STANDARDS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY FOR THE FOREIGN SERVICE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP61-00357R000100180003-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2013
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 5, 1959
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

1959
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/08/07: CIA-RDP61-00357R000100180003-9
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE 2985
balance the the budget by cutting down on what
the President has asked for in foreign aid.
Both parties have now worked themselves
Into a jam which, considering the state of
the world, is not an inspiring thing to look at.
The Republicans have gotten themselves
into a position where they must save on
spending for native American needs?such
as education and public facilities, almost
certainly also the national defense. But the
Republicans, as the great savers, are im-
plored by the President to spend abroad on
foreign aid the sums they would like to
spend here at home.
The Democrats on the other hand have
worked themselves into the embarrassing
position where they, the party of Wilson,
Roosevelt, Truman, and Stevenson, are
threatening to save on foreign aid in order
to spend more at home.
Surely, there is something inherently ab-
surd in a situation where the Republicans
are the globalists and the Democrats are the
isolationists. Could such a topsy-turvy sit-
uation have developed if politicians in both
parties had not forgotten the realities of our
national needs while they play politics with
the budget and with taxes?
What has happened to all these earnest
and patriotic men? They have become en-
tangled in a dogma which few of the Mem-
bers of Congress and none of the leaders in
Washington have the courage to challenge.
What is the dogma? Is it that the budget
should be balanced? No. The budget
should if possible be balanced, and if that is
impossible, there should nevertheless be a
serious attempt made to balance it.
The dogma which confuses the whole sit-
uation and the position of both parties is
that the budget must be balanced without
raising the income tax rates. The crux of
the matter is the acceptance by both sets
'of political leaders of the dogma that the
income tax rates of 1954 are sacrosanct.
Once that dogma is accepted, the budget
cannot be balanced except by two equally
unacceptable methods. One is to balance
it by taxes on consumption. This is some-
thing that Congress will not now do. The
other method is to balance the budget at
the expense of our national defense and of
our foreign policy, and of our internal public
needs and development. This is something
that the country cannot afford to do.
Here, having accepted the dogma about
the 1954 income tax rates, we have locked
ourselves in a room from which there is no
decent exist.
What is in prospect now, unless there is
a revival of national leadership at both ends
of Pennsylvania Avenue, is, first, a budget
which does not balance because Congress
and the President between them will not
produce the taxes necessary to balance it;
second, a budget which does not support
our national interests at home and abroad,
and will, therefore, have to be supplemented
in the near future by extraordinary appro-
priations.
While this is going on we shall have to pay
the price of having neglected our national
(By Walter Lippmann) needs because we were too soft and too
The President's budget is now a football timid to tax ourselves enough.
In a political scrimmage. Both parties are
pretending that they are struggling to bal-
, -
ance the budget. -In fact neither the admin- / STANDARDS OF FOREIGN LAN-
istration nor the Congress shows any sign GUAGE PROFICIENCY FOR THE
of being willing to vote the taxes which are FOREIGN SERVICE
absolutely essential if the budget is to be
balanced.
As of now, both parties regard as untouch-
able the income tax rates which were fixed
in 1954, the date of the Eisenhower reduc-
tion of taxes. The President's budget plan,
if we accept some rather fancy calculations,
can be brought into balance?but only if
Congress will raise postal rates and increase
the gasoline taxes. As Congress is certain to
reject the new taxes, the official theory ,of
the Democrats seems to be that they can
I look forward to his report, and hope
that it will result in affirmative action
by the Congress.
Likewise, I believe that we should
examine carefully the tax on capital
gains, various excises, and tax treatment
of different groups and individuals on the
?
basis of special distinctions.
Mr. President, I do not wish to have it
thought that because of my advocacy of
the four tax proposals which I have just
discussed that I have become a victim
of the balanced-budget fetish.
I do not believe that there is anything
sacrosanct about any item now in the
President's budget. Nor do I believe
that a program outside the President's
arbitrary framework is untouchable.
The administration has created a mythi-
cal balanced budget which was achieved
on paper a year and half before it was
possible to actually balance the books?
and with heavy reliance on revenue
measures not yet law, for example, the
motor-fuels tax increase.
Mr. President, I wish to emphasize the
point that even the present budget,
which has been sent to Congress by the
White House, for $77 billion, cannot be
regarded as balanced unless Congress
increases motor fuel taxes and increases
postal rates. Two of the bills which I
have introduced today are intended to
accomplish that purpose. Therefore, I
believe it is wise that Members of the
_ Senate recognize the basic, unassailable
fact that we are not talking about a bal-
anced budget of even $77 billion unless
two of the revenue measures which I
have introduced here are enacted into
law.
The fundamental purpose of the
budget is to weigh "opportunity costs,"
the price of giving up one thing so as
to do something deemed of greater im-
portance, the division of resources be-
tween the public and the private sectors
of the economy, between competing pro-
grams within the budgetary framework.
The fact that a particular program
has accumulated a hoary tradition of
congressional support is no argument in
itself for its continued Federal backing.
The budgetary procedure is one of re-
view and allocation. It should not be
stultified by habit or pressure.
