistic moral or political ends and if we, as a society, help to build an intolerance of that and a sense of the mourning that comes out of that, we also open our society up to say things like, 'ok, well what's left?'
And then, well, maybe a lot of things are left, and some of them are not so bad. Maybe we start to imagine something better. That's where I'd rejoin Jackson and Weber; after that set of ethical/emotional/spiritual moves. I think, by the way, that Patrick mostly agrees with me; it's only a question of what his work emphasizes and what mine has emphasized. On this point, consider Ned Lebow's notion of tragedy. He and I disagree on some of the details of that notion. But on top of his remarkable erudition, he's a survivor of the Shoah. I suspect he has thought very deeply about grief and mourning, and in ways that might not be open to me.
The final question I want to pose to you is a substantive one: Your understanding of critique somehow does relate to sustaining progress, in a way. Perhaps on the one hand, you are not so optimistic as Weber was, but on the other hand, your work conveys the sense that it is possible to bridge the gap between concepts and things. I'm not sure if it's possible, but perhaps you can relate it to the substantive example of how your work relates to concrete political situations. I think the example of Israel-Palestine comes to mind best.
Again, I don't think I am as optimistic as that. In my heart of hearts, I desperately wish this to be the case. To think of the people who were most influential on my intellectual development—my cohort of fellow grad students at Johns Hopkins and our teachers, to whom as a group I owe, really, everything in intellectual terms—I was certainly in the minority view. Most of them were, I think, working in the Deleuzian vein of making 'theory worthy of the event.' I just don't believe that's possible; or anyway I think it's really, really, really hard, the work of a generation to tell that story well and have it percolate out into our discipline and our culture. In the meantime, we must muddle through. I hope I'm wrong and I hope they're right. I'm rooting for them, even as I try to give them a hard time—just as I give Keohane (Theory Talk #9) and Waltz and Wendt and everyone else I write about a hard time. But I'd be happy, very happy, to be wrong.
What I do think can be done is that you can sustain an awareness of the space between things-in-themselves and concepts, and by extension some sense of the fragility and the tenuousness of the things that you think and their links to the things that you do. Out of this emerges a kind of chastened political praxis.
You mentioned Israel and Palestine, which I care a great deal about and am trying to address more squarely in the work I'm doing now, partly on my own and partly in pieces I've worked on with my colleague Daniel Monk. What we observe is that though the diplomatic negotiations failed pretty badly twelve and a half years ago, we're still looking at the same people running the show: the same principal advisers and discussants and interlocutors: in the US and Israel and in the Palestinian Authority. The same concepts and assumptions too. Just a few days ago, Dennis Ross published a long op-ed about how we get the peace process back on track, and you might think that you're reading something from another time—as though the conflict were a technical challenge rather than a political one. You know that Prince song about 'partying like it's 1999'?
I don't know what a peaceful, enriching, meaningful Israeli-Jewish-Arab-Palestinian-Muslim-Christian collective co-existence or sharing of space or world looks like, but I know that this pseudo-politics ain't that. When I see something that's just a re-hashing, I can say, 'come on guys, that is not thinking, that's recycling the old stuff and swapping out dates, proper nouns and a few of the verbs.' Nor is it listening to other voices who might inspire us in different ways, or might help us rethink our interests, categories and beliefs. Lately, I've been listening to a band called System Ali, hip-hop guys from Jaffa's Ajami quarter, who sing in four languages. What they say matters less to me than the fact that they really seem to like another, they trust each other, they let each voice sing its song and use its words. They have something to teach me about listening, thinking, acting and feeling—because it's music after all—and that can produce its own political openings.
Of course, there are pressure groups, from industry and AIPAC to whatever else in the US, and those groups merit discussion and debate, but I'm also wary of the counter-assumption which follows from folks who talk about this too reductively: that there actually is an American interest, or a European or Arab or Israeli one, which somehow transcends partisan interest—one that can be recovered once the diaspora Jews, the oil moguls, the arms dealers or the Christian 'Left Behind' people are taken out of the picture. That feels like the same heady brew that Treitschke and Meinecke and the German realpolitik scholars poured and drank: that the national state has some transcendent purpose to which we gain access by rising above or tuning out the voices of the polity or its chattering classes. Only with a light liberal-internationalist gloss: Meinecke meets David Lake (Theory Talk # 46), Anne-Marie Slaughter or John Ikenberry.
I can also go meet starry-eyed idealists who want to hold hands and sing John Lennon, I can say to them yes, I want to hold your hand and sing John Lennon, but I am also enough of a social scientist to know that if a policy does not respond to real and pressing problems—water, land, borders etc.—that any approach that does not respond to those things will be hopelessly idealist. It will be what my granny called luftmentsch-nachess—the silly imaginings of men with their heads in the clouds, like the parable about Thales and the Thracian maiden. I am not interested in being either a luftmentsch nor a technocrat. So what does that leave with you with? You need to balance.
You can look at groups at the margins of political culture to see what they can tell you. In Israel and Palestine, it's groups like Ta'ayush, Breaking the Silence and Zochrot, and this settler leader who recently died, Rabbi Frohman, who was going out and meeting every Palestinian leader he could because for him, being a Jew in the land was not, in the first instance about his Israeli passport. There were and are possibilities for discussion that feel really pregnant and feel very different from the conversation we are sustaining now; which reveal its shallowness and its limitations and its pretentiousness. These other voices are of course not ideal either, they are going to have their own problems and limitations, their own descent into power and exclusion and so on, but they reveal some of the lie of what we're doing now.
I guess in the end, social scientists make a living imagining the future on the basis of the past. I also spend a lot of time reading novels and watching books and films. Partly because I am lazy and I like them. Partly because I'm looking for those novels and films to help me imagine other possibilities of being that aren't drawn from the past. Art, Dewey tells us in The Public and its Problems, is the real bearer of newness. Maybe then, I get to grab onto those things and say ok, what if we made those them responsive to an expansive materialist analysis of what an Israeli-Palestinian peace would need to survive? What if we held the luftmentsch's feet to the materialist/pragmatic fire, even as we held the wonk's feet to the luftmentsch's fire? Let them both squeal for a while. There's possibility there.
Daniel J. Levine is assistant professor at the University of Alabama. Among his recent publications (see below) stands out his book Recovering International Relations.
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Faculty Profile at U-Alabama Read the first chapter of Levine's Recovering IR (2012) here (pdf) Read Barder and Levine's The World is Too Much (Millennium, 2012) here (pdf) Read Levine's Why Morgenthau was not a Critical Theorist (International Relations, 2013) here (pdf) Read Monk and Levine's The Resounding Silence here (pdf)
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To celebrate International Youth Day 2020 Rachel Mims, Senior Program Officer for Youth Political Participation at NDI, is joined by three young leaders from Zambia, Lebanon, and Moldova. They discuss competitive youth debate as an opportunity to build political skills, actively contribute to solving social problems, and create greater space for youth inclusion in public life. For more information please go to https://www.ndi.org/youth-leading-debate Find us on: SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | Google Play Given Kapolyo: I don't believe in the saying young people are the future leaders. Because the truth is they tell us this for years and years and years, when I was 15 they told me you're a future leader, then I turned 20 and they said I'm a future leader, then they turned 25, and they said I'm a future leader, so then I'm now just waiting, I'm saying okay, when does the future come? Now I think just this is time that we turn it around, and say young people should be the leaders of today, as well. Rachel Mims: Today's young people deserve real opportunities to participate in political processes, and contribute to practical solutions that advance development. When given an opportunity to organize, voice their opinions, and play a meaningful role in political decision making, they consistently demonstrate their willingness and ability to foster positive lasting change. They also become more likely to demand and defend democracy, and gain a greater sense of belonging. Recent global movements such as movements for climate justice and racial justice demonstrate that young people are demanding a shift in who has power, and in how that power is used, yet young people still find themselves marginalized from mainstream politics, and are limited in their ability to exercise the same influence over decision making processes. This is particularly true for young people who have experienced intersecting forms of marginalization and exclusion. At a time when global inequality is increasing, young people remain disproportionately impacted, and are expressing frustration with leaders and institutions that they perceive to be inaccessible, incapable, unresponsive, corrupt, and often repressive. NDI works globally to support the political participation of young people through a variety of approaches that increase young people's agency, and create a more supportive environment. One approach involves helping young people develop competitive debating skills, including an issue analysis and framing, reasoning, public speaking, and active listening. NDI has supported [inaudible 00:02:05] programs in several countries, including longstanding programs in Jordan and Moldova, and more recent programs in Guatemala and Libya. We've seen the debate skills not only enhance political participation, but also contribute to holistic youth development. Debate builds practical skills that pave the way for young people to successfully engage in civil discourse and peaceful problem solving, both with their peers and with adult power holders. I'm Rachel Mims, Senior Program Officer for Youth Political Participation at the National Democratic Institute, and today we are joined by three young leaders from Lebanon, Moldova, and Zambia, each working in different ways to apply their debate skills and actively contribute to solving social problems. As a result, they're creating greater space for youth inclusion in public life. First we'll hear from [Gibbon Carpolio 00:02:58]. Next up, Rachbenda Fou, and then Selena Decuzar. Welcome to Dem Works. In Zambia, NDI partner with a chapter of the Center for Young Leaders of Africa, and Youth for Parliament, to gather young people from across political parties, media, and civil society organizations to debate solutions for increasing the number of young people in parliament. This debate program created an opportunity for youth from parties and civil society to change ideas, develop their public speaking and research skills, and to generate discussion around critical issues facing youth in Zambia. We spoke with Given Kapolyo to learn more. Given, thank you for joining us today. GK: Thank you so much for having me. It's a great pleasure to feature. First of all, I'm a young African female, my name is Given Kapolyo, I'm a young politician, I'm a student, I'm an activist, I'm an advocate, and a public speaker now. I can proudly call myself a public speaker, after I took part in the NDI public speaking that was called the Youth Debate Zambia. I live in the northern part of Zambia. That's Kasama, northern province, Kasama, rural part of Zambia, so it was great that I was moved from the northern part of Zambia to the capital city, just to participate in the Youth Debate Zambia. RM: Thank you, and thank you for telling us about all the different hats you wear. I hope to hear more about your activism, and other things that you're doing in politics. Can you tell me more about your experience in the debate program? What was it like? What were some of the topics that you all discussed? GK: We began with a training session. We covered the history of public speaking, we covered the tricks that we need for public speaking, how you draw the attention of a crowd, how you keep them engaged, and ordered. It was different young people from different parts of the country, and we were all brought together and were taught together, and then were given a topic. We were discussing how we can increase the number of young people in parliament, the number of youths in parliament, and it was a very profound experience, in the sense that we didn't just learn, then they'd give us a chance to actually show what we had learned from the training, and it was that interesting. By the time we were leaving the training, there were people that were so confident to go back to their communities, and just speak change into their communities, into the crowds, and that was just how interesting, and just how meaningful it was to me and other participants that were there. RM: I really love the point about public speaking, and this immediate sense of agency that young people feel, that they can go back and use their voice, and they have skills that they can start to put into use right away. Can you talk about the connection between some of the skills that you learned and your future political aspirations? I know that you're interested in running for public office. GK: One of the things that we learned at the Youth Debate Zambia was that communication, public speaking and communication have a lot to do with politics, and with the youth standing out as a public figure, because it's they also mentioned how many great orators were [inaudible 00:06:34] were to get into public office because of how they spoke, how good they were at it, and the impacts that it just had in changing society. For me as a young politician, first of all I must mention that the country that I'm from it's very difficult for a young female. First of all, it's very difficult for a female to make it into public office. It's even worse for a young female to make it. That, it also prepared me for how I could use my words to show people that not only will I be a voice for them, I could actually speak my heart out to them, tell them what my plans are, but then do it skillfully in a way that they buy into it, and are able to elect me, and even how because we dealt with topics on how you could make your speech relatable such that as you're telling your story somebody that is listening instantly feels like you're telling their story, and when they're able to relate with you it will be very easy for them to actually elect you as their leader, because they feel like you're a mirror of them, and then you can represent them better. The training for me was actually a point that I think began a lot of things for me, because I knew I could speak, but then I didn't know I could use it to further my political ambition. When I went back home, in Kasana, I was able to speak to various groups. Just by me sharing my story with them, they were able to buy into the vision that I have for my ward, because I have aspirations of standing as a ward counselor next year, in our general elections, and it's been very helpful. I've been able to know another important thing we learned is how you should be able to read your audience, so depending on who I'm talking to, I'm able to know which skills I should employ. RM: Thank you. I know you can't see me, but I'm nodding vigorously over here, because you just shared, I think, so many important lessons with our listeners, just about how you can use these skills to further your political ambition, how things are different for young women, and how they face different barriers and challenges into getting into elected office, and how these skills help create an opening. I want to talk about NDI's work in changing the face of politics, and it relates directly to what you mentioned about being a young woman in politics. NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and that includes their participation in leadership and politics, and I wanted to hear from you what you think young people's role is in not only changing the face of politics, but ensuring that young women have a role to play, and can participate in politics. GK: We need to become alive to the reality that our parents will not be here 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, it is us that will be here. Every time I'm speaking to young people about young people involvement in politics and leadership and decision making and getting involved in civic spaces, I'm always telling them if we don't get involved now, then we are simply selling our future off ... Not even selling it off, we're simply giving it off for free. Because whatever our ... Those that we leave leadership to today, whatever decisions they make, or whatever they choose to do with the resources that we have, whatever they choose to do with our nation, they will not be here to face the repercussions, we will be here. Most of our parliament, the Zambian parliament has over 158 seats, and only 2 people are below the age of 35, only two people are youth, but if we do get young people involved, then we do get young people into parliament, we will know to say this decision that I'm making today, I'm only 27, so the decision that I'm making today, 30 years from now the chances that I still will be here to answer for it and to face the repercussions of if I make a bad decision will linger in my mind, for even as I make a decision I'm thinking I'm not thinking five years from now, I'm thinking 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years from now, because I'm assured I will still obviously be here. I feel the time is now that young people actually take over and provide solutions to many of these challenges, and many of the problems that our country, our continent, and even the world is facing today. RM: So many of the points that you just talked about really point to the need for this culture shift, and a culture change within politics. I think a lot of what you are advocating for, particularly about greater youth inclusion, can help contribute to that shift, and politics being more inclusive and representative of young people. I just really want to thank you for taking time to talk with us today, and to share your thoughts, and I really want to wish you all the best in your run for office. I think you would make an amazing political leader, and I'm really excited to see what your future holds, and where you'll go after your participation as a young person in politics. GK: Thank you so much. I look forward to where I go to, so I keep working towards it. And this I'm guaranteed that I will get there. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure having this conversation with you. I look forward to further interactions. RM: Us as well. Thank you again. For more than 35 years, NDI has been honored to work with thousands of courageous and committed democratic activists around the world, to help countries develop the institutions, practices, and skills necessary for democracy's success. For more information, please visit our website, at www.NDI.org. In Lebanon, NDI is collaborating with the television station MTV Lebanon, for its weekly program, It's About Time, which features political leaders responding to questions from the host and from young people who have been trained in policy analysis and debate skills by NDI. MTV Lebanon hopes that by expanding debate culture in the country and by proving that young people can debate, they will pave the way for hosting Lebanon's first debates between national political leaders before the next elections in 2022. The show has achieved broad viewership, and resulted in viral moments on social media, with some political leaders saying that they tune in specifically to watch the youth debate segment. I would like to introduce everyone to Rafka Noufal, a junior Lebanese lawyer, and active participant on the debate show. Rafka, thank you for joining us for the podcast today. Rafka Noufal: Thank you for having me with you today. RM: I'd like to start with you giving us a brief introduction about your work, and your background, and what brought you to the debate show. RN: I'm a 24-years-old Lebanese junior lawyer. I studied law in the Holy Spirit University, a Catholic University in Lebanon, and I just graduated from my masters to a degree. I also have a certificate of completion of the [inaudible 00:14:06] university program on international criminal law and procedures, and am a very social person who's interested in politics and in all the topics that are rising inside our country. When I knew about the TV political show It's About Time, through my university, I was very excited and more willing to join this show because I saw it as a platform to raise our voice as the young people in Lebanon, and to give our opinion and our thoughts on all the political and social and economic topics that are arising inside our society. I work as a lawyer now, [inaudible 00:14:42] bar association, and I work in an office that takes private law cases and more specifically criminal law cases. Throughout my work, I got familiar with the gaps and insecurities inside the Lebanese legal system. RM: I see so much connection between your ability to do this work as a lawyer and having the opportunity to dig into these pressing political issues on the debate show. Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience on the show, and talk about some of what you gained, whether it's skills that you gained, or kind of how the show maybe changed your perspective about politics? RN: In fact, the different trainings we did with NDI were very useful on many levels. First of all, it developed our skills in public speaking, which is very important in the life of politics, and to my work also of the lawyer. Also, these trainings triggered the reason and the logic inside every mind of the young people who participate in the show, and it let us discuss and have conversations people from all over the country, so this debate program let us know how to discuss, how to debate topics without hurting other people's feelings, or other people's opinions. RM: Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the topics that you debated on the TV show, and maybe topics that came up that were a bit more controversial, or there was more, there were maybe more emotions, or opinions that people really wanted to share? RN: First off, my last debate at the show was about the early elections in Lebanon. I was supporting that we should have an early election in Lebanon, to change the members of the parliament, because the government in Lebanon now, even the parliament, they are not doing enough work in order to take us, or to help Lebanon go through this economic situation, this economic crisis we're going through right now in Lebanon. I was supporting the fact that we should be doing an early election, to change the leaders, to change the member of the parliament. We need young people to get inside the parliament. We need new, free minds, that are not attached to the past, they are not divided by sectarianism. We need a civil country, not a country that is divided by sectarianism. RM: Can you talk a little bit more about your thoughts on the protest, and what you see as a way forward not only for young people in Lebanon, but the entire so many people across the country have been engaged in the protests, kind of what do you see as a vision, or a way forward? RN: I would like to start by giving, talking about the problem between this disconnection, between young people nowadays in Lebanon, and the political parties, before talking about the protests. In fact, political parties in Lebanon are still attached to the past, and they divide young people by sectarianism. You should follow this party because you are from the sect that this party supports, or also I think that political parties inside Lebanon lack any vision for the future beyond their personal interests, and the most important point is that they deny the youth right to participate in decision making process, because they are political parties that are doomed with ... How to say it? Political inheritance, and the cultural hierarchy that says that elders know better than young people, but in fact when that's not the case when it's faced with reality, because every generation faces new challenges, different from the challenges that the other generation faced, so all of this adding to the corruption that grows like a tumor inside [inaudible 00:18:54] infecting all the aspects after [inaudible 00:18:58] for about like the environment, infrastructure, and economic crisis led to the birth of this protest and this revolution that emerged inside the streets of Lebanon. RN: I think that young people, and I'm one of them, we saw this revolution as a window of hope to change the current corrupted situation in the country, and maybe to take part of the decision making process, to give our opinion, our thoughts. RM: Do you see some of the topics that have come up in debates, and young people's desire to protest and take part in the revolution, do you see that as a meaningful pathway to change? RN: I think so. I think young people believe in these social movements because these social movements are based on the free minds, and are detached from sectarianism, and from inequality between the Lebanese people, and maybe these social movements can create in the future political parties that can govern Lebanon and help it to develop like other countries in the world. RM: This year, under the banner of of Changing the Face of Politics, NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and that includes their participation in leadership and politics. I wanted to ask you what you see as young people's role in changing the face of politics, and ensuring that young women specifically can participate and have a meaningful role in politics, and particularly in the context of Lebanon, this new politics that you all are attempting to usher in. RN: I think that [inaudible 00:20:44] young people are making a step to bridge this gap between politics and youth people, because they are taking on important issues, such as climate change, mass immigration, and even women empowerment, however, I think that we still have a bit of problem inside the third-world countries, but as for women empowerment, I think Lebanon and and outside in other countries young people believe in gender equality between man and woman, and they don't consider gender as an indication for holding a political position. In fact, we support us young people that competence, performances and efficiency are the only conditions for judging a person in a position of power, and not being a woman or a man. Thus, if we take charge in Lebanon, I think you will see more women engaged in the politics. For example, right now in Lebanon we are demanding the vote of the law for women's quota in all Lebanese election as a step to engage more women in the political life of the country. RM: Do you think that this culture of youth debate, and young people sharing their voices on these important political topics, do you think that this trend will continue, in that it's important that young people continue to use debate to speak out about politics? RN: The debating concept is important because first, it lets you build constructive arguments in a persuasive way, and you don't only talk just to talk, you have to talk with a logic and reason. Young people can express their opinion with public speaking skills, and to accept the opinion of other people without deciding them, or offending them, as I mentioned before. RM: I really want to thank you for taking time out to share more with us about your political experience, and to talk about the political trends that we're witnessing in Lebanon. I think that a lot of what you shared can be really relevant for young people, and for others that are participating in politics, to really understand how this development skills and development of knowledge around debate can be useful for a political career. RN: I would like also to thank NDI for all the training they did with us, and it was really a lifetime experience with them, and with It's About Time show. RM: Great. Thank you. RN: Thank you so much. RM: NDI has worked with thousands of young people on the art of competitive policy debate, and has ongoing debate programs in three regions. To learn more about NDI youth debate programs, or access program resources, visit the Youth Leading Debate Initiative, on NDI.org. In Moldova, NDI is facilitating the seventh iteration of the Challenger Program, which aims to help create the next generation of political leaders, policymakers, and civil servants. Challenger equips young people with the knowledge and skills to develop realistic public policies that respond to the needs and priorities of the people in Moldova. The youth debates take place in the second phase of the program, the policy debate school. During the program, the participants acquire research and analytical skills, and they also take part in developing a youth manifesto, which addresses important national problems faced by young people in the country. I would now like to introduce you to Silena, who is a member of the Challenger Program, and is going to join us to talk a little bit about her experience. Hey, Silena, thanks for joining us today. Selina Dicusar: Hello. Thank you for having me. RM: I'd like to just start with you giving us a brief introduction about yourself, and telling us about your experience in the program. SD: Okay. My name is Selena Dicusar. I am 20-years-old. I was born in the Republic of Moldova. Currently, I'm studying Moldova, at the international relations. SD: I am a member of the Communication PR Department of the Erasmus Student Network Chisinau, but elections are currently underway, and I will run for Vice President. I am also participant of Challenger, and a double winner of the Best Speaker Award. RM: Selena, thank you for that introduction. Can you tell me about your experience in the Challenger Program, why did you decide to join in the first place, and what do you think you gained from your participation in the program? SD: It's certainly the most complex intense and in depth project that I've ever been involved in. I've had a unique experience participating in a project which changed my attitude towards politics, and taught me new skills. Firstly, I learned to value my knowledge in terms of languages and to apply them correctly in research. Secondly, I have learned to think critically, and always question any information I receive or process. And last but not least, I learned how to develop solutions. About opportunities, yes, what I gained in Challenger helped me to properly recommend myself to the mayor of my native village, and prove that my ideas will help improve the situation in the village. RM: Thank you. I think you brought up some really excellent points, particularly about this need to challenge information that we receive from different sources, and to really kind of understand what's being proposed for our different communities. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the debate skills? You mentioned that they connect to your political participation outside the program. What about the debate component helps prepare you for political engagement outside the program? SD: First of all, the debate helped me understand how to make a manifesto, because we are writing manifestos in the program, and I think this is one of the most important skills that I have learned, and that have certainly helped me to engage more in politics out of the program. RM: Great. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about I know that you do quite a bit of work on the local level, and that you've been doing some work with the local mayor, so I want to talk about this trend that we're seeing, which is a bit of a disconnect between young people and formal political institutions, and we're really seeing young people kind of disengage from formal politics. I'm wondering based on your work in the community and on the local level what you think about this trend in young people moving away from formal politics, and also if you think that working on a local level is part of a solution or a viable pathway for young people to participate in politics. SD: First of all, it is mandatory that parties and politicians stop underestimating youth. They shouldn't only change their attitudes, but also encourage young people to join parties, giving them the opportunity to work on the issues that interest them, and unfortunately one of the biggest issues between young people, political institutions, and parties in Moldova that they don't hear each other. Young people are often not appreciated fairly, they are not heard, and these of course discourages them from further action. Local political participation is certainly a viable path that many Moldovans are unaware of, specifically my case about three or four young people and one curator from another city work on projects in our city [inaudible 00:28:24], those are the critical shortage of young people work is proceeding slowly. Most likely this is due to the fact that such work requires time and dedication. Is almost not rewarded financially, and among our youth experience is not in the first place for all. The situation is improving, the new generation is more politically active. RM: Thank you, Selena, and I think a lot of the points that you made about how parties need to change their strategy about the way that they engage young people is really important, and also this need to work at multiple levels, that we're working at the lower level, but we're also creating opportunities at the national level, too, and I think your work experience speaks to that as well. I want to talk a bit about young women's participation. This year, under the banner of changing the face of politics, NDI is launching a decade-long campaign to accelerate the pace of change on all aspects of women's empowerment, and this includes women's participation in politics. I want to ask you what you feel like young people's role is in ensuring that the face of politics changes, and that young women have more opportunities to participate. SD: First of all, it seems to me that the new generation which is now growing up is more aware of the problems that humanity faces. This is a generation that can embrace changes slowly, and their role in ensuring that participation of women in politics is first of all to learning how to accept the leadership of a woman, and question the abilities of women and men working in the same area on the wages of equal criteria, and to better involve young women in politics we must first of all educate them because an educated woman is a strong woman who can defend her interests. RM: Thank you. I think you know the point about it being a generational change, I think that's echoed in the other, the conversations with other young people, as well, is it seems like this generation is more willing to ensure that participation is inclusive, and then that includes young women as part of the conversation. I really want to thank you for joining us today, and for sharing some insights about your participation in the program, and how you see your participation in Challenger really helping create political space for young people. Is there anything you want to add, in closing? SD: I would like very much to thank the people coming here that created this program. It's a big challenge for Moldova to teach a generation of people that is aware of politics, that can change the political situation in the country, and the political culture, as well. I think if we get to teach more people how politics works, probably there will be a positive change in my country. RM: Again, I just want to thank you for joining us, and answering the questions. I really wish you the best of luck in everything that you pursue, moving forward. SD: Thank you very much. RM: Thank you to our listeners. To learn more about NDI, or to listen to other Dem Works podcasts, please visit us at NDI.org.
Podcast Participants; Given Kapolyo, Rafka Noufal, Selina Dicusar.
24. Increasing Youth Political Inclusion through Debate
Democracy (General), #NDI #National Democratic Institute #Women #Citizen Participation #Youth
The Situation In The Middle East Report Of The Secretary-General On The Implementation Of Security Council Resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2258 (2015), 2332 (2016) And 2393 (2017) ; United Nations S/PV.8171 Security Council Seventy-third year 8171st meeting Tuesday, 30 January 2018, 10.35 a.m. New York Provisional President: Mr. Umarov. . (Kazakhstan) Members: Bolivia (Plurinational State of). . Mr. Llorentty Solíz China. . Mr. Shen Bo Côte d'Ivoire. . Mr. Tanoh-Boutchoue Equatorial Guinea. . Mr. Ndong Mba Ethiopia. . Mr. Woldegerima France. . Mr. Delattre Kuwait. . Mr. Alotaibi Netherlands. . Mrs. Gregoire Van Haaren Peru. . Mr. Meza-Cuadra Poland. . Ms. Wronecka Russian Federation. . Mr. Safronkov Sweden . Mr. Skoog United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . Mr. Allen United States of America. . Mr. Miller Agenda The situation in the Middle East Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2258 (2015), 2332 (2016) and 2393 (2017) (S/2018/60) This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the translation of speeches delivered in other languages. The final text will be printed in the Official Records of the Security Council. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room U-0506 (verbatimrecords@un.org). Corrected records will be reissued electronically on the Official Document System of the United Nations (http://documents.un.org). 18-02496 (E) *1802496* S/PV.8171 The situation in the Middle East 30/01/2018 2/10 18-02496 The meeting was called to order at 10.35 a.m. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted. The situation in the Middle East Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2258 (2015), 2332 (2016) and 2393 (2017) (S/2018/60) The President: In accordance with rule 39 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure, I invite Ms. Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, to participate in this meeting. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I wish to draw the attention of Council members to document S/2018/60, which contains the report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2258 (2015), 2332 (2016) and 2393 (2017). I now give the floor to Ms. Mueller. Ms. Mueller: I thank you, Mr. President, for this opportunity to provide the Security Council with an update on the humanitarian situation in Syria. Years of conflict have caused immeasurable human suffering and left countless civilians dead, injured or missing. The United Nations estimates that 13.1 million people are in need of protection and humanitarian assistance, including 6.1 million people who are displaced within the country. Another 5.5 million people have fled the conflict across borders into neighbouring countries. The Council will have heard at first-hand the account of the Emergency Relief Coordinator in his statement to the Security Council on 22 January with regard to his visit to Syria, in which he highlighted the plight of the Syrian people. During the visit, he heard individual stories from some of the people caught up in the violence and conflict. In Homs, he saw entire districts of the city reduced to rubble. The visit was the first for an Emergency Relief Coordinator in more than two years. It was an important opportunity to see ways in which the United Nations can support people in need. It was also a chance to hold discussions with the Government of Syria and our humanitarian partners on how to address some of the most pressing humanitarian needs. As fighting continues, I am particularly concerned about the safety and protection of civilians caught up in the violence in north-west Syria, where hostilities have reportedly caused numerous deaths and injuries. Air strikes and fighting in southern Idlib and northern Hama have resulted in more than 270,000 displacements since 15 December 2017, driving people from their homes to other areas of Idlib. Camps for displaced people are overstretched, forcing most of those displaced to seek shelter in some 160 makeshift settlements. During the cold and wet winter months, many families have nothing else but improvised tents, which they share with others. Attacks on medical facilities and vital infrastructure continue, with reports of at least 16 attacks on health-care facilities during the month of December alone. Yesterday Médecins Sans Frontières reported that air strikes had hit a hospital it supports in the Saraqib district of Idlib, causing five deaths, injuring others and seriously damaging the facility, which is now closed. That was the second reported strike on the facility in nine days. Further north, in Afrin, in Aleppo governorate, the United Nations is carefully monitoring the situation of over 300,000 people living in the district, which is experiencing fighting. We have reports of civilian casualties and that approximately 15,000 people have been displaced within the district, with another 1,000 displaced to Aleppo governorate. We have also received reports that local authorities inside Afrin are restricting civilian movement, particularly for those who want to leave. I am also concerned about the situation in eastern Ghouta and areas of Damascus, where civilian deaths and destruction of civilian infrastructure continue to be reported. In the first 10 days of the year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights documented at least 81 civilians killed in the enclave, including 25 women and 30 children. Scores of residential buildings in the area have been damaged or destroyed in recent weeks. I also note with concern