Portrait Of The Year

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 10

Portrait Of The Year

IBy SIMON KAVANAUGH}

The watcher (let us imagine) turned from his instruments and gazed out across the forlorn red sands of Mars. Another observation of another Earth-year was complete. Another record of the strange shifting patterns. and gathering turbulences on the distant, cloud-wrapped planet was ready for logging. Did the zany jumble that was Earth Year 1960 make any kind of sense to Earthmen? Were they trying to blow up their little world or escape from it for ever? What kind of sense could even he sift from it all, in cosmic prospective across the vast span of the light years? The watcher .opened his logbook and, for the benefit of Martian posterity, began to -try. Africa the Storm Centre From the first days, Africa was the storm centre. The clouds already hung low over the dark but fast-awakening continent. The year was scarcely born before the wind blew, too. The wind of change, the British Prime Minister,. Mr Macmillan christened it, going there to feel its keen edge for himself. It blew in South Africa, where a mass treason trial was just resuming; over dawning dreams of independence all the way to Algeria, riot-torn and strikebound in the protracted agony of her problem. Outside a hotel in the African township of Blantyre, the wind fanned a spark into an angry blaze when there were protests (later declared unwarranted) that the police had ill-treated demonstrating Africans. And across the world, beyond the wind’s reach, men dived to a record depth in a United States Navy bathyscaphe, and a small female monkey in a United States rocket climbed into space. In the second month, guns in Britain crashed out the good news of a boy prince born: the first child to a reigning British Sovereign for over a century; and again, to announce the betrothal of a Royal Princess to Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones, a photographer. South African Violence March; and the wind had a rawer bite. Rifles cracked out in Sharpeville in the African Transvaal: 72 dead and 181 wounded in a demonstration against natives’

compulsory passes. The stain of violence spread fast over South Africa: stonings, police raids, states of emergency, arrests. A 901 b satellite, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, was sent to escape it all, circle the sun, earth and Venus, and course on for 100,000 years. \ Then, in Johannesburg, in April, a pistol blazed. Dr. Verwoerd staggered from a platform after opening the Union Exposition, shot twice in the face. A white farmer was detained.

Anger in Britain, too: Blue Streak abandoned as a military weapon after millions of pounds spent. There was Opposition censure, and pressure for a committee of inquiry. The U-2

But on May 5 the vortex rolled north and east, to settle about the Kremlin’s towers: obedient to the behest of that cunning old storm-raiser, Nikita Khrushchev, as he announced triumphantly his country’s capture of the American U-2 pilot, Gary Powers. Deep depression over America, sunk in the involuntary torpor of a waning Presidency. And deeper depression still, as Russia flung into orbit a 4J-ton spaceship satellite with a dummy man aboard. Then black gloom over all: a serious hitch at the long-awaited Summit conference in Paris, ds Mr Khrushchev refused even to begin without -an American apology for the U-2 flight. And the year’s best hope of immortality, as well as the world’s best hope of peace, collapsed in the ruins of the Summit that never was. The clouds broke briefly for the openihg of the vast, symbolic Kariba Dam on the Zambesi; and for the fairytale wedding in London of the Princess and Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones. And not even Mr Khrushchev could hold those clouds for long. Mass anger drew them over Israel, with the announcement of the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the former Gestapo chief and Jew exterminator. The Congo By June they were back over Africa, denser and more menacing still as Patrice Lumumba launched the Congo into its bloody independence with an attack in

King Baudouin’s presence on Belgium’s colonial record. Ghana became a republic in July. But the Congo became a bloodbath with European families in pitiful rout, Mr Lumumba grappling with his mutinous Force Publique, Mr Tshombe declaring rich Katanga Province totally independent. United Nations troops began their uneasy vigil over the sweltering bedlam that threatened the peace of the world. And warningly, from American waters, a Polaris missile hissed up for the first time from the underwater hull of a submerged nuclear submarine.

Russia capped that one with the successful launching of another 4j-ton rocket, to hurl into space a capsule carrying a rabbit and Belka and Strelka (dogs). And Moscow handed out a batch of stiff diplomatic Notes about the shot-down RB-47. In Britain the death of Aneurin Bevan, the well-loved enfant terrible of the Left, left the Labour Opposition sunk in the gloom of bedrock discord over nationalisation and The Bomb.

August: a ridge of high pressure over Rome for the opening of the Olympic Games; another over strife-torn Cyprus, peaceful and an independent republic at last.

But strength was locked still against strength in the heaving Congo turmoil. The demonstrations were mountingly hostile now against Mr Lumumba, clamouring for the withdrawal of United Nations forces and patently working on Moscow’s, wavelength. Moscow stole the scene again, as Powers was tried for two days in a blaze of global publicity, then sentenced to 10 years’ loss of liberty. The world wrote off the last dim hope of further useful talk between Mr Eisenhower in his twilight and Mr Khrushchev at his zenith.

But in America new hope of accomplishment was born, as young Jack Kennedy, aged 43, and a Roman Catholic, worked his way towards the youngest-ever occupancy of the White House. The sharp Congo drama became desperate tragi-comedy as Mr Lumumba was reported deposed, arrested, escaped, and arrested again. The United Nations mission

tottered; the strength of Russia and the United Arab Republic hung dangerously poised. America was reported to be ready to send in forces. The dying year mustered a last spurt. Nigeria managed independence bloodlessly. Mr Kennedy won and the apathetic spell that gripped America was broken. There was talk of new Summit hopes and even a new look at Communist China. . But Russia and China,, for the moment, were locked in ideological dispute at a protracted and highly secret Kremlin conference. General de Gaulle, landing In Algeria in revived hope, triggered off lethal rioting that left him pale with - disappointment. Airliners collided disastrously over Brooklyn and Munich; a brand-new American aircraftcarrier blazed; there was trouble in Laos, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia rushed home from Brazil in time to quell a tricky coup. The watcher closed his book. Perhaps he would recommend continuing the Earth-watch after all. If they could survive all that without blowing themselves into cosmic dust, there was clearly hope for them yet.—(Express Feature Service.)