Nor do I wish to leave the impression
that concern with the questions of in-
flation or deficit spending has caused me
to lose sight of the problems of full em-
ployment and maximum growth which
face us today.
EMPLOYMENT, GROWTH GOALS VITAL
In this session, as in the past, I urge
enactment of a broader housing pro-
gram, liberalization of unemployment
compensation, passage of a depressed
areas bill to relieve those living in sec-
tions of chronic unemployment, increase
and extension of the minimum wage law.
I again support measures to provide Fed-
eral assistance to the States in classroom
construction, extend Federal help offered
airports, authorize construction of water
control projects. All of these measures
will have a beneficial effect on growth
and employment and will tend to in-
crease tax revenues and aid in solving
problems of stagnation which have ap-
peared in the "post-recession" economy.
But while I recognize these facts, I
am disturbed by the continued reluc-
tance to seek new revenue sources. In-
creasing concern is being shown as to
placement of the public debt. There ex-
ists the possibility that debt monetiza-
tion may increase through the commer-
cial banking system more rapidly than
economic growth, thus supplying a po-
tential source of inflation.
Interest and service charges involved
in bond financing add to the cost of the
Program to be implemented. These costs
benefit directly only the lenders. Inter-
est payments in fiscal year 1960 are esti-
mated at $8,096 million. In fiscal year
1955 the figure was $6,438 million. In
5 years interest costs increased over 20
percent. Today interest payments rep-
resent 10.5 percent of total budget ex-
penditures?more than we will spend on
all the Federal functions of commerce
and housing, natural resources, and la-
bor and welfare.
Mr. President, that proportion of GNP
represented by nondefense expenditures
by the Federal Government has declined
every year since fiscal year 1954 with the
exception of 1958 when special stimu-
latory measures were taken to aid the
economy in recovering from the reces-
sion. I believe that if we are to effec-
tively provide the goods and services
which our country needs, we must con-
sider increasing that share of resources
allocated to the public sector through
taxation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes
once said: "Taxes are what we pay for
civilized society."
I share with Governor Nelson Rocke-
feller of New York the view that we
should not shove off onto the backs of
future generations our own burdens to-
day. They will have plenty of problems
of their own. Are we self-sacrificing
enough to meet the test of the 20th cen-
tury? This question is implicit in the
revenue-raising measures I have intro-
duced in the Senate this afternoon.
In his thoughtful syndicated column
for March 5, Mr. Walter Lippmann has
called for higher taxes in order to meet
our ever-rising duties in our own land
and in the world. This column appeared
here in the Washington Post and Times-
Herald and in the Oregonian of Port-
land, Oreg. I ask unanimous consent,
Mr. President, that it be printed in the
RECORD with my remarks.
\There being no objection, the article
was ordered to be printed in the RECORD,
as follows:
THE STULTTFYING DOGMA
Mr. SALTONSTALL. Mr. President,
last Monday I introduced for myself
and the distinguished Senator from
Montana [Mr. MANSFIELD] a bill (S.
1243) dealing withloreign language pro-
ficiency standards and training for the
Foreign Service of the United States.
The bill also contains provisions de-
signed to facilitate recruitment for the
Foreign Service. ,
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2986 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
The United States has come of age in
the past two decades. We have once
and for all joined the world. America's
detached and distant situation, as
Washington called it in his Farewell
Address, is gone like yesterday's snows.
And gone with it is any possibility of
following Washington's advice to steer
clear of the foreign world.
Largely because of the recentness of
our advent to the position we now oc-
cupy in the world, our country is in a
comparatively immature stage in pre-
paring its people for life as citizens of a
leading international power. By and
large American educational processes
and family life are still inner directed
relative to the rest of the world. There
are, however, many developments in
education which are turning our people
more and more to an "outer directed"
orientation vis-a-vis other nations and
their people.
Let me mention a few:
In January 1948, Congress passed the
U.S. Information and Educational Ex-
change?Smith-Mundt?Act, Public Law
80-402, which gave the Government per-
manent authority to engage in world-
wide educational and cultural exchanges
with the people of other countries. The
semiannual reports of the Secretary of
State and of the U.S. Advisory Commis-
sion on Educational Exchange contain
a review of the manifold programs and
activities under the act.
Last year marked the 10th year of
educational exchanges under the world
renowned Fulbright Act, Public Law
79-584.
The program of university contracts
abroad for technical assistance, admin-
istered by the International Cooperation
Administration, has been in operation
under the Mutual Security Act since
1951.
Title VI of the National Defense Edu-
cation Act of 1958, Public Law 85-864,
established a program to -further the
teaching of modern foreign languages
not generally taught in this country and
to provide for studies necessary for a
full understanding of the areas in which
such languages are commonly used.
Several institutions in my State of
Massachusetts are leaders in various
fields of international studies. Among
these are my own alma mater, Harvard
University, which has a host of programs
and activities at the undergraduate and
graduate levels; the University of Massa-
chusetts, which is participating in fac-
ulty-exchange programs in Japan and
Venezuela under ICA and USIA, respec-
tively; Tufts College and its Fletcher
School of Diplomacy; Boston University,
which has one of the Nation's leading
African area studies programs; Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology and its
Center for International Studies, which
has done excellent work under contract
to the Foreign Relations Committee;
Clark University, a leader in the study of
geography; Newton College of the Sacred
Heart, Mount Holyoke; Radcliffe, Smith,
and Wellesley Colleges with well-estab-
lished international student-exchange
programs; Brandeis University with its
Wien international scholarship program,
and its Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and
Judaic. studies; Amherst College with its
Merrill Center for Economics at which
international summer seminars on major
economic problems are held.