that shelling continues from eastern Ghouta into Damascus, resulting in civilian deaths and injuries. Although 29 patients in urgent need of medical care were allowed out of eastern Ghouta in late December, hundreds more, most of them women and children, require immediate medical attention. So far, there have 30/01/2018 The situation in the Middle East S/PV.8171 18-02496 3/10 been 21 civilian deaths among those waiting for and needing medical evacuation. Their needs are critical, and the law is clear. I urge all parties, and all those with influence over the parties, to see to it that all such medical evacuations take place without conditions or delay. With reference to all of the flashpoints I have highlighted, I call on the parties to ensure the protection of civilians and civilian and medical infrastructure, in line with international humanitarian law, and to ensure the safe, sustained and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to all in need. I would also like to take this opportunity to reiterate my concern about the protection situation in the city of Raqqa, where returns continue despite the widespread presence of explosive remnants of war. Nearly 60,000 individuals have reportedly returned since the end of hostilities in October 2017. However, humanitarian partners continue to emphasize that, given the high prevalence of landmines, booby traps and unexploded ordinance, Raqqa is not safe for civilian returns. Deaths and injuries due to explosions have been reported with alarming frequency, and trauma cases nearly doubled in recent months. More than 534 civilians have been injured in blasts since the expulsion of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant from the city in October 2017, of whom 112 people died. Each week, between 30 and 50 civilians continue to arrive at trauma centres in Raqqa after being wounded by improvised explosive devices concealed in their homes and neighbourhoods. Risk from explosive hazards is not limited to Raqqa; there are indications that substantial contamination also exists throughout Deir ez-Zor governorate, where there has been little or no mine surveying or clearance. Despite the desperate humanitarian needs in many areas in Syria, the United Nations and humanitarian partners continue to face serious challenges in accessing those in need. Last month, I briefed the Council that none of our cross-line convoys were able to reach besieged locations and that only two convoys had accessed hard-to-reach areas. This month, the United Nations and its partners have had no access to any such locations at all. Not one convoy has been able to deploy. Discussions about convoys have stalled over requirements to lower the number of beneficiaries and about splitting convoys in a way that would not allow us to provide food or other essential items. Our deliveries must continue to be based on humanitarian principles and international humanitarian law, impartially based on civilian need. At the same time, the United Nations is also seeing access to areas previously reached under regular programming coming to a halt. Local authorities in north-east Syria have twice held humanitarian convoys at the checkpoint with Government-controlled areas in eastern Aleppo. Furthermore, local authorities have requested changes related to the operations of our non-governmental partners, which in turn has blocked our assistance delivery to much of north-east Syria. The situation has been further compounded by the refusal of the Governor of Hassakah to issue facilitation letters for our deliveries. While the cross-border operations of our partners continue, such assistance is not sufficient to meet the needs in the north-east. To solve the situation, I call on all parties and those with influence over them to engage now to see that access to those areas resume. Finally, due to insecurity in the north-west, which has included numerous rocket attacks from within Syria into Turkey, on 20 January the United Nations temporarily suspended cross-border deliveries at the two authorized border crossing points in Turkey. The United Nations remains in discussion with Turkish authorities on restarting operations as quickly as possible to ensure the continued delivery of assistance, which hundreds of thousands of Syrians rely upon every month. Those access challenges underscore the importance of using all the modalities of delivery at our disposal. Despite prevailing challenges, the United Nations and its partners have continued to reach millions of people in need each month. For example, in December, regular programming from within the country resulted in the delivery of humanitarian assistance to millions of people, including over 3 million people who received food assistance through 1,500 deliveries. The United Nations and its partners also provided health, protection and education services. Cross-border assistance also continued to reach hundreds of thousands of people in need, as 653 trucks delivered food assistance to more than 500,000 people, health assistance for over 600,000 treatments, as well as other support for hundreds of thousands. After almost eight years of conflict, people's needs are as vast as they are critical. The United Nations and its partners will continue to deliver to millions of S/PV.8171 The situation in the Middle East 30/01/2018 4/10 18-02496 people in need. The United Nations also stands ready to bolster such support, but requires efficient and effective mechanisms to ensure the safe and rapid delivery of aid. To that end, the Emergency Relief Coordinator has identified five areas where the United Nations is looking to make concrete progress. First, we need to finalize the United Nations humanitarian response plan for 2018, for which we will be seeking $3.5 billion to meet the needs of more than 13 million people in all parts of Syria. Secondly, it is important that there be an agreement on medical evacuations for hundreds of critically ill people trapped in besieged eastern Ghouta. People in other besieged areas should get the same assistance. Thirdly, humanitarian access needs to improve. The United Nations has requested agreement for three to four United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent inter-agency cross-line convoys each week. We need consistent access to all people in need. Fourthly, we must reach agreement on the United Nations-supported aid convoys from Damascus to Rukban in south-eastern Syria. While the exceptional delivery of assistance from Jordan in early January was a positive development, a sustainable solution is required. Fifthly, more effective arrangements are needed to enable the United Nations to support the work of Syrian non-governmental organizations and to enable international non-governmental organizations to perform the stronger role they can, and are ready to, play in relieving the suffering. I hope that we will be able to report to the Security Council next month on real progress achieved in those five key areas, and that, month after month, we will move forward until they are all fully addressed. The President: I thank Ms. Mueller for her briefing. I shall now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements. Mr. Allen (United Kingdom): I thank Assistant Secretary-General Mueller for her briefing. When considering the Syria humanitarian issue, we always have in mind the powerful plea last December by the Russian Permanent Representative that we should keep our differences over the politics in Syria out of our consideration of humanitarian issues — a view that we strongly continue to endorse. Last week, Mark Lowcock briefed us on his visit to Syria. It was the first time that an Under-Secretary- General for Humanitarian Affairs had visited Syria in more than two years, having been blocked previously from visiting. The United Kingdom commends the Under-Secretary-General's efforts to start a meaningful dialogue between the United Nations and the Syrian regime in order to improve the humanitarian situation for the people of Syria. On the basis of discussions and as we iterated today, the Under-Secretary-General set out five clear asks to enable the United Nations to sustain and improve its aid efforts. The United Kingdom fully supports those asks. Unfortunately, the Security Council has been unable to reach agreement on a text that would unanimously call upon the Syrian regime to ensure that those five asks are granted without delay. I want to reflect on this disappointing situation. One of the five key asks of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is the regime's agreement to allow three or four United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoys each week across front lines to provide assistance to up to 2.5 million people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas. These convoys are needed to deliver aid, including both food and medical supplies, to civilians who have lived in a war zone for almost seven years. That request for consistent, regular access to all people in need is crucial. In 2017, only 27 per cent of United Nations inter-agency convoy requests were approved by the Syrian regime in full. That is significantly worse than in 2016, when 45 per cent of requests were approved. Assistant Secretary- General Mueller's briefing was especially concerning in that respect. We cannot let that happen again in 2018. Ninety-four per cent of those living under siege are located in eastern Ghouta. The Al-Assad regime is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war by restricting access to the besieged population. There were no aid deliveries to the area for the whole of December, and nearly 12 per cent of children under five years of age in eastern Ghouta suffer from acute malnutrition. It is appalling that innocent children are once again suffering the most. The Under-Secretary-General also requested the immediate evacuation of hundreds of people who are in need of medical assistance from eastern Ghouta. We call on those who can influence the regime to use all of their authority to allow for rapid, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access and medical evacuations 30/01/2018 The situation in the Middle East S/PV.8171 18-02496 5/10 for those in need. According to the Secretary-General, 18 people have already died while waiting for the regime's permission to leave the besieged city. People are dying for want of health care and services that are available fewer than 10 miles away, in Damascus. Let us recall that the backdrop of the Under- Secretary-General's visit was the escalation in air strikes in eastern Ghouta and the north-west, including Aleppo, Idlib governorate and northern Hama. Yesterday at least five people, including a child, were killed by an air strike on a hospital supported by Médecins sans frontières in Syria's Idlib governorate. The facility was also seriously damaged and at least six people, including three medical staff, were injured as a result of the attack. The air strikes on the hospital occurred while the doctors were receiving people who had been injured an hour earlier in another air strike on a market. Those strikes had already killed 11 people. These events are taking place are in areas where there are meant to be ceasefires with the stated aim of putting a prompt end to violence and improving the humanitarian situation. Unfortunately for the people of Syria, that could not be further from the reality. The deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Idlib and eastern Ghouta continues, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law. The intensification of hostilities has displaced approximately 270,000 people within Idlib since 15 December 2017, stretching scarce resources beyond their limits. The escalation of air strikes in eastern Ghouta has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths since 30 December. UNICEF reports that, in the first 14 days of 2018, more than 30 children were killed by escalating violence in the enclave. It is against that backdrop that I call on the regime to allow for immediate, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian assistance to meet fully the needs of those who require food and medical supplies. Let all with influence exert it to ensure that. It is our must crucial, immediate request. It is also imperative that all parties adhere to agreed ceasefires and cessations of hostilities, uphold international humanitarian law and protect civilians. Yesterday, a number of us visited the United States National Holocaust Museum's exhibition on Syria. We saw the photographs of those killed and tortured by the regime and we read their biographies, their life stories. It had a profound effect on me, and it brought home how the tragedy in Syria is not just a geopolitical one — it is a human one. For humanity's sake, all of us around this table must ensure that we have done our all. Mr. Delattre (France) (spoke in French): I would like to thank Ms. Ursula Mueller for her comprehensive briefing. I reiterate France's full support for the recommendations of the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mr. Mark Lowcock, which Ms. Mueller has just referenced. I would also like to express my country's grave concerns about the latest developments in the humanitarian situation in Syria. Several points are of particular concern. We note the extremely dire situation of the population in eastern Ghouta — still besieged and denied the humanitarian assistance and medical evacuations that they need — and the escalation of violence, particularly in the Idlib region. In addition, we are concerned about the attacks on hospitals, medical facilities and the provision of health care, as well as the persistent restrictions on humanitarian access in Syria, which are unacceptable and have tightened further in recent weeks — denying the civilian population the access to the essential resources that they so vitally need. Accordingly, I should like to make three main observations. First, we are particularly concerned about the current escalation of violence in eastern Ghouta and the Idlib region, which adds to the suffering of the affected populations. In eastern Ghouta, 400,000 civilians are victims of almost daily bombings by the regime and its allies. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 750 people in eastern Ghouta are still waiting for emergency medical evacuation. Since 30 December, the wounded have been unable to be transported out of eastern Ghouta to receive care; 21 others have died from their wounds, unable to wait another day. We note and stress that it is the responsibility of the Syrian regime to allow those medical evacuations to proceed without delay. The situation in the south of Idlib and in the north of Hama is very worrying as well. The continued bombings led to the displacement of about 250,000 civilians last month. More than 33 people were reportedly killed in less than 24 hours. The town of Sarakab was bombed yesterday morning, and the strikes hit the town market, killing more than 11 people and injuring a number of others. One hour later, the only public hospital in the district — a hospital supported by the non-governmental S/PV.8171 The situation in the Middle East 30/01/2018 6/10 18-02496 organization Médecins Sans Frontières — was struck, killing five people, including a child, and injuring six others, including medical staff. France very firmly condemns attacks on health-care workers and medical infrastructure, as well as the indiscriminate bombings carried out in recent weeks by the Syrian regime against civilians in eastern Ghouta and in residential areas of Idlib province. France reiterates that indiscriminate bombings and the use of incendiary weapons against civilians represent serious violations of international humanitarian law and could constitute war crimes or even crimes against humanity. It is vital and urgent to bring to an immediate end the bombings in Idlib and the siege in eastern Ghouta. The Astana guarantors have taken upon themselves the responsibility to supervise its implementation, and we therefore urge these States to effectively impose on the Syrian regime a complete cessation of hostilities as well as respect for the basic principles and norms of international humanitarian law and human rights law. The second observation is particularly worrying: the deterioration of humanitarian access in recent weeks in Syria. We have reiterated this concern on numerous occasions in this Chamber: the humanitarian situation will not improve without comprehensive, unimpeded, safe and ongoing humanitarian access to the aid distributed by the United Nations and its partners. Nonetheless, the regime is continuing to create unacceptable obstacles to the provision of humanitarian aid. The Syrian authorities have not authorized even a single inter-agency convoy in several weeks. France condemns this unacceptable attitude and reiterates its call for the safe and unhindered access of the United Nations and its humanitarian partners to civilians throughout Syrian territory. The right of the Syrian population both to humanitarian assistance and to protection must be respected unconditionally. The Security Council cannot remain silent given these recurring violations of international humanitarian law, which require a strong response from the Council. Finally, I would like to touch on the obvious discrepancy between the continuing violence on the ground in Syria and the diplomatic offensives, which are not facing up to the situation. We know that only an inclusive political solution that is elaborated under the auspices of the United Nations and that sets up a political transition in the context of resolution 2254 (2015) can bring a lasting and credible end to the suffering of the Syrian people. However, the regime is continuing its policy of methodical and deliberate obstruction, as we saw during the negotiation session held in Vienna on 25 and 26 January. In this context more than ever, we need to support the United Nations and United Nations mediation in Geneva, as well as eschew any temporary solutions agreed without the opposition, which would be unrealistic as they would not meet the aspirations of all Syrians. It is up to those countries that support the regime, primarily Russia and Iran, to bring to bear the pressure necessary to ensure that the regime puts an end to this negative and irresponsible strategy. Make no mistake: there can be no negotiated political transition in Syria without a total ceasefire, humanitarian access throughout the whole of the territory and the creation of a neutral environment that would restore trust and ensure the safety of all Syrians. How credible is a regime that is stepping up the bombing in Idlib, preventing medical evacuations in eastern Ghouta and refusing to authorize a single humanitarian convoy? How credible can diplomatic efforts be that are devoid of any specific assurances and that do not lead to any significant and lasting improvement in the humanitarian situation in Idlib and eastern Ghouta? We reiterate that humanitarian aid is unconditional and apolitical. We therefore make an urgent request to see proof of this on the ground. That is exactly what France will seek to defend in the weeks to come, in line with the Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex), namely, the establishment of a neutral environment that must include the lifting of sieges, the cessation of hostilities, prisoner exchanges and chemical disarmament, all of this under international supervision so as to ensure genuine constitutional reform and the holding of free elections. That is the only way to bring a lasting end to the suffering of the Syrian people and open the way to an inclusive political process in Syria, in the interests of all the Syrian people. It is for that reason that we will continue to fully support the process stemming from resolution 2254 (2015), and we will make every effort to unite the Council in this respect. Mrs. Gregoire Van Haaren (Netherlands): The Kingdom of the Netherlands wishes to thank Assistant Secretary-General Ursula Mueller for her briefing. 