Radio Script #1175

Little Talks on Common Things
October 29, 1978

Today people are disturbed about government spending at all levels – local, state and national. We all realize that it costs a lot of money to provide the things most of us agree government should supply. We do not object to assistance to those truly in need, be they elderly or younger citizens. We certainly want the veterans who risked their lives in the nation’s wars to have adequate provision as they return to civilian life, and we especially want those who suffered wounds or imprisonment to be cared for. We want adequate, modern education for our children. We must have the services of police and fire departments. What we object to is the waste of much money at all these levels of government, especially the heavy expense of overhead – the salaries paid to people just to administer the programs.

Competent economists tell us that there is extravagant overspending in about every department of our federal government. Recently the Congressional Record supplied the figures for total expenditures of foreign aid between 1947 and 1977. Since the second World War that total has mounted to 241 billion. Certainly the aid we extended to some nations did a great deal of good. The Marshall Plan was especially successful. It would be stupid to argue that we should not have contributed to save the world from economic collapse. But we have every right to ask the question, was that total of $241 billion in the three decades since World War II substantially justified?

Not only was much of it questionable. Some of it certainly contributed to present low status of the American dollar in world trade. Some of that aid was not only poured down the drain, it actually went to help nations that turned against us. The largest single recipient was Vietnam. Entirely apart from the enormous expense of keeping our armed forces in that country, we gave the government of Vietnam since 1945 a total of $23 billion. We gave to South Korea $13 billion. Believe it or not we gave Cuba $100 million before we shut down on Castro. The third largest recipient was Israel, which got a total of $10 billion.

Then note what we gave away to the now rich oil-producing countries: $2 billion to Iran, one billion to Iraq, $325 million to Saudi Arabia, $100 million to Yemen, $275 million to Venezuela, and $230 million to Libya.

Then consider the aid we have given to outright Communist nations: $200 million to Czechoslovakia, $50 million to Hungary, $540 million to Poland, three billion to Yugoslavia, and most astonishing of all, $200 million to the Soviet Union.

On the floor of the Senate, Senator Scott pointed out that the $241 billion of direct foreign aid was only a fraction of total foreign assistance donated by the United States. He said if our contributions to a number of international organizations such as the World Bank were included, the total should exceed $600 billion. He called attention, for one item, to the salary of the President of the World Bank, $116,000 a year. Senator Scott concluded, “I doubt if more than a few members of Congress understand the entire amount this country is still spending to aid foreign nations around the world.”

Foreign aid is just one area of government finance where savings might well be made. How long can we continue to increase every year the total of our national debt? The federal budget for fiscal 1979, the period from October 1, 1978 to September 30, 1979, is the astonishing figure of $555 billion, in expected expenditures,and only $517 billion is expected in revenues – a deficit in one single year of $38 billion. Our national debt is already $798 billion. In October 1979 it will be $836 billion. If the increase in debt continues at the present rate, it will be more than a trillion dollars by 1983. Is there not more than sufficient reason for taxpayers’ concern and even revolt allover our nation?

Now let us go to the more usual theme of this program – Kennebec Valley events of long ago.

For many years it has been the task of college students to write English compositions. What some of them wrote about is revealed in one written by Louise Coburn of Skowhegan, when she was a Colby student in 1875, more than 100 years ago. Many of my listeners know that Miss Coburn was one of the most prominent woman our state has ever produced. She was a famed writer in both prose and verse. She developed the attractive Coburn Park in Skowhegan where are planted trees from allover the world. She was the first woman trustee of Colby College. Inheriting considerable family wealth, Miss Coburn was a philanthropist whose money helped many worthy causes. She was especially generous with the school that bore the family name, Coburn Classical Institute.

The composition that Miss Coburn wrote in 1875 concerned a New England author then living at the height of his fame, and one whose writings, both prose and poetry, Miss Coburn valued highly. The writer was James Russell Lowell, whose travels in the Maine wilderness became nearly as famous as those of his contemporary, Henry David Thoreau.

Miss Coburn wrote thus: “James Russell Lowell is about the easiest and most delightful prose writer of all our American galaxy. When we undertake to read the works of some writers, we brace ourselves as if for a conflict, and hope for pleasure that results from victory. We finish said reading with a sense of duty done. Other works get their chief merit from their soporific power. They may be good for nothing else, but they are at least good sleep providers.

“Then there are other books which hold us with strange fascination, as a snake does a bird. Yet, when we have finished them and the spell is broken, we find that we have gained nothing but a sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction. There are other books so full and running over with wisdom and witticism, where thought pursues thought, and metaphor crowds after metaphor, with such rapidity that they need to be taken in exceedingly homeopathic doses, like first class wedding cake. Of those books one feels inclined to say they are just too good.

“There are a few books which seem at first almost commonplace, but whose every perusal discloses new beauties, until they become our ideal of literary excellence. Among such are some of Shakespeare’s Plays. Some books lift us up to the stars and drop us so suddenly that we see stars. They transport us into an unreal existence, which seems so real that it makes life seem false.

“With all this, there is one kind of book which seems to be the most restful, the most thoroughly delightful of all. This kind is done by the writer who is drawn to record a little chat with his readers. Everything he says is just what you would have said yourself, if you had such thoughts. Among such writers we class James Russell Lowell.” That ends Miss Coburn’s
composition.

Alas for what passing years do to fame. While Lowell is respected today by students of American Literature, scarcely anyone else reads him. As for myself, I never cared for his prose, but memory brings back some lines from one of his poems.

“Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the stress of strife and conflict,
For the good or evil side
Right forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne.
But that scaffold sways the future,
And in the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows,
Keeping watch upon his own.”

In this day when new church buildings are taking spectacular form, it is interesting to note what at least one commentator had to say about such buildings 125 years ago in 1854. The comment was made by the editor of a magazine called the American Baptist Memorial. The writer said: “Now when the principles of science are applied to many areas of life, why is it that church edifices do not show more improvement? In respect to form, radical changes are in order. The present usual form of our churches has many inconveniences. The octagonal shape offers more space in proportion to material used than does any other. Every speaker knows the difference between a compact and a scattered audience, and how much better they are impressed when within a circle of influence. People seated in remote corners of our quadrangular buildings fail either to hear or see the speaker.

In church meant to endure should have its walls of stone. A wall made of lime and sand (evidently he never heard the word ‘concrete’) will do, but stones, artistically cut, add much to solidity. Of course, oyster shells, brick bats, cinders, or anything hard, will serve the same purpose as small stones. All that is needed is something for the lime to stick to. “The foundation must be the same as for any other house. It must be solid and set in ground below frost level. The foundation must not give, or the building will crack, whether it is made of wood or stone. As for inside walls, after you have laid your foundation and have put in your floor timbers, procure pine boards an inch thick and make your inside walls.”

Primitive as those directions were, they produced some long lasting meetinghouses more than a hundred years ago. There is one exception, however. While numerous octagonal (eight-sided) buildings were erected – at least one was the post office in Liberty, Maine – I do not recall ever having seen an octagonal church building. The nearest to it is the shape of the new Notre Dame Church on Waterville’s Silver Street.

And with that we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1978