Recently I have been corresponding
with Father Vincent R. Dolbec, A.A.,
dean of the faculty of Assumption Col-
lege, about its newly proposed summer
institutes in Russian and French lan-
guages and culture. The school has a
proud reputation for its foreign-studies
effort.
Only a few days ago I conferred with
Dr. Glenn A. Olds, president of Spring-
field College, and heard something of the
promising new projects which ? he is
planning there.
Plainly, more and more is being done
in America in the development of pro-
grams of international education, re-
search, and study, whose long-run effect
will be felt throughout the fabric of our
society in giving all our citizens an
orientation consistent with ? the role in
the world which our Nation must play.
Similar influences stem from the con-
tinually expanding oversea operations
of American business enterprises and the
steadily increasing activities of our many
nongovernmental, informal educational
organizations.
However, we would be deluding our-
selves if we failed to recognize that there
is room for much more to be done. We
are indeed fortunate that the chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
the distinguished Senator from Arkan-
sas (Mr. FULBRIGHT] , recognizes this..
The bill (S:1205) which he filed on Feb-
ruary 26, to amend the National Defense
Education Act of 1958 to provide ad-
vanced training in foreign countries dur-
ing summer vacation for teachers of fort-
eign languages, is an imaginative and
constructive proposal which deserves
promp and favorable consideration by
the Congress.
. The educational activities which are
going on and which are being planned
in America are but a small proportion
of all that will have to be done before
the vast majority of our citizens will be
globally oriented; before our young peo-
ple will come to regard an oversea ca-
reer with- the same interest and alacrity
as they now view domestic careers. I
commend to all Senators for study the
hearing of the Foreign Relations Com-
mittee held February 18 at which Dean
Harlan Cleveland, dean of the Maxwell
Graduate School of Citizenship and Pub-
lic Affairs, Syracuse University, and two
of his associates discussed in most stim-
ulating fashion the subject of the over-
sea Americans.
During the course of the hearing, Dean
Cleveland made the following observa-
tions in talking about the urgency of
changing the attitudes of our citizens to
make them more compatible with' the
role of our Nation in the world:
I am also painfully aware as an educator
that there is a certain cycle in growing peo-
ple, as there is in other forms of agriculture,
and that if we have an outstanding person-
nel, oversee personnel service, including the
Foreign Service and other forms of oversea
_ civilian service in a generation, we will have
to operate with the greatest urgency today
in growing the kinds of people that will have
to make up that service.
? ? ?
March 5
So the first thing is to put it on a long-
range basis, and the second thing is to estab-
lish enough training and education programs
around the country to begin to produce a
real pool of qualified people.
I think there is much wisdom in these
observations by Dean Cleveland. Per-
haps their principal significance is their
implication for the Foreign Service of the
United States and our other govern-
mental oversea operations, for they must
recruit their personnel from the ranks
of young men and women with the out-
looks and qualifications which today's
American education and family life im-
part to them. Until time and hard work
have wrought the transformation in out-
look and qualification of our citizens so
as to create a real pool of first-rate over-
sea emissaries, it seems inevitable that
there will have to be considerable orien-
tation and language training of Amer-
icans who are to serve in our Govern-
ment's oversea operations.
The principal center for such training
within the Government is the Foreign
Service Institute, which is doing a fine
job in its crucial work.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous con-
sent to have printed at this point in my
remarks two interesting, recent maga-
zine articles about the Foreign Service
Institute.
There being no objection, the articles
were ordered to be printed in the RECORD,
as follows:
[From the Reader's Digest, February 1959]
OUR OVERSEAS TASK FORCE IN MUFTI
(By John Stuart Martin)
In a Japanese port, a brisk, Michigan-bred
woman strides into a police station near the
waterfront. She exchanges greetings with
her good friend, the desk sergeant, and
listens to what is troubling him this even-
ing: Some American seamen have wrecked a
tavern and have been locked up. Riding
herd On such cases has long been one of this
lady's specialties as a I.S. consul charged
with matters maritime.
In New Delhi, India, a U.S. attach?ho
can read and speak Hindi pores over stacks
of Blitz, a virulently anti-American journal.
His task: To find out the editor's grievances
and then try to clear up his misconceptions.
Somewhere in southeast Asia, a U.S. con-
sular official broadcasts a radio warning:
"Attention, all American citizens. Atten-
tion. Call the U.S. consulate at once."
With Red guerrillas approaching his area, he
is preparing an emergency evacuation of
American residents.
' In the Foreign Service of the United States
are about 4,500 such people, counting those
on duty in State Department offices at home.
Serving about 12 years abroad to 3 state-
side, they staff 278 Foreign Service posts in
87 foreign lands.