30/01/2018 The situation in the Middle East S/PV.8171 18-02496 7/10 Seven years after the start of the conflict in Syria, the humanitarian situation in the country continues to be a truly heartbreaking drama. While several parties to the conflict are responsible for a wide array of violations of international humanitarian law, it is especially painful to see the horrifying effects of the military actions taken by the Syrian authorities. Instead of protecting their own citizens, the Syrian authorities are bombing them. Instead of providing basic services to their people, the authorities are destroying hospitals and schools. Instead of allowing humanitarian aid into the most affected areas, the authorities are starving some of their own people. The outlook for 2018 remains grim, with a worsening humanitarian situation and a continuation of the battle for influence by regional Powers. Allow me to focus on three important aspects: the current situation on the ground, cross-border aid delivery and the implementation of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' (OCHA) five asks. On the situation on the ground, the international community has been providing funding for a principled humanitarian response. The Kingdom of the Netherlands has provided amply to the United Nations and to international non-governmental organizations in order to provide relief for the suffering of the Syrian people. But this relief is hardly reaching those in need. In besieged eastern Ghouta, we are witnessing the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Not a single aid convoy has reached the 400,000 people trapped there in the last three months. Where have we seen this before? In Idlib, because of the continuous intensified aerial bombardments, aid to more than 250,000 internally displaced persons is extremely difficult to deliver. Improvised explosive devices in Raqqa and elsewhere in Syria have caused large numbers of casualties. The Netherlands urges all Council members to continue their contributions to make all of Syria free of mines and explosive devices. Concerning cross-border aid delivery, it is equally disturbing that today, one month after the Council renewed the authorization of cross-border aid, some of these very aid convoys cannot cross the border because of the security situation. The consequences of this lack of cross-border aid for the large number of displaced people in north-west Syria are tremendous. There is an urgent need to ensure that all convoys can have safe passage to reach those in need, both in Afrin and beyond. In Afrin, the intensification of the military operation there last Sunday has led to more displaced families that have nowhere to go. We call upon all parties to protect civilians, to facilitate humanitarian access and to allow for the safe passage of all people who wish to leave areas under attack. Turning to the implementation of OCHA's five asks, the recent visit by Mark Lowcock to Syria was in itself a positive step, but it is imperative that the dialogue on aid delivery yield effective results as soon as possible. In effect, the requests made by the Emergency Relief Coordinator do not differ much from those of his predecessors, effectively highlighting the lack of progress in terms of sustained, principled humanitarian access to those most in need. The message of the humanitarian and international community has been consistent: respect your obligations under international humanitarian law, protect your own citizens — including health workers and humanitarian aid workers — and allow for rapid, safe and sustained humanitarian access. In conclusion, it is crucial that the Security Council unequivocally unite itself behind the concrete and attainable five asks of OCHA. It remains essential to see progress on the rapid, effective and principled implementation in the coming weeks of all five asks of OCHA. We call on Council members to consider steps to be taken collectively in case no progress takes place and on those who have influence on the Syrian authorities to make sure that humanitarian aid reaches those most in need. Let us not forget that lives are at stake. Mr. Miller (United States of America): The Security Council met only last week (see S/PV.8164) and heard the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs describe his visit to Syria and reiterate a series of requests that, in his estimation, would be a positive step towards improving the humanitarian situation in Syria. Sadly, not only has none of those requests been approved by the Syrian regime, but also the situation in places such as eastern Ghouta continues to deteriorate beyond our worst imagaination. To the surprise of no one, cross-line deliveries in Syria, particularly to besieged and hard-to-reach areas, remain stalled. In S/PV.8171 The situation in the Middle East 30/01/2018 8/10 18-02496 fact, there have been no United Nations inter-agency convoys anywhere for more than six weeks and no convoys to a besieged area for more than eight weeks. We deplore what are, frankly, starve-and-siege tactics, preventing the distribution of aid, which must be needs-based. As a result, many families are going without the most basic food, medicine and other supplies required for survival. Hospitals reuse syringes and other medical items meant for single use and, during the coldest months of winter, families who have run out of fuel and cooking oil burn household items to stay warm. That is happening in Ghouta and elsewhere throughout Syria. We need an immediate, unconditional humanitarian pause in eastern Ghouta, where the impact of air strikes and artillery shelling on the civilian infrastruture has forced the closure of more schools and medical clinics. Those bombings continued over the weekend, further proving that any supposed ceasefire in the area was merely aspirational. We reiterate the need to evacuate hundreds of critically ill people trapped in eastern Ghouta. We have seen no movement on that issue since late December, and the list continues to grow. Only a few weeks ago, we heard that the medical evacuation list contained 600 names, including hundreds of children. That list has now grown to at least 750 people, according to the United Nations staff on the ground. Over the weekend, the United Nations reported that another critically ill person on Ghouta's medical evacuation list died due to the lack of medical treatment. Such deaths are senseless and reflect the Syrian regime's depraved disregard for human life. Such gratuitous cruelty suggests that the regime's siege of eastern Ghouta is directed not at the armed opposition but against the civilian population. We need not remind the members of the Council that a siege directed against civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law. We also appreciate the fact that Sweden and Kuwait worked on a draft presidential statement to address such dire humanitarian challenges. The overwhelming majority of Council members agree that we must be clear in demanding that the Syrian authorities allow immediate medical evacuations and cross-line assistance. When there are hundreds of thousands of Syrians besieged by the regime and starving due to the regime's actions, such demands are the very least that the Council can make. We would also like to take a moment to thank the Government of Jordan for facilitating an extraordinary delivery of humanitarian assistance in mid-January to the internally displaced populations stranded at Rukban. That population now has food and relief items for one month. However, we continue to wait for the Syrian regime's formal approval for the United Nations to begin cross-line aid deliveries to that vulnerable population from Damascus. The United Nations submitted its proposal in mid-November and has still receievd no response. All arrangements have been made for the deliveries to begin as soon as possible. The Syrian regime has only to grant its approval and to stand out of the way for life-saving assistance to reach those in need. As we heard earlier today, members of the Security Council visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., yesterday and saw the exhibition about the Syrian regime's arbitrary detention and torture of more than 100,000 civilians. The name of the exhibition is "Please Don't Forget Us". We should bear that, and what the Syrian regime is capable of doing, in mind as we discuss yet again what is taking place in easter Ghouta and elsewhere in Syria. Mr. Llorentty Solíz (Plurinational State of Bolivia) (spoke in Spanish): My delegation wishes to thank Ms. Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, for her briefing. Bolivia regrets the crisis in Syria, which, after all these years, has caused so much destruction and the loss of so many lives. Ms. Mueller told us that, since the beginning of the conflict, more than 500,000 people have died; currently, there are 13.1 million people who need humanitarian assistance, 2.9 million of whom are trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas; and at least 6.1 million people have been internally displaced. We believe that the most recent events have resulted in an increase in the number of dead, of people who need humanitarian assistance and of internally displaced persons. We call for the cleaning and demining of and access for basic humanitarian assistance to the city of Raqqa to take place as soon as possible to allow for the safe and dignified return of those families who were displaced due to the conflict. We regret that, since the month of October 2017, approximately 220 people have died and others have been injured in blasts. 30/01/2018 The situation in the Middle East S/PV.8171 18-02496 9/10 The recent events in Syria show once again the urgent need to revitalize the Geneva political process, reinforcing the tangible results of the Astana meeting, in consultation, of course, with all the parties involved, including the opposition, in order to facilitate the development of mutual confidence-building measures and, as a result, the improvement of the political and humanitarian situation. We are certain that this will also allow for the release of detainees and hostages and the search for the disappeared, as well as for the establishment of conditions for a political process and a sustained and lasting ceasefire. We express our support for the efforts made recently in Vienna and for the work to take place in Sochi. We welcome the decision of the Secretary-General to allow his representative to participate in those events. We once again remind the parties to the conflict that they must allow unconditional access for humanitarian assistance, ensuring and safeguarding the security and physical integrity of humanitarian workers, in particular in the besieged and hard-to-reach areas. In that regard, we reiterate once again our highest recognition for the work being done by the staff of the various humanitarian assistance agencies and bodies on the ground, and we urge the parties involved to meet their obligations under international law, in particular international humanitarian law and international human rights law. We remind the parties involved that they must implement the Astana agreements, respect the de-escalation areas and prevent any attacks on civilian institutions, such as residential areas, schools and hospitals, in line with international humanitarian law, to ensure the protection of civilians and unimpeded access for accredited humanitarian organizations to provide the greatly needed assistance. In that regard, we underscore the work of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has reached 800,000 people through cross-border convoys. We hope that those operations can continue, for which better coordination and cooperation between the United Nations and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic are recommended. In that context, we underscore the agreements arrived at among Iran, Russia, and Turkey on 22 December 2017, and we urgently call for strengthening them so as to free detainees and abductees, as well as to positively identify missing persons. We stress the importance of the work of the Russian Centre for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in the Syrian Arab Republic, which has become a guarantor of security and the distribution of humanitarian aid, while ensuring the evacuation of persons from areas facing armed conflict. Lastly, it is important to point out that the humanitarian situation, which is affecting more than 13.2 million people in Syria, must be resolved exclusively through an organized, inclusive and political process based on dialogue and led for and by the Syrian people, which would allow for a peaceful solution respecting the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Syria. We call on members of the Security Council to make every effort to ensure that it remain unified on such an issue as fundamental as humanitarian assistance. Mr. Meza-Cuadra (Peru) (spoke in Spanish): We thank Ms. Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, for her detailed briefing. The humanitarian landscape in Syria that she described to us this morning is, once again, disheartening. Over the past several years, the relevant reports of the Secretary-General and Security Council meetings on this issue have repeatedly related victim fatalities, the renewal of the large-scale displacement of refugees, besieged cities, an increasing spread of diseases, a high level of malnutrition, the destruction of medical infrastructure and other scourges. Given such a situation, the only remedy left is to ensure the immediate, safe and unrestricted access of humanitarian assistance and strict compliance under international humanitarian law, in particular respect for the principle of proportionality as related to conducting military attacks and taking the appropriate precautions with regard to their impact on the civilian population. We therefore regret the persistent restrictions placed on access to humanitarian aid in various areas of Syria, in particular the tragic and untenable situation facing the people of eastern Ghouta and Idlib. We hope that the ceasefire agreement in eastern Ghouta, recently deliberated in Vienna, will have a positive secondary effect in addressing the pressing humanitarian needs of its people. We appreciate the work of the Syrian authorities and Russia that resulted in the medical evacuation of 29 people from eastern Ghouta in December 2017. At the same time, we encourage them S/PV.8171 The situation in the Middle East 30/01/2018 10/10 18-02496 to intensify such efforts as there are hundreds of other people who are in need of urgent care. Another issue that deeply concerns us pertains to demining and, in general, to the deactivation of explosive ordnance, in the light of what is happening daily in cities, such as Raqqa in which 30 to 50 victims, who fall prey to such ordnance, are recorded weekly. We see as positive the dialogue aimed at humanitarian goals between the United Nations and the Government of Syria, especially the visit to the country by Under- Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock. That dialogue and the joint statement on humanitarian mine action issued following the latest Astana meeting positively herald that more substantial progress could be made in that area. Concerning military operations in densely populated areas, such as Afrin, we call for preventing any escalation that could further exacerbate the suffering of the people and hinder achieving a political solution pursuant to resolution 2254 (2015) and the Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex). It is absolutely necessary that the Council show the world its unity and sense of commitment, and send a message that prioritizes human beings over political interests. We therefore hope that a consensus can be reached on the adoption of a text that reflects the five priorities outlined by Mr. Lowcock, which constitute the bare minimum for alleviating the human suffering of the Syrian people, and that is why Peru fully supports them. Mr. Ndong Mba (Equatorial Guinea) (spoke in Spanish): In taking the floor at this meeting on the humanitarian situation of Syrian Arab Republic, I should like to begin by sincerely thanking Ms. Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, for her detailed briefing on the very unfortunate humanitarian situation that Syria is currently undergoing. Moreover, we listened to Under-Secretary- General Lowcock's briefing on 22 January following his visit to Syria, in which he pointed out for us five areas where improvement is needed in order to address the serious humanitarian situation, including the imperative to address the needs of some 13 million people in Syria, to facilitate medical evacuations and freedom of movement across borders, and to adopt measures so that the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations can provide effective assistance to the Syrian people. Both Ms. Mueller and Mr. Lowcock's briefings afford us a very desolate overview that must focus the attention of the international community on making every effort necessary to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people. The specific situation in eastern Ghouta, in which almost 94 per cent of the people are trapped, is a particularly a worrisome issue. The situation of more than 600 people in need of urgent medical care has been, and is being, exacerbated by air-strike campaigns that have led to the displacement of those in Idlib and Hama. In addition to all this, we also point to the catastrophic humanitarian situation resulting from the ongoingOperation Olive Branch, which is leading to the substantial displacement and suffering of civilians. On the one hand, that can only elicit our deep concern, and, on the other hand, we must call for redoubling the efforts of the United Nations and the international community to find a solution to the very serious humanitarian crisis in the Syrian Arab Republic. The President: There are no more speakers inscribed on the list of speakers. I now invite Council members to informal consultations to continue our discussion on the subject. The meeting rose at 11.30 a.m.
YOL. XII NO. 1 MARCH, 1903 The Gettysburg ODereary GETTYSBURG COLLEGE GETTYSBURG, PA. T r PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS ! Good Work Low Prices Publishers ol THE GETTYSBURG NEWS 142 Carlisle St., Gettysburg, Pa. JUBEIEIItf LITTLE, LTD. AMOS ECKERT Latest Styles in HATS, SHOES AND GENT'S FURNISHING .Our specialty. WALK-OVER SHOE AMOS ECKERT Prices always right The Lutheran puM$jing {lou£e". No. 1424 Arch Street PHILADELPHIA, PA. Acknowledged Headquarters for anything and everything in the way of Books for Churches, Col-leges, Families and Schools, and literature for Sunday Schools. PLEASE REMEMBER That by sending your orders to us you help build up and devel-op one of the church institutions with pecuniary advantage to yourself. Address H. S. BONER, Supt. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTIZERS. FURNITURE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames, Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. * Telephone No. 97. X3Z_ IE. Eem-d-er 37 Baltimore St., Gettysburg, Pa. THE STEWART & STEEN CO. 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I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handcherchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly droppt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark and say, Whose ?" When he was too ill to leave his room he wanted his friends continually by his side. Whitman died March 26, 1902, and his funeral was wholly without parallel in this country. It was attended by thous-ands, yet not so much a funeral as a merry-making; not a tear fell, bright and happy were the faces. They did not rejoice in his death, but were glad that he had lived. Walt Whitman enjoyed a popularity abroad equal only to that of Longfellow. Here his popularity is intermittent, Long-fellow's constant. Whether he will be generally read, time alone will tell. Some will be repelled by the lack of rhyme and rhythm. But give his poems that excellence, you take away the force, you take away the man, and we care for rhyme and rhythm not more than for Whitman himself. His admirers have called him the American Homer ; others, Hesiod teaching us "Works and Days." There is somewhat of the Greek in Whitman, yet not the Greek of Homer nor yet the Greek of Hesiod, for he was as in-capable of pessimism as Hesiod was of optimism. He is our American Rhapsodist singing the songs of Man, of Nature and Life, of Home—a genius, let us take him as he is. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. THE ELECTRA OF SOPHOCLES. M. ADA MCLINN, '04. THE Greek poet Sophocles was called "The Bee" among his contemporaries because of the sweetness and smoothness of his verse. From such a writer we should expect a well-written play; and our loftiest expectations are realized after a study of his Electra. This tragic drama deals with the ill-fated house of Atreus. Agamemnon, a descendant of this house, upon his return from the Trojan war in which he commanded the Greeks, was treacherously slain by his wife Clytemnaestra with the aid of her paramour Aegisthus. Her son Orestes was also to be dispatched by some underhand means, but he is rescued by his sister Electra, who, after caring for him for many years, sends him to the court of Strophius of Phokis. He afterward visits the oracle of Apollo, where he is commanded to avenge his father's death. Both Electra and Orestes make this revenge the one aim and purpose of their lives. The story opens eight years after Agamemnon's death. Orestes has returned with his attendant to his native land. While at his uncle's court, he formed a fast friendship with his cousin Pylades and it is with his advice that all plans for ven-geance are formed. The morning has dawned bright and joyous and with it dawns a new hope. Orestes is roused to cany out the oracle's command—■ That he himself unarmed with shield or host Should subtly work the righteous deed of blood. The deed is to be carried out by strategy. News of his death will be carried to the palace, thus giving Clytemnaestra and Aegisthus a sense of freedom from their constant fear of Ores-tes; then, off their guard, they will be slain. The play naturally divides itself into four parts : First—The return of Orestes and the formation of a plan for executing vengeance. This plan forms the key-note of the play. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 9 Second—The appearance of Electra before the palace, her outpouring of grief, the sympathetic answers from the chorus, the appearance of Chrysothemis, a younger sister, with offerings from Clytemnaestra for Agamemnon's grave to propitiate the dream which she had received, Electra's persuasions resulting in Chrysothemis' pouring libations on the grave with prayers for Orestes' return, Clytemnaestra's appearance and her bitter reproaches against Electra, the arrival of the messenger telling of Orestes' death, over which Electra is cast down to the depths of despair and Clytemnaestra raised to a corresponding height of joy, Chrysothemis' second appearance telling of Orestes' visit to Agamemnon's grave and of his offerings upon it, Electra's refutation of this by the news of Orestes' death, the coming of two messengers bearing the urn containing Orestes' ashes; this may be called the elaboration in preparation for the catastrophe. Third—The recognition of Orestes and Electra upon his revealing his identity, their joy in meeting and their discussion of vengeance. Fourth—The conspiracy against Clytemnaestra and Aegis-thus resulting in their death, thus freeing the house of Atreus from its curse as expressed in the closing lines of the chorus: O seed of Atreus, after many woes, Thou hast come forth, thy freedom hardly won, By this emprise made perfect ! The play throughout is characterized by great feeling. The plot is so well carried out that the interest of the reader is con-stantly sustained. There are some phases of the play which call forth our in-dignation; for example—Clytemnaestra's hatred of her son and daughter, her joy over the announcement of her son, Orestes' death, Electra's life-consuming passion for revenge, her seem-ing delight and satisfaction when the murder of her mother and Aegisthus takes place, and Orestes' performance of the murder; but the Greek idea of vengeance was that of a relig-ious duty and a man received commendation for executing it. IO THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. The heroine and strongest character of the play is Electra. For force of will, persistence of purpose, and thirst for ven-geance she has not been surpassed among womankind. Yet counterbalancing the sterner side of her nature is her tender care of Orestes when he was a child, her love towards him, her great joy at meeting him, and her pleasure upon recognizing the faithful old pedagogue. Her tendency to extremes of despair and joy is shown in the following lines: and "Ah me ! I perish utterly. All is lost !" 'O blessed light! O voice ! And art thou come?" The former, uttered when she thought Orestes dead; the latter when she recognizes his living presence. Sophocles thoroughly understands the art of making his readers acquainted with his characters. One feels as if he were living with them. When Electra is sad, we are sad, and we sympathize with her as did the chorus. Her lot was indeed a hard one. For those many years she had waited for the exe-cution of vengeance, while, in the mean time, she had to live in the same building with those whom she despised, to see Aegisthus established in her father's place, and, to all appear-ances, prosperous and happy, to be deserted by all friends, and at last to hear of the death of Orestes, the one in whom she centred all her hopes. Still with a courageous spirit, she sug-gests to Chrysothemis that they together do the deed. Orestes enters the play as a means for revenge. The interest is so constantly with Electra that one is interested in him only in his connection with Electra and in his fulfilment of her wishes. He shows an obedient spirit in his regard for the pedagogue's advice and a stern sense of religious duty in his regard for the oracle's command. His love and compassion for his sister in her neglected condition is expressed between the lines, as it were, in these words of recognition: "Is this Electra's noble form I see? Alas, alas, for this sad lot of thine !" . r THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. II In the same degree that we sympathized with Electra, we hate Clytemnaestra. Her heart is black and sinful and in all her words we must condemn her. She appears specially obnoxious when she receives the news of Orestes' death, and how we must loathe the feeling of satis-faction she exhibits when she says: "Now, for all her threats, We shall live on and pass our days in peace." With the same feeling of detestation we regard Aegisthus and we give our assent when his murder takes place. The irony of the conclusion is fine. We can feel it in all that is said and done. Sophocles has fairly painted before our eyes the picture of the scenes. For example, when Aegisthus removes the cloth from the face of Orestes, as he supposed, and finds Clytemnaestra, his wife, dead and cold, we can hear him say: "Oh, what sight is this?" Chrysothemis, the sister of Orestes and Electra, is a minor character, introduced to bring out by contrast with her weak-ness the great strength of Electra's character. The play contains many fine monologues. The attendant's description of the chariot-race is so real that one can see the contestants as: "With sound of brazen triumph, They started. Cheering all their steeds At once, they shook the reins, and then, The course was filled with all the clash and din Of rattling chariots, and the dust rose high ; And all commingled, sparing not the good, That each might pass his neighbor's axle-trees, And horses' hot hard breathing," The gods are clearly recognized but are kept in the back-ground. They control the acts of men, and great confidence is placed in them as shown in the words of the chorus: "Take heart, my child, take heart; Mighty in heaven he dwells, Zeus, seeing, guiding all." 12 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. THE EVOLUTION OF PERSONALITY. E. B. HAY, '03. HAVE you ever stopped, in the turmoil of your busy life long enough to think that you are a person: that is( I mean—to realize that you are more than an individual, a mere unit among the myriads of humanity ; that, on the other hand, you are unique, no other being has been just like you, and all eternity will fail to reproduce your personality ? If you have ever meditated thus, or if you have attempted to solve the question : What is implied by the word personality ? you have doubtless been staggered by the immensity of the problem before you. There are terrestrial bodies of water which have never been fathomed. Men have been able to obtain some idea of their great depth, however, by the very futility of their attempts to gain more exact knowledge. So, in our consideration of per-sonality, we may but hope to sound its depths for a further rev-elation of their vastness. It is not my intention to trace out the lines of distinction in personalities which lead to the many interesting variations among humanity; but, to present an outline,in accordance with modern scientific views, of the vast movement through which an unceasing energy has evolved from an original chaos the complexity of system to which we to-day give the name of petsotiality. We cannot but approach our discussion in reverence, realiz-ing that none but the great Creator and Preserver of this mighty universe knows, or perhaps ever will know the exact course through which a terrestrial being, man, came to be but a little lower than the angels, "to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." "Man proposes, but God disposes." God has disposed, and now man would propose. Made in the image of his Creator, man seeks to understand the divine plan. He would study and interpret the laws of God. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 13 As the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, so can man, of himself, never reach a perfect solution ol the methods and laws of his Creator. One law, that of his own heredity, has, how-ever, long been of paramount interest to man, and more es-pecially to the inquisitive Aryan. Theory upon theory has been advanced and accepted. Each has its flaws and breaks of evidence. Any discussion of our topic, however, must be based upon some one of these theories, and so I have chosen the great generalization of to-day's scientific thought; namely, "the genetic unity and unbroken development of the whole realm of nature, to which we also belong." Scientists tell us that organic and inorganic forms were orig-inally one.the organicbeingahigher development of the inorganic. They further make mind the consummate flower of organic life. Hence we would complete the vast development of nature in the final fruitage of personality, saying with Drummond that "to withdraw continuity from the universe would be the same as to withdraw reason from an individual." In the first place, we shall trace a development from an original unity of matter to a separation of i?idividual iorms ; in the second, an advance in these individual forms from their primal simplicity to a marked complexity ; and finally, we shall attempt to show that the consummation of the universal im-pulse to.individualization is personality. Consider, then, a period probably thousands of millions of years ago, when space was occupied by a diffused nebulous material, where the ultimate atoms were the only definite struc-tures. Out of this seemingly infinite and formless deep the nebulae settle into various individual aggregations. The move-ment is universal, and as this primitive matter assumes individ-ual forms it also takes on certain functions, and gradually great solar systems evolve. Our own earth, a vast whirling mass of nebulous matter, gradually contracts and assumes still more complicated functions as it falls into motion about a similar though much larger aggregation of matter. Turning our atten-tion now solely to our own sphere and passing by ages in its formation, we reach the highest form of distinctive character in 14 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. its inorganic development when the crystal first makes its ap-pearance. Now, we first have a clear and substantial prophesy of those higher forms of individuality which are to follow. Each crystal has a well defined and a generally symmetrical form. Under the action of the crystalizing force, it may take up new materials and rebuild itself, a property commonly at-tributed only to organic forms. But who shall trace further the course from the greatest in the kingdom of the inorganic to the least in the kingdom of the organic ? Indeed La Conte tells us that "conditions necessary for so extraordinary a change could hardly be expected to occur but once in the history of the earth." Thus far, we have traced a great impulse leading from unity to individual forms; now, we would look at the more complex outgrowth as we find individuality developed by the throb of life. Following nature then in her continuous course, which we may so nearly yet not clearly establish at this point, we note that she starts on her more perfect individualization by the forming of a cell. Now, for the first time, a formation of na-ture has the capacity to perpetuate itself. Too much stress cannot be laid upon this advance from, or as scientists would say, through the inorganic to organic forms, in nature's develop-ment towards the more complex existence. The fundamental properties of life, assimilation, growth and reproduction, are now active, and it is but a question of time till these cells multiply and are organized under different environments into the intri-cate forms of plant and animal life. The next great step in the evolution of complex individuality is achieved in the gain of sentient power. It were indeed a difficult task to form any sharp distinction between the awaken-ing animal sentiency and the sensitiveness of some plants. But, in the animal world we find sensitiveness specialized and developed in and with more or less acute nervous organization to the resultant varying degrees of animal intelligence. From the lower forms of animal life, where nature seems to care not for the individual but only for the species, we find her interest THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 15 apparently increasing with the advance in sentiency. All things seem to work together for good to the individual, as we ascend the scale of animal intelligence. And finally, after a seeming perfection has been reached in the physical organiza-tion of the individual, this sentient energy continues to advance and develop in complexity. But, now having considered two phases of the vast move-ment to individuality, you may wonder what all this has to do with personality. It will have either little or much to do, ac-cording as we accept the "supernatural descent of mind into matter, or the theory of its natural ascent through the develop-ment of matter." Incidentally, I may say, that though in some circles the Creator is still grudged his own universe, yet, the thoughtful naturalist finds as much manifestation of divine power and wisdom in the controlling and gradual evolution of forces, as in their terrestrial introduction by special creative acts, breaking in upon the continuity of the universe. If we accept the modern scientific hypothesis of evolution, the steps just traced are of vital importance. For somewhere in this great movement toward the perfection of individual types, must have gradually evolved a part so far transcending "dying nature's earth and lime" as to admit of no comparison or analogy with this baser foil of its glory. In the words of Newman Smyth, the scientist regards personality as "a specialization of a spirit-ual element and energy which was in the beginning and which has ever been pressing to revelation throughout the whole evolution." So, rather than pick up an uncertain thread from its midst, we have traced from the beginning this vast process of the ages, this propagation of a mighty impulse, to its con-summation in personality. What an elevated position do we, then, as persons, hold in this grand upward moyement through formative cycles ! For, "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Who can believe that this implanted image of the Creator shall be consigned eternally to its native dust, or who shall say that the travail of the ages has been for a be-ing whose days are as the grass, as a flower of the field ? ■ *fl! 16 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY'. Shall the dissolution of our earthy frame, which has long since become subject to the higher power within, mean the cessation of the mighty evolution, which has made us persons, or shall we not, giving dust to dust, free these personalities from every weight which doth so easily beset them, and continue the "rand march of time amid celestial harmonies ? THE PHILOSOPHERS. They are presumptuous systems that we raise To compass life's last miracle and frame The glory with its source, forging a name Exhaustive of the meaning of our days. Is there no peace among sweet finite ways— No rest forever from the inward flame Of troubled question over chance or aim, Real and unreal, and what's to blame or praise ? Can we not wait, patient with life'awhile, Somewhat content to speak the given word, Go the appointed way, and ask no more— Then, if the work be done, with quiet smile, When in our darkened house the voice is heard, Pass silently with Death through the last door?—Ex. ' ■ ' *ft-lm't *-. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 17 A CHARACTER SKETCH OF CECIL RHODES. ABDKI. R. WENTZ, '04. ALMOST a year has elapsed since the death of Cecil Rhodes, familiarly known as the South African "Colos-sus," and the press has not yet ceased to publish discussions of the man's character. Few had more zealous friends; none have had more bitter enemies. And yet his most devoted friends found in his character some undesirable traits, and his most positive enemies recognized some merit. It will be in-teresting, therefore, to attempt to understand his real character and to ascertain the moral of his marvelous career. Cecil Rhodes was born in 1853, in Hertfordshire, England, in the impecunious condition of the younger son of a country parson. He was unaided by birth, fortune, or any other outside agency. From his parents he received no position, no money, nothing except clean and gentle breeding. His early life at home and at grammar school afforded no indication of genius. It was intended that he should enter the ministry and so he was sent to Oxford University. But a decline in health was soon noticed and his physicians confidently foretold his death of con-sumption. In the hope of prolonging his life for a few years he went to South Africa where his older brother was living. For a while he assisted his brother in diamond-digging, but he soon went into the industry for himself and great success attended him. In the meantime his health was greatly im-proved by the pure, dry air of the African veldt and he was able, both financially and physically, to return to Oxford during the dry summer months and continue his course of study. This he did year by year, always returning to South Africa in the Fall, and finally in 1881, nine years after he had matricu-lated, he was graduated from the University. By this time he had laid the foundation for a large fortune in South Africa. He succeeded in having the law repealed which provided that one person could hold only one diamond claim. The new law permitted a man to hold ten claims, and it was soon discovered 18 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. that Rhodes held ten. This new law was also repealed after a short time. Then began the speculation in buying and selling claims, and presently he found himself one of three interests con-trolling the entire diamond field. And this number soon dimin-ished to two. Then came the amalgamation, with Cecil Rhodes as the amalgamator, and the colossal De Beers Diamond Min-ing Company as the product. By this he was enabled to create a monopoly, control the diamond market, and amass his millions. In this respect he was the forerunner of J. P. Mor-gan. The next step in his wonderful career was to enter the Parliament of Cape Colony. He soon became the most pow-erful man in the politics of South Africa; and this distinction he continued to enjoy until his death on March 26, last. In order to understand the motive which actuated his won-derful career it may be well to consider for a moment the course of reasoning by which he determined what should be the aim of his life. In the course of his studies in Greek at Oxford University he chanced upon Aristotle's definition of virtue as the "highest activity of the soul living for the highest object in. a perfect life." This he interpreted to mean that every person should have an object in life sufficiently lofty to make it worth while to spend a lifetime in the endeavor to ob-tain it. The object had not yet been determined in his own life, and so he began to reason with himself in the endeavor to find the aim sufficiently lofty to justify him in dedicating his life to it. First he considered the matter of accumulating wealth. But what is wealth ? From the experience of the men about him who had made the amassing of wealth the chief aim of their lives he concluded that wealth as an end in itself was only a source of care and anxiety. People spend part of their lives in making money and the rest in taking care of it. This, Rhodes decided, could not by any means justify the expendi-ture of one's life. Then he considered politics. But what is the highest round in the political ladder? In his case it was the premiership of Cape Colony. And what sort of life is that of a premier ? Now THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 19 in office and now out; constantly dependent upon the good will of the voters. Surely, this was not the proper goal for his life. Then he turned to religion. He had always admired the career of Ignatius Loyola. But then Rhodes felt that he could scarcely accept any religious creed. Every excavation in Pal-estine revealed some new fact which to him seemed to prove the Bible untrue. The Catholic beliefs came nearest to his, but he was sure there was no hell, and how then could he devote his life to serving the Catholic Church ? So he concluded that religion was not to be the field of his life work. Then he went deeper. In religious views he was decidedly agnostic. He always held that there was a 50-per-cent chance that there is a God. So he continued his reasoning thus: "If there be a God, of which there is 50-per cent chance, it is all-important that I should do what he would have me do." Then again, "If there be a God, and if he is concerned at all about what I do, it is safe to say that he would have me do what he himself is doing, to propagate his own work." From this arose the question, "What is God doing ?" Then he set about discovering the divine plan. In the first place the divine plan whatever it is must be universal. God cares for all. Whatever instrument he is using therefore must be in-fluencing the whole race of man. Now Rhodes was a strict believer in the Darwinian theory of evolution. He believed in the survival of the most capable species. And in the pro-cess of perfecting the race of man by the elimination of the least capable, he recognized the "struggle for existence" as the instrument of the divine Ruler. And in the struggle for exist-ence the white race, beyond a doubt, had been the most cap-able. Moreover, taking as standards of human perfection, the three great principles of Justice, Liberty, and Peace, he unhesi-tatingly concluded that it is the English-speaking race that is most likely to secure universal justice, all-pervading liberty, and world-wide peace, if these are to be secured at all. And the conclusion of the long train of reasoning was "that the highest practical idea was to work for the unity of the English-speaking 20 THE GETTVSBUKG MERCURY. race, in order that, being united, it might extend over all the world the beneficent influence which this race exercised for Justice, Liberty, and Peace among the inhabitants of this planet." This, then, was the guiding principle of his life—internation-al amity and the unity of the English-speaking race. And Rhodes thought that in order to wield any considerable influ-ence in that direction, he must have