Their duties are of two basic kinds: Diplo-
matic?maintaining friendly relations with
foreign governments; and consular?protect-
ing American lives, rights, trade, and prop-
erty throughout the world. Ranging in rank
from ambassador down through minister to
first, second, and third secretary, and from
consul general to consul and vice consul,
they are the unarmed custodians of our na-
tional honor and interest wherever our flag
flies on a guest basis.
The instruments they use are mainly psy-
chological and economic, ranging from mon-
ey grants to cultural exchanges, from infor-
mation and propaganda to farm aid. The
job involves everything from making ar-
rangements for Danny Kaye or Marian An-
derson on a good-will tour to explaining
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1959
AR
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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE 2987
Little Rock, juvenile delinquency, or Holly-
wood absurdities.
Recently I went to Washington to learn
what kind's of people are now entering our
Foreign Service, and how the corps is being
trained for its crucial work. I was aware of
the criticism that has been directed' at our
overseas representatives: That they are
drawn from the most privileged groups, that
their training prepares then!' to deal more
with social amenities than with the realities
of the cold war.
I found that in the last few years the
entire concept of ' foreign sevice has been
revitalized, thanks to the potent stimulus of
the Wriston report of 1954, the personnel-
policy study headed by Henry M. Wriston,
then president of Brown University. Except
at the very top, where the President still
enjoys latitude in choosing Secretaries of
State and Ambassadors as his personal rep-
resentatives, entry into the Foreign Service
is no longer possible through influence or
affluence. From the bottom up the corps
Is entirely career, wide open, and highly
competitive.
More than 4,000 candidates annually take
the tough entrance exams at 65 educational
centers throughout the country. Only
about 150 are selected. No college degree is
required, but usually some 65 percent of the
winners have not only B.A.'s but M.A.'s, and
5 percent have Ph. D.'s. Average age is 26.
Men outnumber women 15 to 1, but able
women are prized.
Those selected through the written exams
are screened orally for an exacting combi-
nation of traits: leadership, mental and
moral fiber, special flair for languages, skill
in political analysis. The men and women
finally chosen are a remarkable cross section
of the country's young talent, and could
almost certainly climb fast in other profes-
sions. In the Foreign Service their pay be-
gins at about $100 per week, and they know
that 12 or 15 years must pass before that
figure is doubled. The knowledge of their
eliteness, plus the realization that they are
performing a vital service, must be a large
share of their reward.
To the Foreign Service Institute, founded
in 1946, is entrusted the job of turning these
new recruits into accomplished diplomats.
Operating today with a budget commensu-
rate with its importance in our national life,
the Institute has become a highly profes-
sional college, where making friends and in-
fluencing people on a world scale is ap-
proached as a fine art.
Now housed in new quarters a couple of
miles up the Potomac from the Pentagon,
the Foreign Service Institute is headed by
Harold Boles Hoskins, 63, a sharp-witted
former textile executive with years of for-
eign-trade experience. To its old basic-
training course for new Foreign Service offi-
cers there has been added a refresher course
for promising midcareer people. Atop that,
there is now a course for seniors who are
eligible and needed to fill the highest For-
eign Service posts.
The basic course for Foreign Service re-
cruits lasts 12 weeks. It teaches the Serv-
ice's history and its place among other Gov-
ernment agencies. Packed in tightly are
lectures and seminars on large subjects like
"Answering Criticisms of the United States
Abroad," "Philosophy of World Labor
Groups," Middle East problems, Communist
strategy, international law. For the most
part, however, the instruction deals with
rules and tools: how Foreign Service posts
operate, how to promote American trade,
how to handle routine consular duties such
as visas, admission of aliens, intelligence
work. There are also field trips , to such
government agencies as an immigration
center, an Atomic Energy Commission lab-
oratory and the Agricultural Research Cen-
ter at Beltsville, Md.
No. 36 9
Perhaps one or two expert linguists in a
class of 25 will go abroad immediately; the
rest will stay in Washington for a year or
18 months, working at desk jobs in the
State Department and continuing their
language studies. For it has finally dawned
on Washington that Americans are woefully
clumpsy with the most potent peace tool
of all: the ability to speak other peoples'
languages. There is now a crash program
in language learning throughout the For-
eign Service. Besides its Washington classes,
the Institute runs language-study centers
in Mexico City, Paris, Frankfurt, Beirut,
Tokyo and Taichung (on Taiwan). Using
texts and tapes from home and tutors hired
locally, it gives extension courses to some
2,700 U.S. employees at 158 overseas posts.
On the institute faculty there are nearly
200 instructors, half of whom are foreign-
born tutors in 22 languages. The school's
corridors buzz at coffee breaks with conver-
sations in Burmese, Cambodian, Persian,
and other exotic tongues. The course is
probably the world's most intensive. The
method used is "overlearning"?constant
reiteration to achieve speech that is in-
stinctively correct. Hour after hour, in
groups of six or less, the trainees sit in cu-
bicles with phonetic lesson sheets before
them and learn, by repeating phrases after
the tutor, to coordinate tongue, ear and
brain in foreign patterns. They also prac-
tice "kinesics," the motions and gestures
of head, hands and body proper to the
language they are learning.
In off hours the trainees have at their
disposal an audio-tape practice room, nick-
named "Babel," containing three dozen
booths, each with a two-track tape recorder.
Turning on his machine, the student hears
a tutor speak. He echoes the words into his
then plays back both voices. Spotting
his own mistakes, he can erase his track, then
try over and over again. In the tape library
are rolls containing courses in 43 languages.
Wives are considered so important that,
before posting abroad, they are invited to the
Institute for coaching in foreign amenities?
dress, deportment, handling of servants. In
charge of this program is Mrs. M. Williams
Blake, a Foreign Service widow with ex-
perience in nine countries.
For the Institute's mid-career course,
promising officers of 10 or 12 years' service
are picked, in groups of about 20, to be-
come higher-powered administrators, an-
alysts, negotiators. Each group is first se-
questered for a fortnight on an old Army
post at Front Royal, Va., where they study
typical problems a mission might face. Ex-
ample: What aspects. of U.S. life should an
American contribution to an international
trade fair stress?
Back in Washington, the group plunges
into sociology. Professor Marion J. Levy of
Princeton, for one, expounds to them such
subjects as the contrasting effects of West-
ernization on the old cultures and politics
of China and Japan, and what lessons the
contrast teaches about the modernization
of underdeveloped countries today.
Then, to learn the inside facts about our
national policies and our present strength,
the midcareerists are briefed by top Gov-
ernment brass.
Gordon Gray, special assistant to the
President for national security affairs, ex-
plains the workings of our highest, most
secret policy body?the National Security
Council. The Chiefs of the State Depart-
ment's Bureau of Intelligence and Research
and of the Central Intelligence Agency set
forth their techniques for studying our
country's friends and foes. George Allen,
boss of the United States Information
Agency, lectures on good propaganda and
bad. ("I don't like that phrase, 'selling
ourselves.' One hard fact-is worth a gallon
of hogwash.")
A Congressman reports congressional tem-
peratures on foreign policy, and what deter-
mines them. Leading publicists interpret
present-day U.S. culture and attitudes,
which often startle Foreign Service officers
after years abroad. The midcareerists may
also hear authoritatively from industry, la-
bor, the pulpit and universities.
The Institute's senior course, new last Sep-
tember, enrolls only a dozen Foreign Service
officers of the three top ranks (average age,
43) , plus maybe a half dozen seniors from
other services, including the military.
Among them are officers already serving or
ready to serve as ambassador, minister, con-
sul general. Much of their 10-month course
is devoted to advanced studies of foreign
policy, and to preparing analytical reports on
trips to U.S. labor and trade congresses,
scientific conclaves, meetings of bar and
medical associations, which bring them up to
date on the climate of American society.
"If we are to insure our future," Senator
LEVERETT SALTONSTALL, Of MaSSRCIHISettS,
said recently, "our Foreign Service officers
would appear to be our most promising over-
seas task force."
[From the Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 3,
1959]
SCHOOL FOR MODERN DIPLOMATS
(By Henry F. and Katharine Pringle)
Not very long ago, the typical young man
who chose the United States Foreign Service
as a career was a socialite, a graduate from
an eastern seaboard college, had a private
income and took pleasure in wearing striped
pants. He limited his official and social con-
tacts mainly, to other diplomats. He spoke
cultivated English and perhaps halting
French or German. The mere notion of
learning Arabic, Chinese, or Malayan would
have filled him with well-bred distaste.
Foreigners should, of course, speak English.
Happily, much, of this has changed. Im-
portant in the evolution of our new, more
practical style in diplomats is a unique
school, the Foreign Service Institute, op-
erated by the State Department in Arlington,
Va., where successful candidates for the
Foreign Service come for training. The
backgrounds of the students are varied.
They come from every State in the Union,
plus Hawaii. They are graduates of many
different colleges, some quite small and ob-
scure. Many are ex-servicemen; some have
had experience as businessmen, newspaper
reporters, teachers, lawyers, and engineers.
Ten percent of them are girls?a fact which
would have caused yesterday's diplomat to
choke on the olive in his martini. Before
going abroad, all of them will, through an
Intensive new method, learn to speak at
least one foreign language.
The primary purpose of the Foreign Service
Institute is to prepare the people who repre-
sent the United States in foreign lands to do
the best possible job. This requires a broad
curriculum which is offered to an average
enrollment of about 3,000 a year, including
1,000 full-time and 2,000 part-time students.
The full-time students include recently ap-
pointed Foreign Service officers who are un-
dergoing 3 months of basic training, followed
by another 4 months of special language
training if they need it. Usually there is a
handful of senior officers, even an occasional
ambassador, taking specialized training. In
addition, the FSI is open to personnel of a
number of Government agencies concerned
with foreign affairs, such as the U.S. Informa-
tion Agency and the International Coopera-
tion Administration. Also among the stu-
dents, all voluntarily, are the wives of junior
Foreign Service officers who want to learn
something about the culture and customs of
the strange posts for which they are soon to
. depart?places such as Addis Ababa, Saigon,
Kabul, or Taihoku. All stKlents: except the
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2988 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
wives, of course, draw full pay while they are
going to school.