wealth. "What is the use," he said, "of having grand projects if you lack the money to back them ?" and so he proceeded to acquire wealth, solely with a view to extending the British Empire and thus the Eng-lish- speaking race. His money was never spent for selfish ends. His personal needs could have been covered by a clerk's income. Though king of the diamond mines, he never wore a single one of the precious gems upon his person. He never changed the simple tastes which he had acquired at the coun-try parsonage. He was unconventional to the extreme. As prime minister of Cape Colony he wore the worst hat in the as-sembly. His aristocratic friends in London were compelled to be ashamed of him when he visited them. True, he had a fine house, but it was for the entertainment of others. He never had many fancy pictures; not because he could not appreciate the art, but because he considered the money spent uselessly. "I could build so many miles of railroad for such a picture," he would say. And so it was in all his financial relations; his money was to be used solely upon the object for which he was living. To him nothing seemed more abhorrent than the clogged and impotent discomfort of the ordinary millionaire. He considered it a positive injustice for a man to leave his chil-dren so much money as to enable them to go through the world with folded arms. His life-aim required money for its accomplishment, and for that reason he amalgamated the diamond out-put of the world, thus arming himself with the chosen weapon of the day. Moreover, Rhodes realized that political influence would help him to obtain his life-object. He entered the Parliament of Cape Colony and was soon raised to the highest office in the THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 21 Cape government, the premiership. This influence he began to wield to the end that "as much of the map of Africa as possi-ble might be painted British red," as he himself put it. Terri-tories, one after the other, were added to British dominion. It is true, too true, that the means which he used to bring about these results were in many cases questionable. Even his most admiring friends are compelled to admit that he was unscrupu-lous in his methods. He knew no code of political morals. He did not hesitate to do anything which would help bring about the object for which he was spending his life. He wanted to extend the British empire, and to this end he bent all his en-ergies, whether by deceiving the ignorant Boers or by juggling the laws of the different governments. And it has been calcu-lated that he carried the British flag over a territory nearly as great in extent as British India. But there was one great hindrance to the carrying out of Rhodes' idea of a confederated South Africa, and that was the existence of the two independent Dutch republics known as the the Orange River Free State and the Transvaal. Accordingly he began to form deep-laid plans to bring them under British dominion. The notorious Jameson raid was the result. The facts of the raid, to be brief, are these : A large mining popu-lation composed in great part of foreigners had gathered in those districts. In order to overthrow the Dutch government and acquire the country, Rhodes had his agents to build up secret organizations among the foreigners in Johannesburg, the capital city of the Transvaal. It was planned that upon an appointed day these foreigners, or "Uitlanders" as the Boers called them, should cause an uprising under some feigned pre-text and precipitate a revolt against the government. The Uitlanders were to be assisted from the outside by the invasion of a small body of troops under the command of Dr. Jameson, Rhodes' right-hand man. It is a well-known fact that the raid failed. The Boers were apprised of the plot; the foreigners refused at the last moment to act and Jameson and his men were ignominiously captured by the Boers. It was this Jameson raid which precipitated the Boer war, so disastrous to all par-ties concerned. 22 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. This was the turning-point in Cecil Rhodes' career. The Boers, among whom he had been very popular previous to the raid, and by whose votes he had become premier, now became his bitterest enemies; for he had betrayed them. The English government renounced all connection with Rhodes. The whole world called it an outrage. He was compelled to resign the premiership, and it is said that his friends noticed that in a few days following the failure of the raid his hair became whiter and the lines about his mouth and eyes deepened. This was the one gross blunder of his life, the one dark spot upon his character which to some seems so dark as to cover with a shadow the better qualities of the man. Cecil Rhodes was a millionaire with an imagination ; he did not hold his money-bags on his head and allow them to crush out his brains. He was philosophic and reflective in mind ; and in his entire foreign policy his strength and victory lay in his vision of what the other side desired and how they hoped to achieve it. He was a great reader although he did not have a very large library. One of his favorite books was Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," and this probably gave him many thoughts upon his life-aim. In Parliament he was a very effective speaker but not what we would call eloquent. He was a lover of natural scenery, as is shown by the selection of the sites of his buildings and of his burying place. His remains are en-tombed in the midst of picturesque mountain scenery. In the will of this great man we see again his immense wide-ness of view. His bequest of $10,000,000 to Oxford Univer-sity has provoked much discussion here in America. But it is not the bequest which concerns us so much as the conditions which the bequeather attaches to it. The will provides that the $ 10,000,000 shall be applied to scholarships apportioned as follows: Two to each of the self-governing colonies of Great Britain, five to Germany, and two to each State or Ter-ritory in the United States. The will also provides for a very unique method of choosing the students, and states that the object of the scholarships is to educate together the future leaders of the three great countries, and thus "secure the peace of the world." It is not necessary to consider here whether THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 23 the scholarships will really secure "the peace of the world," nor yet whether they will probably benefit America or not. We need but to note the largeness of the scale upon which Cecil Rhodes laid his plans. He thought in continents; and this is only one of the many schemes which he devised to bring about his favorite idea of the unity of the English-speaking race. Rhodes always felt that life was too short to achieve much ; he was too eager to see his objects accomplished. And his last words were, "So much to do ; so little done." Surely few men present such great complexity of character. He was "ruthless in the pursuit of gain, and caring nothing for gold ; cursed as the cause of the war, yet looking to the reign of universal peace." To some he is known as the author of the South African war, the plunderer of inferior races, and the personifi-cation of greed ; to others, as a poet who confined his energies to deeds. By some he is called the Napoleon of South Africa; by others, the South African Colossus. Whatever can be said concerning Cecil Rhodes, it must be admitted that he pro-duced a lasting impression upon the world's destinies. 24 THE GETTVSBURG MERCURY. SALAMIS AND PROGRESS. BERTRAM STROHMEIER, '06. TTpROM the earliest dawn of history, even from the ages *■ shrouded in the gloom and mist of antiquity, now being rescued from oblivion through the discovery of broken inscrip-tions, and crumbled cities, even to the present day, down the . centuries has flowed almost unceasingly a crimson flood fed by a myraid of battlefields. Mars has revelled to his heart's con-tent in his infernal sport. And when we consider the useless carnage and frightful slaughter that has followed men's differ-ences in oftentimes trivial affairs, it would seem that some treacherous spirit does stir up men's hellish passions just to ap-pease an ungovernable desire. But here and there dropped in the path of Time, unwittingly and unrecognized at fir^t, we find a battle, that in the light of subsequent events proved a boon to mankind, and marked an epoch in the progress of civilization—a battle terrible as a thunder-storm, yet, like iti grand, awe-inspiring, even sublime—a battle not between men alone nor yet between nations, but a struggle between ideas and principles—a battle not for one man, nor for one people; not for one age; but a battle for all people, for all time. Salamis was such a battle. As Balboa paused on the mountain height to recover from his great astonishment, and to take in and more fully under-stand the panorama that suddenly burst upon his vision, when first he beheld the calm Pacific, before plunging down the rockyway to plant the flag of Spain in its waters, so let us pause and take in the historical panorama before entering into the consideration of this world famed battle. Persia is the all-supreme ruler of the East. One by one the proud Oriental kings have bowed the knee to her conquering despot, until for further conquest he has been compelled to send his triumphant legions into far away India on the one side, and to cross the Caucasian limits of his empire on the other and strike terror to the Scythian hordes. From North, South, East In an up-to-P^J CHORUS. — U-pI-dee-l-dee-l-da 1 etc. Her voice is clear as a soaring lark's, And her wit is like those trullev-car sparks I When 'cross a muddy street she ilits, The buys ;;d h^ve conniption fits I The turn of her head turns all ours, too. There's always a strife to si: in her pew; 'Tis enough to make n parson drunk, To hear her sing; old co-ca-che-luuk! m j. The above, and three other NEW verses to U-P1-DEH, 1,, rJf/IT and NEW WORDS, catchy, uu-to-date, to many f*pe- ii TT ^\y},[ sides OLD FAVOK ■ TBS ; and also many NEW SONGS. Jik> SONGS OF ALL THE COLLEGES. Wtf m\Copjrrlgln, Price, S/.JO, postpaid. m ILUU HINDS & NOiSLE, Publishers, New York buy. 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Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Lakkipur-1 Microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and the physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundaries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characteristics, classification and use potentials of the soils in the microwatershed. The present study covers an area of 342 ha in Gundlupet taluk of Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought-prone with an average annual rainfall of 734 mm, of which about 254 mm is received during south–west monsoon, 268 mm during the north-east and the remaining 212 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 89 per cent is covered by soils, 26 per cent by forest and 3 per cent by others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below. The soils belong to 11 soil series and 21 soil phases (management units) and 8 land management units. The length of crop growing period is about 150 days starting from the 3rd week of June to 3rd week of November. From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated. Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval. Land suitability for growing 27 major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated. About 71 per cent area is suitable for agriculture. About 27 per cent of soils are shallow (25-50 cm), 26 per cent are moderately shallow (50-75 cm), 2 per cent of the soils are moderately deep (75-100 cm), 4 per cent of the soils are deep (100-150 cm) and 30 per cent are very deep (>150 cm). About 29 per cent of the area has clayey soils at the surface and 60 per cent area loamy soil. About 51 per cent of the area has non-gravelly soils and 38 per cent gravelly soils (15-35 % gravel) soils. About 27 per cent has soils that are very low (200 mm/m) available water capacity. An area of about 59 per cent has very gently sloping (1-3% slope) lands, 12 per cent is gently sloping (3-5% slope), 9 per cent is moderately sloping (5-10%) and 9 per cent is strongly sloping (10-15% slope). An area of about 33 per cent has soils that are slightly eroded (e1) and 56 per cent soils are moderately eroded (e2). An area of about 14 per cent is strongly acid (pH 5.0-5.5), 16 per cent is moderately acid (pH 5.5-6.0), 23 per cent is slightly acid (pH 6.0-6.5), 32 per cent has soils that are neutral (pH 6.5-7.3) and an area of about 3 per cent has soils that are slightly alkaline (pH 7.3-7.8). The Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soils are 0.75%) in organic carbon. About 17 per cent of soil are low (23 kg/ha), 36 per cent of the soils are medium (23-57 kg/ha) and 37 per cent are high (>57 kg/ha) in available phosphorus. About 29 per cent are medium (145-337 kg/ha) and 60 per cent are high (>337 kg/ha) in available potassium. About 3 per cent of the soils are low in available sulphur and 87 per cent are medium (10-20 ppm). Available boron is low (1.0 kg/ha). Available iron is sufficient (>4.5 ppm) in the entire area of the microwatershed. Available manganese and copper are sufficient in the entire area of the microwatershed. Available zinc is deficient (0.6 ppm) in 52 per cent. The land suitability for 27 major crops grown in the microwatershed were assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the Microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable(S1 ) Moderately suitable(S2 ) Highly suitable(S1 ) Moderately suitable(S2 ) Sorghum 103 (30) 56 (16) Sapota 46 (13) 20 (6) Maize 53 (15) 48 (14) Guava 60 (18) - Redgram 53 (15) 74 (22) Banana 33 (10) 78 (23) Horsegra m 53 (15) 115 (34) Jackfruit 46 (13) 14 (4) Field bean 33 (10) 126 (37) Jamun 46 (13) 14 (4) Groundnut 20 (6) 81 (24) Musambi 103 (30) 14 (4) Sunflower 25 (7) 86 (25) Lime 103 (30) 14 (4) Cotton 83 (24) 68 (20) Cashew 46 (13) - Onion 33 (10) 126 (37) Custard apple 118 (34) 145 (42) Potato 33 (10) 69 (20) Amla 118 (34) 153 (45) French Beans 33 (10) 126 (37) Tamarind 46 (13) 14 (4) Beetroot 33 (10) 68 (20) Marigold 53 (15) 106 (31) Turmeric 33 (10) 68 (20) Chrysanthemu m 33 (10) 126 (37) Mango 46 (13) 14 (4) - - - Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 8 identified LMUs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fodder, fibre and horticulture crops. Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc., Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required. As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges. Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Lakkipur 1 micro-watershed (Gopalapur sub-watershed, Gundlupet taluk, Chamarajanagar district) is located in between 11044' – 11045' North latitudes and 76033' – 76035' East longitudes, covering an area of about 342 ha, bounded by Channamallipur, Maddinahalli and Lakkipur villages with a length of growing period LGP of 120-150 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and eco system services were quantified. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Lakkipur 1 micro-watershed (Gopalapur sub-watershed, Gundlupet taluk, Chamarajanagar district) are presented here. Social Indicators; Male and female ratio is 47.1 to 52.9 per cent to the total sample population. Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 50.0 per cent to the total population. Literacy population is around 44.1 per cent. Social groups belong to scheduled caste (SC)/scheduled tribes (ST) were around 20.0 per cent. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the source of energy for a cooking among 80.0 per cent. About 40.0 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card. Majority of farm households (70.0 %) are having MGNREGA card for rural employments. Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system of having all sample households. Swach bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 40.0 per cent of sample households. Institutional participation is only 8.8 per cent of sample households. Women participation in decisions making are around 47.2 per cent of households were found. 2 Economic Indicators; The average land holding is 1.3 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to small and medium farmers. The dry land account for 67.7 % and irrigated land 32.3 % of total cultivated land area among the sample farmers. Agriculture is the main occupation among 6.3 per cent and agriculture is the main and non agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation for 87.5 per cent of sample households. The average value of domestic assets is around Rs. 11970 per household. Mobile and television are popular media mass communication. The average value of farm assets is around Rs. 30383 per household, about 50 per cent of sample farmers own plough and sprayer (10 %). The average value of livestock is around Rs.19625 per household; about 50 per cent of household are having livestock. The average per capita food consumption is around 690.8 grams (1494.1 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 60 per cent of sample households are consuming less than the NIN recommendation. The annual average income is around Rs.54221 per household. Thirty per cent of sample households on above poverty line. The per capita monthly average expenditure is around Rs.1269. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services; The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use. The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs.1078 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs.328649 per year for the total area of 342.0 ha. The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around Rs. 50726/ ha/year. Per hectare food grain production services is maximum in turmeric (Rs.132852) followed by cotton (Rs. 124561), garlic (Rs. 101751), onion (Rs. 63229), maize (Rs. 36649), cowpea (Rs. 35235), sunflower (Rs. 31093), horse gram (Rs. 18747), ragi (Rs. 14441), marigold (Rs.3179) and groundnut is negative returns. The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around Rs. 2286/ha/year. Per hectare fodder production services is maximum in groundnut (Rs.3952) followed by maize (Rs. 2653), cowpea (Rs.2506), ragi (Rs.1300) and horse gram (Rs. 1300). The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum in cotton (Rs. 3 274528) followed by turmeric (Rs. 54978), maize (Rs. 54775), sunflower (Rs. 49884), horse gram (Rs. 31878), groundnut (Rs. 27486), onion (Rs. 16796), garlic (Rs. 15587), ragi (Rs. 13238) and cowpea (Rs. 12042). Economic Land Evaluation; The major cropping pattern is maize (27.5 %) followed by maize (27.5 %), horse gram (18.0 %), cowpea (8.4%), groundnut (8.4 %), onion (8.4 %), sunflower (8.4 %), turmeric (5.5 %), ragi (4.8 %), garlic (4.7 %), marigold (4.7 %) and cotton (1.2 %). In Lakkipur 1 micro-watershed, major soils are soil of alluvial landscape of Kallipura (KLP) series is having deep soil depth cover around 4.2% of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing garlic. Honnegaudanahalli (HGH) are also having very deep soil depth cover 6.0 % of area, the crops are cotton (7.4 %), maize (7.4 %), onion (51.0 %) and turmeric (34.2 %). Beemanabeedu (BMB) soil series having very deep soil depth cover around 17.2 % of areas, crops are maize. Hullipura (HPR) soil series having moderately shallow soil depth cover around 12.1 % of area, crops are cowpea (18.2 %), horse gram (31.8 %), maize (18.2 %) and sunflower (31.8 %). Magoonahalli (MGH) soil series are having moderately shallow soil depth cover around 11.9 % of area; the major crops grown are cowpea (37.9 %), groundnut (18.9 %) and horse gram (21.6 %). Shivapura (SPR) soil series are having very shallow soil depth covers around 14.7 % of area, the major crop grown is maize (64.1%) and marigold (35.9 %). The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for maize ranges between Rs.78831/ha in HGH soil (with BCR of 1.07) and Rs. 27873/ha in BMB soil (with BCR of 1.61). In horse gram the cost of cultivation range between Rs 27542/ha in MGH soil (with of 1.51) and Rs. 14192/ha in HPR soil (with BCR of 2.65). In cowpea the cost of cultivation ranges between Rs. 33083/ha in HPR soil (with BCR of 1.57) and Rs. 11497/ha in MGH soil (with BCR of 4.3). In cotton the cost of cultivation in MLR soil is Rs.202501/ha (with BCR of 1.62). In onion the cost of cultivation in HGH soil is Rs 60271/ha (with BCR of 2.05). In sunflower the cost of cultivation in HPR soil is Rs 28187/ha (with BCR of 2.1). In ragi the cost of cultivation in MGH soil is Rs 29976/ha (with BCR of 1.53). In garlic the cultivation in KLP soil is Rs.57035/ha (with BCR of 2.78) and turmeric cultivation in HGH soil is Rs.115992/ha (with BCR of 2.15). The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil 4 and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM. It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use More fertilizer applications are deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions; Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation. The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices. Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments. By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households. By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in maize (42.9 to76 %), cowpea (0 to 53.7%), cotton (26.5 %), ragi (90 %), garlic (71.1%) and turmeric (36.7%). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project
Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Kanekal-3 microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and these physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundaries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characteristics, classification, behaviour and use potentials of the soils in the microwatershed. The present study covers an area of 547 ha in Kanekal-3 microwatershed in Yadgir taluk of Yadgir district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought-prone with an average annual rainfall of 866 mm, of which about 652 mm is received during south–west monsoon, 138 mm during north-east and the remaining 76 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 99 per cent is covered by soils, 1 per cent by rock outcrops and others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below. The soils belong to 13 soil series and 18 soil phases (management units) and 7 land use classes. The length of crop growing period is about 120-150 days starting from the 1st week of June to 4th week of October. From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated. Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval. Land suitability for growing 26 major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated. About 99 per cent area is suitable for agriculture and 1 per cent is not suitable for agriculture but well suited for forestry, pasture, agro-forestry, silvi-pasture, recreation, mining, installation of wind mills and as habitat for wildlife. About 150 cm) soils. About 72 per cent of the area has clayey soils, 18 per cent loamy soils and 9 per cent sandy soils at the surface. An area of about 84 per cent has non-gravelly and 15 per cent are gravelly. About 6 per cent of the area has soils that are very high (>200mm/m) in available water capacity, 15 per cent medium (100-150 mm/m) and about 78 per cent low (51-100 mm/m) to very low (0.75%) in organic carbon. An area of 21 per cent has soils that are low (57 kg/ha) in available phosphorus. About 5 per cent low (337 kg/ha) in available potassium. Available sulphur is low (1.0 ppm) in about 9 per cent area of the microwatershed. About 11 per cent area has soils that are deficient (4.5 ppm). Available manganese and copper are sufficient in all the soils of the microwatershed. Entire area of the microwatershed is deficient (<0.6 ppm) in available zinc. The land suitability for 26 major crops grown in the microwatershed was assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, market price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the Kanekal-3 microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Sorghum 97 (18) 259 (47) Sapota 35 (6) 185 (34) Maize 97 (18) 228 (42) Guava 35 (6) 185 (34) Red gram - 251(46) Pomegranate 35 (6) 216 (39) Bajra - 251(46) Jackfruit 31 (6) 168 (31) Ground nut 35 (6) 307 (56) Jamun 31 (6) 95 (17) Sunflower - 234 (43) Musambi 35 (6) 216 (39) Cotton 31 (6) 325 (59) Lime 35 (6) 216 (39) Bengalgram 31 (6) 325 (59) Cashew 35 (6) 121 (22) Chilli - 373 (68) Custard apple 132 (24) 224 (41) Tomato 97 (18) 245 (45) Amla 132 (24) 224 (41) Drumstick 35 (6) 216 (39) Tamarind 35 (6) 95 (17) Mulberry 35 (6) 168 (31) Marigold - 373 (68) Mango 35 (6) 47 (9) Chrysanthemum - 373 (68) Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the seven identified LMUs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fodder, fibre and horticulture crops that helps in maintaining the ecological balance in the microwatershed Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc., Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required. As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and submarginal lands, field bunds and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges, that are edible, ecological and produce lot of biomass that helps to restore the ecological balance in the micro watershed. Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: The Kanikal 3 micro-watershed in Yadgir taluk and district is located in between 16035' – 16036' North latitudes and 770 18' – 77020' East longitudes, covering an area of about 547.22 ha, bounded by Gudalagunta, Samabara, Kanikal and Balacheda villages. Agro Ecological Sub Region (AESR) 6.2: Central and Western Maharashtra Plateau and North Karnataka Plateau and North Western Telangana Plateau, hot moist semi-arid ESR with shallow and medium loamy to clayey black soil (medium and deep clayey Black soil as inclusion), medium to high AWC and LGP 120-150 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified for each watershed. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Kanikal 3 micro-watershed in Yadgir taluk and district are presented here. Social Indicators; Male and female ratio is 55.6 to 44.4 per cent to the total sample population. Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 55.7 per cent to the total population. Literacy population is around 39.8 per cent. Social groups belong to SC/ST is around 13.0 per cent. Wood is the source of energy for a cooking among 100 per cent. About 39.1per cent of households have a yashaswini health card. Majority of farm households (26.1 %) are having MGNREGA card for rural employments. Dependence on ration cards through public distribution system is around 100 per cent. Swatch bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 17.4 per cent. Rural migration to unban centre for employment is prevalent among 2.3 per cent of farm households. Women participation is decisions making are around 39.2 per cent of were found. 2 Economic Indicators; The average land holding is 12.6 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to large farmers. The dry land account for 91.8 % and irrigated land 5.8 % of total cultivated land of sample farmers. Agriculture is the main occupation among 4.4 per cent and Agriculture is the main and non agriculture labour is predominant subsidiary occupation for 91.3 per cent. The average value of domestic assets is around Rs.31009 per household. Mobile and television are mass popular mass communication media. The average farm assets a value is around Rs.72963 per household, about 36.1 per cent of sample farmers are owing plough. The average livestock value is around Rs.20721 per livestock; about 77.8 per cent of household are having livestock. The average per capita food consumption is around 891.9 grams (2030 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 60.9 per cent of sample farmers are consuming more than the NIN recommendation. The annual average income is around Rs 40315 per household. About 8.7 per cent of farm households are below poverty line. The per capita monthly expenditure is around Rs 2333.9 per household. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services; The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use. The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs 1768.9 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs.956979 per year for the total area of 547.2 ha. The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around (Rs 9011/ ha/year). Per hectare food production services is maximum in onion (Rs. 8287) followed by sorghum (Rs. 7408), redgram (Rs.6098), cotton (Rs. 5411), maize (Rs. 2465), green gram (Rs. 2258) and groundnut (Rs.1307). The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around (Rs 2961/ ha/year). Per hectare fodder production services is maximum in maize (Rs. 4482) followed by sorghum (Rs. 2964), groundnut (Rs.2477) and paddy (Rs.1919). The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water was maximum green gram (Rs.70127) followed by sorghum (Rs.56464), red gram (Rs.52576), cotton (Rs.42847), maize (Rs.32384) groundnut (Rs.29424), and onion (Rs.10078). 3 Economic Land Evaluation; The major cropping pattern is red gram (50.6%) followed by groundnut (15.5 %), cotton (7.9 %), maize (6.5 %), paddy (9.3 %), green gram (4.6 %), onion (1.8 %) and sorghum (3.7%). In Kanikal 3 micro watershed, major soil are soil of alluvial landscape of Badiyala (BDL) series are having shallow soil deep cover around 13.2 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing cotton (15.4%), maize (46.2 %), groundnut (23.1%) and red gram (15.4 %). Soil of granite and granite gneiss landscape of Sambara (SBR) series are having moderately shallow soil deep cover around 12.5 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing red gram (40.7 %), cotton (7.4 %), groundnut (29.6 %), paddy (14.8 %) and green gram (7.4 %). Baddeppalli (BDP) series are having moderately soil deep cover around 0.6 % of area. Yalleri (YLR) series are having moderately shallow soil deep cover around 8.9% of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing. Cotton (10.9 %), groundnut (14.5 %), paddy (7.2 %) and red gram (60.2 %), Pogalapur (PGP) series are having moderately deep soil deep cover around 17.7 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing paddy (25.9%) and red gram (22.2 %), groundnut (29.6 %). Yadgir (YDR) series are having Deep soil deep cover around 3.9 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing maize (28.6%) paddy (21.4%) and red gram (50.0 %). Bhimanahalli (BMN) series are having very deep soil deep cover around 5.7 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing red gram (70.0%) and sorghum (30.0 %) on Belagundi (BGD) series are having Deep soil deep cover around 0.3 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing cotton (42.9), paddy (28.6%) and red gram (28.6%). Balichakra (BCL) series are having moderately deep soil deep cover around 4.4 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing red gram, Bomraldoddi (BMD) series are having Very deep soil deep cover around 6.3 of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing green gram. Gundedagi (GDG) series are having moderately soil deep cover around 8.5 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing green gram. Vanakanahalli (VNK) series are having shallow soil deep cover around 3.9 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing groundnut (25.0 %) and redgram (75.0 %). Duppali (DPL) series are having moderately shallow soil deep cover around 14.1 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing groundnut (4.8%), onion (4.8 %), paddy (4.8%) and red gram (85.7%). The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for groundnut ranges between Rs.75191/ha in DPL soil (with BCR of 1.02) and Rs.25460ha in BDL soil (with BCR of 1.52). In cotton the cost of cultivation range between Rs 52541/ha in SBR soil (with of 1.06) and Rs.24517/ha in BGD soil (with BCR of 1.34). 4 In green gram the cost of cultivation range between Rs. 46066/ha in PGP soil (with BCR of 1.07) and Rs. 22949/ha in GDG and BMD soil (with BCR of 1.0). In maize cost of cultivation range between is Rs.53030/ha in YLR soil (with BCR of 1.14) and Rs.20504 in BDL soil (with BCR of 1.28). In red gram cost of cultivation range between is Rs 52680/ha in DRL soil (with BCR of 1.14) and Rs. 9514/ha in DPL soil (with BCR of 1.3). In paddy cost of cultivation in DPL soil is Rs.53387/ha (with BCR of 1.6) and PGP soil in Rs.30141/ha (with BCR of 1.29) and onion cultivation in DPL soil is Rs 62108/ha (with BCR of 1.13). The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of Farm Yard Manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM. It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. Fertilizer applications are deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions; Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation. The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices. Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments. By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households. By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in maize (34.8 to 72.8%), cotton (32.5to 66.3 %), red gram (2.4 to 79.8 %), groundnut (0 to 7.4 %), paddy (12 to 67.8%) and green gram (0 to 6.7 %). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project
Not Available ; The land resource inventory of Siddapura Microwatershed was conducted using village cadastral maps and IRS satellite imagery on 1:7920 scale. The false colour composites of IRS imagery were interpreted for physiography and the physiographic delineations were used as base for mapping soils. The soils were studied in several transects and a soil map was prepared with phases of soil series as mapping units. Random checks were made all over the area outside the transects to confirm and validate the soil map unit boundaries. The soil map shows the geographic distribution and extent, characteristics, classification and use potentials of the soils in the microwartershed. The present study covers an area of 493 ha in Gundlupet taluk of Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka. The climate is semiarid and categorized as drought prone with an average annual rainfall of 734 mm of which about 254 mm is received during south –west monsoon, 268 mm during north-east and the remaining 212 mm during the rest of the year. An area of about 74 per cent is covered by soils, 25 per cent by forest and one per cent by others. The salient findings from the land resource inventory are summarized briefly below. The soils belong to 9 soil series and 24 soil phases (management units) and 9 land management units. The length of crop growing period is about 150 days starting from the 3rd week of June to 1st week of October. From the master soil map, several interpretative and thematic maps like land capability, soil depth, surface soil texture, soil gravelliness, available water capacity, soil slope and soil erosion were generated. Soil fertility status maps for macro and micronutrients were generated based on the surface soil samples collected at every 250 m grid interval. Land suitability for growing major agricultural and horticultural crops were assessed and maps showing the degree of suitability along with constraints were generated. About 65 per cent area is suitable for agriculture and 8 per cent not suitable for agriculture. About 21 per cent of the soils are moderately deep (75-100 cm) to very deep (>150 cm) and 53 per cent are shallow to moderately shallow (25-75 cm). About 16 per cent of the area has clayey soils at the surface, 56 per cent loamy soils and two per cent area has sandy soils. About 51 per cent gravelly soils (15-35 % gravel) and 23 per cent has very gravelly (35- 60% gravel) soils. About 57 per cent has soils that are very low (200 mm/m) available water capacity. About 65 per cent area is very gently sloping (1-3% slope) to gently sloping (3- 5%) lands and moderately sloping (5-10%) lands. An area of about 41 per cent has soils that are slightly eroded (e1), 24 per cent moderately eroded (e2) and 8 per cent soils are severely eroded (e3). An area of about 2 per cent has soils that are slightly acidic (pH 6.0-6.5); 14 per cent area has neutral (pH 6.5-7.3) and maximum area of about 80 per cent has soils that are slightly alkaline (pH 7.3 to 7.8) to strongly alkaline (pH 8.4 to 9.0). The Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the soils are dominantly 0.75%) in organic carbon. About 35 per cent of the soils are low (57 kg/ha) in available phosphorus. About 2 per cent of the soils are low (337 kg/ha) in available potassium. Available sulphur is low (20 ppm) in a very small area of less than one per cent. Available boron is low (0.5 ppm) in about 33 per cent area, medium (0.5-1.0 ppm) in 39 per cent area and high (>1.0 ppm) in less than one per cent area. Available iron is deficient in about 47 per cent area and sufficient in 27 per cent area. Available manganese and copper are sufficient in all the soils of the microwatershed. Available zinc is deficient (<0.6 ppm) in all the soils of the microwatershed. The land suitability for 27 major crops grown in the microwatershed were assessed and the areas that are highly suitable (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) are given below. It is however to be noted that a given soil may be suitable for various crops but what specific crop to be grown may be decided by the farmer looking to his capacity to invest on various inputs, marketing infrastructure, price and finally the demand and supply position. Land suitability for various crops in the Microwatershed Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Crop Suitability Area in ha (%) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Highly suitable (S1) Moderately suitable (S2) Sorghum 78 (16) 115 (23) Sapota 88 (18) 14 (3) Maize 88 (18) 105 (21) Guava 88 (18) 14 (3) Redgram 88 (18) 65 (13) Banana 80 (16) 18 (4) Horsegram 88 (18) 120 (24) Jackfruit 88 (18) - Field bean 80 (16) 63 (13) Jamun 80 (16) 8 (2) Groundnut 208 (42) 155 (31) Musambi 88 (18) - Sunflower 70 (14) 18 (4) Lime 88 (18) - Cotton 70 (14) 113(23) Cashew 88 (18) 14 (3) Onion 80 (16) 113 (23) Custard apple 88 (18) 136 (27) Potato 80 (16) 113 (23) Amla 88 (18) 136(27) Beans 80 (16) 113 (23) Tamarind 80 (16) 8 (2) Beetroot 80 (16) 113 (23) Marigold 88 (18) 120 (24) Turmeric 80 (16) 113 (23) Chrysanthemum 80 (16) 113 (23) Mango 80 (16) 8 (2) Apart from the individual crop suitability, a proposed crop plan has been prepared for the 9 identified LMUs by considering only the highly and moderately suitable lands for different crops and cropping systems with food, fiber and horticulture crops. Maintaining soil-health is vital to crop production and conserve soil and land resource base for maintaining ecological balance and to mitigate climate change. For this, several ameliorative measures have been suggested to these problematic soils like saline/alkali, highly eroded, sandy soils etc., Soil and water conservation treatment plan has been prepared that would help in identifying the sites to be treated and also the type of structures required. As part of the greening programme, several tree species have been suggested to be planted in marginal and sub-marginal lands and also in the hillocks, mounds and ridges. SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF FARM HOUSEHOLDS Baseline socioeconomic characterisation is prerequisite to prepare action plan for program implementation and to assess the project performance before making any changes in the watershed development program. The baseline provides appropriate policy direction for enhancing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. Methodology: Siddapura micro-watershed (Annurkeri sub-watershed, Gundlupet taluk, Chamarajanagar district) is located in between 11041' – 11043' North latitudes and 76039' – 76041' East longitudes, covering an area of about 584 ha. The micro-watershed is bounded by Maguvinahalli, Kebbepura, Hullepura, Kaligaudanahalli and Karle villages, with length of growing period (LGP) 120-150 days. We used soil resource map as basis for sampling farm households to test the hypothesis that soil quality influence crop selection, and conservation investment of farm households. The level of technology adoption and productivity gaps and livelihood patterns were analyses. The cost of soil degradation and ecosystem services were quantified. Results: The socio-economic outputs for the Siddapura micro-watershed (Annurkeri subwatershed, Gundlupet taluk, Chamarajanagar district) are presented here. Social Indicators Male and female ratio is 47.7 to 52.3 per cent to the total sample population. Younger age 18 to 50 years group of population is around 54.5 per cent to the total population. Literacy population is around 72.7 per cent. Social groups belong to scheduled caste (SC) is around 40.0 per cent. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the source of energy for a cooking among 90.0 per cent. About 50.0 per cent of households have a yashaswini health card. Majority of farm households (20.0 %) are having MGNREGA card for rural employment. Dependence on ration cards for food grains through public distribution system is around 90.0 per cent. Swach bharath program providing closed toilet facilities around 50.0 per cent of sample households. Institutional participation is only 18.3 per cent of sample households. Rural migration to unban centre for employment is prevalent among 2.3 per cent of farm households. Women participation in decisions making are around 30 per cent of households. 2 Economic Indicators The average land holding is 1.2 ha indicates that majority of farm households are belong to small and medium farmers. The dry land of 58.9 % and irrigated land 41.1 % of total cultivated land area among the sample farmers. Agriculture is the main occupation among 79.6 per cent and agriculture is the main and agriculture labour is subsidiary occupation for 15.9 per cent of sample households. The average value of domestic assets is around Rs.15613 per household. Mobile and television are popular media mass communication. The average value of farm assets is around Rs. 6597 per household, about 50 per cent of sample farmers own plough. The average value of livestock is around Rs. 24550 per household; about 52.8 per cent of household are having livestock. The average per capita food consumption is around 610.5 grams (1319.5 kilo calories) against national institute of nutrition (NIN) recommendation at 827 gram. Around 64.1 per cent of sample households are consuming less than the NIN recommendation. The annual average income is around Rs. 105779 per household. About 60.0 per cent of farm households are below poverty line. The per capita average monthly expenditure is around Rs.1374. Environmental Indicators-Ecosystem Services The value of ecosystem service helps to support investment to decision on soil and water conservation and in promoting sustainable land use. The onsite cost of different soil nutrients lost due to soil erosion is around Rs.774 per ha/year. The total cost of annual soil nutrients is around Rs.280107 per year for the total area of 492.6 ha. The average value of ecosystem service for food grain production is around Rs 30297/ha/year. Per hectare food grain production services is maximum in onion (Rs. 97066) followed by turmeric (Rs. 92988), maize (Rs. 24497), groundnut (Rs. 18437), sunflower (Rs. 11174), ragi (Rs. 17365), cotton (Rs. 6712), horse gram (Rs. 2392) and sorghum (Rs. 2654). The average value of ecosystem service for fodder production is around Rs. 1227/ ha/year. Per hectare fodder production services is maximum in maize (Rs. 1885/ha) followed by sorghum (Rs. 1780), horse gram (Rs. 1086), groundnut (Rs. 741) and ragi (Rs. 642). The data on water requirement for producing one quintal of grain is considered for estimating the total value of water required for crop production. The per hectare value of water used and value of water is maximum in cotton (Rs. 49758) followed by turmeric (Rs. 47298), maize (Rs. 46680), turmeric (Rs. 47298), 3 sunflower (Rs. 39492), onion (Rs. 26823), groundnut (Rs. 24050), horse gram (Rs. 21601) and ragi (Rs. 13066). Economic Land Evaluation The major cropping pattern is sunflower (10.5%), and cotton (5.2%), groundnut (5.2%), onion (6.1%), ragi (6.0%), safflower (0.9%), sorghum (14.2%), turmeric (23.2%), maize (18.6 %), sorghum (6.0%) and horse gram (10.1%). In Siddapura Microwatershed, major soil of Hindupura (HDR) series is having shallow soil depth cover around 20.36 % of area. On this soil farmers are presently growing horse gram (13.9 %), maize (36.6 %), sorghum (21.8 %) and sunflower (27.8%), Shivapura (SPR) are also having shallow soil depth cover around 7.81 % of area, the crops are onion (40.1%), and turmeric (59.9 %). Hallipura (HPR) soil series having moderately shallow soil depth cover around 10.09 % of areas, crops are cotton (50.0 %) and groundnut (50.0 %). Magoonahalli (MGH) soil series having moderately shallow soil cover around 5.46 % of area, crops are horse gram. Kallipura (KLP) soil series are having deep soil depth cover around 1.59 % of area. the major crops grown are turmeric. Kalligoudanahalli (KDH) soil series are having very deep soil depth covers around 11.63 % of area, the major crop grown is horse gram (3.8 %), maize (21.5 %), onion (10.7 %), ragi (24.8 %) and sorghum (24.8 %). The total cost of cultivation and benefit cost ratio (BCR) in study area for onion ranges between Rs.137827/ha in KDH soil (with BCR of 2.69) and Rs.8226/ha in SPR soil (with BCR of 1.08). In turmeric the cost of cultivation range between Rs. 11526/ha in SPR soil (with BCR of 1.33) and Rs.95749/ha in KLP soil (with BCR of 2.23). In horse gram the cost of cultivation range between Rs 36699/ha in KDH soil (with BCR of 1.02) and Rs.13355/ha in MGH soil (with BCR of 1.03). In maize the cost of cultivation range between Rs 45404/ha in HDR soil (with BCR of 1.30) and Rs.25557/ha in KDH soil (with BCR of 3.53). In sorghum the cost of cultivation in HDR soil is Rs.22877/ha (with BCR of 1.24). In sunflower the cost of cultivation in HDR soil is Rs.20053/ha (with BCR of 2.0). In cotton the cost of cultivation in HDR soil is Rs 38983/ha (with BCR of 1.17). In groundnut the cost of cultivation in HPR soil is Rs 23059/ha (with BCR 1.83) and ragi the cost of cultivation in HPR soil is Rs 14713/ha (with BCR of 2.22). The land management practices reported by the farmers are crop rotation, tillage practices, fertilizer application and use of farm yard manure (FYM). Due to higher wages farmer are following labour saving strategies is not prating soil and water conservation measures. Less ownership of livestock limiting application of FYM. 4 It was observed soil quality influences on the type and intensity of land use. More fertilizer applications are deeper soil to maximize returns. Suggestions Involving farmers is watershed planning helps in strengthing institutional participation. The per capita food consumption and monthly income is very low. Diversifying income generation activities from crop and livestock production in order to reduce risk related to drought and market prices. Majority of farmers reported that they are not getting timely support/extension services from the concerned development departments. By strengthing agricultural extension for providing timely advice improved technology there is scope to increase in net income of farm households. By adopting recommended package of practices by following the soil test fertiliser recommendation, there is scope to increase yield in onion (69.8 to 49.4 %), turmeric (14.0 %), horse gram (32.5 to 24.1 %), maize (55.9 to 40.5 %), sorghum (49.7 %), sunflower (31.7 %), cotton (27.7 %) and ragi (64.9 %). ; Watershed Development Department, Government of Karnataka (World Bank Funded) Sujala –III Project
Background International agencies such as the World Health Organisation have highlighted the potential of digital information and communications technologies to strengthen health systems, which are underpinned by the 'building blocks' of information, human resources, finances, commodities, leadership and governance, and service delivery. In high income countries, evidence of the positive impacts of 'eHealth' innovations on the cost-effectiveness of healthcare is growing and many governments are now providing incentives for their adoption. In contrast, the use of eHealth in developing countries has remained low and efforts to introduce these new approaches have experienced high failure rates. There is even scepticism regarding the feasibility of eHealth in low-resource settings, which may be hindered by high costs, indeterminate returns on investment, technical problems and socio-organisational barriers. More research is needed to document both the value of eHealth for strengthening resource-limited health systems and the challenges involved in their implementation and adoption, so that insights from such research may be used to inform future initiatives. While many studies of eHealth for patient care in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) are taking place, evidence of its role in improving administrative processes such as financial management is lacking, despite the importance of 'good governance' (transparency and accountability) for ensuring strong and resilient health systems. The overall objective of this PhD was to elucidate the enablers, inhibitors and outcomes characterising the implementation and adoption of a modular eHealth system in a group of healthcare facilities in rural Malawi. The system included both clinical and billing modules. The specific objectives were (i) to understand the socio-technical, organisational and change management factors facilitating or hindering the implementation and adoption of the eHealth system, (ii) to assess the quality of data captured by the eHealth system compared with conventional paper-based records, and (iii) to understand how information within the eHealth system was used for service delivery, reporting and financial management. A further aim was to contribute to the corpus of mixed-methods case studies exploring eHealth system implementation processes and outcomes (including data quality) in LMIC. As described in the following chapters, the research also gave rise to unanticipated and serendipitous findings, which led to new lines of enquiry and influenced the theoretical perspectives from which the analysis drew. Methods Mixed-methods case study was used for the research, taking a 'soft-positivist' approach to analysis, which encompasses both inductive and deductive forms of enquiry. Two case studies were undertaken in rural Malawi: one at a 300-bed fee-for-service hospital, and the other at nine primary care health centres that surround the hospital. At the outset of the research, the 'logic model' underpinning the eHealth system implementation programme was mapped, based on formative scoping to articulate the goals and intentions of those commissioning and supplying the eHealth system, along with literature-informed theory. This provided a framework against which to evaluate the processes and outcomes of eHealth system implementation at the ten facilities. For the hospital case study (Case Study 1), a retrospective single-case embedded design was employed, with outpatient and inpatient departments being the two units of analysis. Qualitative data included document review and in-depth key informant interviews, while quantitative data was obtained from the web-based District Health Information System (DHIS2), patient files and the hospital's finance records. For the study of primary health centres (Case Study 2), a single-case embedded design was also used, with the rollout project as the case and the three units of analysis being 3 Early Adopter Facilities, 4 Late Majority facilities and 2 Laggard facilities. This case study used a prospective design, with data being collected 7 months and 24 months after implementation of the eHealth system due to a mismatch between the independent eHealth implementation project and the PhD research. Data sources included documentation screened against the criteria listed in the Performance of Routine Information System Management (PRISM) tools, information extracted from the eHealth system, health indicators drawn from DHIS2 and qualitative data from focus group discussions. In both case studies, framework analysis was used for qualitative data, while quantitative data was analysed by calculating data completeness, accuracy and agreement. Descriptive statistics and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used for analysing finance data in Case Study 1. Content analysis was also used to gain insights from Case Study 2. Results Based on the initial logic model, staff-, service delivery- and management-level outcomes were moderated through the organisational change management and socio-technical factors described below. Key organisational and process factors influencing system implementation Change management processes: Organisational strategies aimed at facilitating the introduction of the eHealth system included training clinical and clerical staff in the computer skills required to use it (see below) and adapting work processes to accommodate and optimise adoption. At the three health facilities where the billing module was implemented, the latter included introducing new procedures for providing electronic receipts to clients and service providers. At Madalo Hospital this also involved the creation of a new category of administrative staff with responsibility for managing the appropriate capture, entry and exchange of data using the system. However, such data clerks were only introduced within the inpatient department, whilst already over-burdened clinical staff in the outpatient department were expected to integrate the eHealth system into their existing work routines. Outpatient departments at the health centres resorted to task-shifting patient data entry roles from clinicians to lower-educated allied staff such as janitors and security guards. Infrastructure and security issues: Organisational enablers were infrastructural and policy interventions aimed at securing equipment and patient data. These included installations of locks and burglar-proof bars, enhanced engagement of security guards and frequent backup of data. An organisational intervention undertaken at the health centres was the introduction of backup batteries and solar power, aimed at providing a continuous electricity supply. However, problems with battery depletion, frequent connectivity interruptions between the client computers and the server and electricity fluctuations and outages, affected both the efficiency of the batteries and the practical utility of the eHealth system. Highly efficient nano-computing units were later introduced, to reduce electricity demands and improve the consistency of available power for the purposes of using the system. Socio-technical issues arising during the implementation process Technical/software problems: There were 24 problems identified with the eHealth system, encompassing its design flaws, security protocols, and hardware and database limitations. For instance, entry of patient data was in multiple windows needing to be minimised, passwords expired with no one at the facilities with rights to issue new passwords, there were frequent disconnections between the client computers and the server, and lists of drugs and indicators for reporting in its database were limited. Although health centre staff used the system for backup storage and retrieval of data, only Early Adopters reported use of the eHealth system's search function. Socio-technical issues: The technical problems outlined above resulted in a heavy reliance on paper records by the health centres, although centres varied in their attitude towards and persistence with eHealth system implementation, with Early Adopter sites overcoming most challenges. At the hospital, the eHealth system was subjected to such inappropriate use by staff that even establishing rules and an IT centre to regulate usage were ineffective, leading to a system crash in 2012 due to viruses and other malware. Such inappropriate use included staff depleting hospital server space by storing personal files (videos, music, pictures, games), being on Facebook instead of attending to patients, sharing of login credentials and not always logging off their account after use, and removal of cables from the computers. Leadership: At the hospital, there was strong management support for the eHealth system. In contrast, there were strong opinions from staff at Late Majority and Laggard facilities about the ineffective engagement of health facility "in-charges". Further, many system champions were senior staff and thus busier and more mobile, most often leaving the junior staff at the health centres, who were not formally trained, to be using the eHealth system. Training: Limitations in the scope and number of staff formally trained was perceived to be a barrier to eHealth system adoption at the health centres, particularly lack of training in basic troubleshooting and maintenance. Even peer training lacked follow-up formal training. At the hospital, developing an appropriately skilled cadre of system users was hindered by high staff turnover and departmental rotations, which required frequent rounds of basic training. Staff at the hospital and health centres were nevertheless happy about the computer knowledge they had gained as a result of the implementation programme, although most expressed a lack of confidence in using the eHealth system. Technical support: For reasons including those already outlined, staff requested support for a range of hardware and software problems, not all of which it was possible to fulfil in a timely way, due to lack of sufficient IT personnel. Lack of in-country technical support for the software was also a considerable barrier to progress, particularly for the IT team based at the hospital, requiring requests for changes to be passed to the parent company. In one attempt to address this, the rights to a partial version of the software was passed to a local foundation for onward management, however the software developers were unwilling to release the source code so that further enhancements and customisation could be made. Efforts to recruit more hospital IT workers and reorganising responsibilities were frustrated by high staff turnover among the IT team. As a result, response to calls from health centres for technical support by the IT team was said to be slow and ineffective (except at Late Majority Facilities), and there was no transfer of basic troubleshooting and minor repair skills from the IT team to the health facility staff. Perceived outcomes: Despite the challenges described above, some tracer outcomes of the eHealth system were detectable from the qualitative and numerical results, relating to data quality, service delivery, reporting and decision-making, and financial management. Perceived and measured outcomes of eHealth system implementation Documentation and associated workload: In both case studies, implementation of the eHealth system illuminated the dysfunctional paper-based system, particularly loss of documents. At the health centres (Case Study 2), only Early Adopters reported reduced administrative and patient care workload following eHealth implementation, while the other adopter groups reported increased workload due to dual use of paper and electronic systems, as well as staff shortage and high patient load. Data quality: Both case studies reported poor data quality in the eHealth system, mainly due to the dual use of the paper-based and electronic systems, and staff defaulting to using the paper-based system only. This was aggravated by infrastructure and leadership problems at the health centres. Across the health centres, completeness of outpatient registration data in the eHealth system was 82.4%, as compared to DHIS2 (100.0% for Early Adopters, 73.9% for Late Majority), equivalent to an average monthly omission of 1,271 clients. When compared to DHIS2 data at Madalo Hospital, outpatient registration data in the eHealth system was 76.0% complete, under-reporting by an average 577 clients per month. Compared with the hospital's paper-based records, inpatient registration and diagnosis data in the eHealth system, as entered by ward clerks, was 93.6% complete and 68.9% accurate. Service delivery (efficiency and patient experience): At Madalo Hospital, the eHealth system was reported to have made retrieval of patients' paper files faster, as the implementation project had also led to changes in the hospital's filing system. This new filing system also facilitated retrieval of data for patients with lost paper records, and allowed linking of patients' outpatient and inpatient records. Reported service delivery improvements at the health centres included enhanced ability for tracing patients, treatment continuity, identifying the correct patient, ensuring patient confidentiality, keeping health workers alert and available, following clinical protocols, identifying the need to change prescription for (or refer) a recurrent patient, and reportedly showing the patient that the provider was paying attention. Improvements in patient experience were perceived to be through avoiding the need for patient details to be re-entered at subsequent visits, better management of queues, and patients feeling more understood by the service provider and having more confidence in the services. Perceived negative patient experiences were associated with staff members' slow typing skills and unfamiliarity with the eHealth system, dual entry of patient information into both the electronic and paper systems, extra steps added to the patient journey through the care process, and disrupted patient-provider interaction. Efficiency of reporting: After its implementation at the hospital site, the eHealth system had become routinely used to generate data for measuring quality of care, and partly for national reporting purposes (HMIS). Customised reports for the hospital were created and used for decisions such as allocation of wards, advocacy and funding applications. In contrast, all the primary healthcare facilities were still using paper registers to compile HMIS reports, a few in combination with the eHealth system, because of lack of knowledge of the reporting module, poor design of the system's reports, and disruptions in electricity and network connections to the server. Management of finances: Financial management was reported to have improved at Madalo Hospital due to better-quality data capture and tracking of service charges, separation of billing and receiving roles by recruiting ward clerks, enhanced oversight by management, and fraud prevention through greater transparency and accountability. Although median monthly revenue was significantly higher after eHealth system implementation (P=0.024), micro- and macro-contextual factors confounded this effect, and the descriptive and qualitative data revealed that genuine improvement only came about after recruitment of ward clerks towards the end of the study period. At the health centres, the eHealth system reportedly helped staff in the accounts department with billing, the facility in-charges with financial oversight, and clients with more trust in printed receipts. Conclusion Converging the results of these two case studies illustrates the potential of eHealth to strengthen LMIC health systems through developing human resource capacity (skills, staff roles), facilitating service delivery, and improving financial management and governance. However, realising such improvements is dependent upon understanding the socio-technical interactions mediating the integration of new systems into organisational processes and work practices, and implementing appropriate change management interventions. The results of this study suggest that, for effective implementation and adoption of eHealth systems, healthcare leaders should (1) recruit data entry clerks to relieve clinical staff, improve workflow and avoid data fraud, (2) facilitate appropriate data use among system users and an information culture at the facilities, and (3) strengthen knowledge and skills transfer from eHealth system developers to local implementers and system champions, to optimise responsiveness and ensure sustainability. Further interdisciplinary research is needed to obtain additional insights into factors affecting the quality of eHealth data and its use in the management of LMIC health systems, including the role of social, professional and technological influences on financial good-governance.