The novice diplomats are instructed in
everything from consular procedures to the
most effective ways of answering foreigners'
criticism of the United States. To the wives
are unfolded the mysteries of diplomatic
protocol. Informal meetings, limited to the
ladies, are arranged with experienced wives
who have served from Oslo to Cape Town.
No questions are barred. At one such session
was a bright-eyed girl with a blond pony tail.
Not yet a wife, but a very earnest fiance, she
was to be married to a junior officer just
before he set out on his first assignment.
"Looking ahead," she said, practically, if
prematurely, "will I be, expected to go to
official functions when I'm pregnant?"
When the older wives stopped laughing,
they told her that the answer depended
somewhat on the post. She would certainly
be welcome in most places, particularly in
Latin America, where motherhood is warmly
approved. On the other hand, the tribal
taboos of a few African chiefs forbid receiving
women in an expectant condition.
Commonsense hints to the wives are given
under the direction of Regina Olszewski
Blake, widow of a Foreign Service officer,
who, during the 16 years of her marriage,
accompanied her husband to Warsaw, Basel,
Tampico, Teheran, Rome and Dakar. A
warmhearted, friendly and reassuring
woman, she warns the youthful wives that
their jobs abroad sometimes will be more
difficult than those of their husbands, who
will spend most of their working hours in
the relatively American atmosphere of their
offices. The wife is on her own in an alien
land. She must manage the house, take
care of the children, direct servants who
often pretend to know more English than
they really do, buy unfamiliar foods in
crowded native markets and handle mechan-
ical breakdowns. Pointing up the need for
resourcefulness, she tells the story of the
wife at? a remote post who chewed vast
quantities of gum in order to make plugs
for leaks in the plumbing.
Because the thirty to forty wives in any
one class may be going to thirty or forty
different posts out of the total of 278 the
United States maintains around the world
the general lectures cannot take up spe-
cific problems peculiar to one area. But
Mrs. Blake keeps in her office a Post Guid-
ance file which all .wives are urged to con-
sult. Here, is detailed information, supplied
by experienced Foreign Service wives on such
?things as food problems and social customs
in all parts of the world. And the new offi-
cers' wives are given personal briefings on
practical problems in their future posts. If
possible, Mrs. Blake arranges for a student
who is going to, say, Afghanistan, to talk
with a wife who has been there. In such a
case the young wife may learn that she and
her husband cannot expect to have Western-
style contacts with Afghan couples because
the women there are kept in strict purdah?
seclusion. Questions about housekeeping
get answered in these interviews. How
long will a sheet last when washed on the
rocks in Djakarta? About as long as when
subjected to a Washington laundry, it ap-
pears. Is the water safe to drink in Teheran?
Not unless it is from the Embassy's private
water supply, as the city water system con-
sists of open jubes, or ditches, which also
are used for washing clothes, bathing, and
rinsing dishes.
The wives' course is not limited to protocol
and household hints. Along with secretaries,
clerks, and men from other Government
agencies assigned abroad, they may take a
2-week orientation course in the funda-
mentals of American oversea missions. Mrs.
Florence Finne, a slim, composed, and pretty
Foreign Service officer, presides over these
sessions, bringing in speakers from State
and other departments to discuss their spe-
cialties. They explain the organization of
Embassies and consulates. They outline
Communist stategy and tactics. They take
students through a quick survey of the
American scene in politics, labor, art, agri-
culture, music, and architecture to make
sure that representatives of the United
States abroad will be able to talk intelli-
gently about their homeland.
The Foreign Service Institute is tackling
the serious challenge of language by spend-
ing 60 percent of its $5 million budget for
the teaching of foreign tongues. The sys-
tem is called intensive or., sometimes the
Army method. During World War II it was
found useful for teaching Japanese and
Pacific-area languages, which had been con-
sidered extremely difficult to learn. The FSI
language classes are tough.
At first, they purposely avoid teaching
rules of grammar, and rely on long hours
of drill until the new vocabulary and idiom
are so well learned that the pupil thinks
in the language.
Under the new system an astonishing
number of Foreign Service officers are mas-
tering not only Spanish, French, and German
but also such tongues as Russian, Polish,
Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Greek, Turk-
ish, Arabic, Hindustani, Mandarin Chinese,
Japanese, Burmese, and Korean. A few stu-
dents simply cannot adjust their vocal cords
or curl their tongues in the right way. Once
in a while a student, unable to stand the in-
tensive drill, collapses into hysterics and
quits. But such failures are rare.
This new emphasis on learning at least one
foreign language well reflects a change in
U.S. conception of diplomacy since World
War II. The old idea was that our repre-
sentative abroad was a delegate from our
Government to the foreign government.
The modern conception is that he is also our
representative to the people of the host na-
tion. It is no longer good enough for the
Foreign Service officer to associate mainly
with a few members of the foreign ministry.
He has a, basic obligation to know the peo-
ple?something best achieved by talking
with them in their own language.
In November 1956, Secretary of State Dulles
approved a new language policy for the For-
eign Service under which all officers would
be expected to acquire a useful knowledge of
at least one foreign language within 5 years
or within the same period after appointment,
and preferably fluency in a second language
as well. Junior officers would not be pro-
moted until they had met the requirement.
Exceptions would sometimes be made for
senior officers or others whose post did not
provide opportunities for language learning.
It would hardly have been feasible to force
the minority of political ambassadors to be-
come fluent before taking up their duties.
But our Ambassador to Brazil, Ellis 0. Briggs,
a career officer who already knew Spanish,
volunteered to take 3 months of intensive
training in Portuguese at the FSI. So did
Mrs. Briggs.
This past year the FSI had classes going
full time in 27 different tongues. In charge
of this rather staggering program is Howard
E. Sollenberger, dean. of the School of Lan-
guages. He has been bilingual from child-
hood, having been raised in North China by
missionary parents. Before joining the FSI,
Sollenberger taught Chinese to workers of
the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration and prepared them for serv-
ice in the Far East.
? Sollenberger has a staff of about 100 tutors
or native speakers, some of them part time,
and 20 full-time linguistic scientists?many
of whom oversee classes in more than one
language. The linguistic scientists worry the
students as little as possible with textbook
rules. People communicate by talking far
more than by writing; besides, the way a
language is written is often no key to the
way it is spoken.
March 5
The new policy already is beginning to pay
dividends. Take the case of a youthful con-
sul, Robert E. Barbour, assigned to Vietnam.
Before going to his post he was sent to
Georgetown University, in Washington, for
his preliminary work in Vietnamese, and
then went through several months' grind It
at the PSI. When he reported to Ambas-
sador Elbridge Durbrow in Vietnam, he was
instructed to spend his first 3 months in
further concentration on the language. By
the time the new American consulate opened
at Hue, a seaport north of Saigon, the young
man had made the acquaintance of all the
provincial chiefs and other officials in his
area. He invited 180 of them to the opening
ceremonies, where he translated the Ambas-
sador's remarks and those of the Vietnamese
representative. Durbrow reported to the
State Department that the Vietnamese were
deeply gratified by the new consul's fluency
in their own language.
Reading and writing are not ignored in
the FBI's language classes. The importance
of being able to read the language of the
host country was demonstrated not long
ago in Indonesia. Until an officer who
could read the native papers in the original
language was sent to Djakarta, the State
Department had 'not been fully aware of
their anti.American tone. The Embassy's
Indonesian employees had been clipping
and translating only the news and editorial
items which, they thought, would please
their American bosses.
All this reflects the postwar American
anxiety to make friends and influence peo-
ple abroad. The same spirit pervades the
whole FSI curriculum. An anthropologist,
D. Scott Gilbert, is on hand to impress on
students the importance of understanding
and respecting the cultures and customs of
other peoples. Gilbert shares with Other
institute lecturers a tendency to toss off
high-flown anthropological terms, to cau-
tion against "ethnocentricism" and "culture
shock." But the talks boil down to a very
sensible warning not to go abroad with the
set conviction that the American way of
life is superior in all?ways to all others.
Another name for the FSI might be
School for Dos and Don'ts in the Foreign
Service. These classifications are hammered
into the young men and women from 9
a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with case histories to
underline the point. There was, for in-
stance, the brash junior officer who had
been assigned to visa work in Manila. An
attractive young Filipino girl came to the
consulate to have her passport validated.
The vice consul looked at her pretty face
and legs and made a wisecrack.
"I suppose you're going to the United
States to snag yourself a rich husband?"
The girl's father happened to be a promi-
nent official of the islands. She reported
the vice consul's impertinence to papa, and
within a couple of weeks the offending
young man was on his way home, his For-
eign Service career at an end.
Advice on how to make use of the cus-
toms of the country is given by experts
such as William Barnes, former chief of the
State Department's foreign-reporting staff.
One morning last year Barnes concluded a
solemn discussion of the problems of ob-
taining and analyzing economic data abroad
with a story of his own experience in Fin-
land. One of the best ways to collect eco-
nomic information there, he had discovered,
was to attend a sauna, or steam-bath
party, with a group of Finnish bankers and
industrialists. A sauna involves being par-
boiled, naked, at high temperature in a
steam room, after which the participants
plunge into the frigid waters of an adjoin-
ing lake. Thus stimulated, and still naked,
the guests relax on a porch with their host
and sip drinks. At this stage, said Barnes,
they are likely to talk very frankly abdut
their problems.
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"Under the circumstances," he observed,
"it is hard for them to play their cards close
to their chests."
How and how not to use an interpreter
)is the subject of a hilarious PSI skit which
acknowledges a debt to "The Teahouse of
the August Moon." Performed regularly for
: each new group of junior officers, the pur-
pose of the playlet is to dramatize the mis-
takes that an inexperienced Foreign Service
officer might make.
The scene is a seaport town on Okinawa.
In a performance last fall, Richard Noss,
of the language staff, played the role of a
newly arrived American vice couiasul calling
on the mayor. Two of the institute's tutors,
Kiyanao Okami and Teruki Komatsu, repre-
sented the mayor and the vice consul's inter-
preter. The three scholars showed surprising
histrionic talent. The vice consul was
brusque and in a hurry. He told the inter-
preter to tell the mayor he had only fif-
teen minutes.
"Express to the mayor some noble sen-
timents and all that," he said. "Keep it
brief. Tell him three United States Senators
are arriving next week and I'm in charge
of the reception."
An interminable conversation in Japa-
nese, the language used in Okinawa, ensued
between Messrs. Okami and Komatsu, with
much bowing and scraping, followed by this
dialogue in English: .
"Vrcz CONSUL. What was that all about?
"INTERPRETER. He talk and talk a long
time.
"V*Icz CONSUL. I could see that. What
did he say? Keep it short.
"INTERPRETER. Mayor expressed apprecia-
tion of kind sentiments. Said he wished to
discuss important matter?American air-
base expansion which robbing the farmers
of their land.
"VICE CONSUL. Oh, tell him all I want is
to have him go to the airport to meet the
Senators, to take some important people
with him. Nanki-Poo! Funny costumes! All
that kind of stuff."
Okami and Komatsu engaged in another
long exchange in Japanese. The interpreter
then explained that the mayor was inviting
the American official to his house for tea,
to which the vice consul replied that he
hated tea, "but I'll take a rain check."
"Rain check?" asked the puzzled inter-
preter. This involved the vice consul in a
long explanation of the rules applying to
American baseball tickets.
After the playlet ended, amid laughter,
Noss summed up its lessons. The misunder-
standings were not merely funny, he warned.
They might have been disastrous. The con-
sular officer should have addressed his re-
marks directly to the mayor, and not to the
interpreter. He should have assumed that
the Okinawan official understood some
English, as he probably did. The vice consul
should not have used American colloquial-
isms. And obviously he should not have
ignored the expected formalities, nor rudely
brushed aside the subjects which the mayor
wished to raise.
The Foreign Service Institute is without
doubt? a livelier and more effective teaching
agency today than it was a few year's ago.
The school was established in March 1947.
With the greatest expansion of the Service
after World War II, it was essential to train
large numbers of new officers to get along
with foreign peoples and to report their
activities accurately. But within the next
few years the morale of the State Depart-
ment and of the Foreign Service slumped,
due largely to the claim of the late Joseph
R. McCarthy that Communists had infil-
trated. The Institute became something of
a stepchild, badly housed on C Street at a
short distance from the State Department.
In March 1954, the Secretary of State
appointed a distinguished committee, of
which Henry M. Wriston, then president of
RECORD ? SENATE
Brown University, was chairman, to appraise
the Department's personnel policies. Its re-
port was highly critical. The Foreign Service
officer corps, it found, numbered only 1,285,
the lowest strength in 5 years. Only 355 of-
ficers had been appointed to the beginning-
officer classification in the past 8 years. One
remedy proposed by the committee was that
Foreign Service officers should be recruited
from all parts of the country, bringing the
Service closer to g democratic ideal.
Today there is no shortage df candidates.
Last year nearly 340 new junionofficers were
selected from among 6,500 hopefuls who took
the examinations. Many are attracted by
the lure of strange places, by an aura of
glamour which still clings to the Foreign
Service. They can be sure of fairly complete
security and of salaries ranging from $4,730
at the bottom to a top of $20,000, plus some
expense allowances.
In its criticisms of the Foreign Service, the
Wriston report described the Foreign Serv-
ice Institute as having fallen into the "in-
tellectual doldrums." It had not measured
up to the standards envisionedlay Congress,
which had hoped for an institution compa-
rable to the Naval and Army War Colleges.
In March 1955 Harold B. Hoskins was made
Director of the PSI, and the Institute began
a rapid emergence from obscurity. Hoskins,
In his early sixties, is not an educator, but a
businessman of wide experience. Born in
Beirut, the son of missionaries, Hoskins'
hobby for years has been the role of the
United States in foreign affairs. He has often
served the State Department as a consultant
on Middle Eastern economic problems and
gone on missions to Arab nations. His abil-
ity as a salesman, acquired during his indus-
trial career, has been of great value in ex-
plaining the FSI's budget to congressional
committees.
Congress has been fairly generous. Among
other things,. the FSI no longer need apolo-
gize for its quarters, which are efficient, if
not luxurious. Since the spring of 1957 the
classrooms, offices, and auditorium have been
housed in what used to be the lower-floor
garage of Arlington Towers, one of the plush
apartment developments on the outskirts of
Washington. The space has been divided
into two floors, and has a functional all-
glass front that extends for about a block
along one wing of the building. This setting
gives more of a government than a campus
atmosphere to the school.
The prestige of the Foreign Service Insti-
tute, which was quite low for a time in the
eyes of State Department brass, gained
ground in the last 3 years. Last September
even Secretary Dulles took an hour out of
his whirlwind schedule to inaugurate the
first senior-officer course, the State Depart-
ment's equivalent of the Defense War Col-
lege.
Hoskins and his assistants are constantly
pondering what should be added, subtracted
or modified to kep the FSI in tune with
needs of the Foreign Service. They are now
concerned that the courses for midcareer
officers may not be stimulating enough in-
dependent thinking. They are worried about
the area specialization courses, although the
very fact that the Foreign Service now has
some 400 specialists trained in Near and
Far Eastern and Iron Curtain country lan-
guages and problems is encouraging. Should
there be more economics taught at the FSI?
More on international-labor movements?
Most impartial observers of the FSI would
probably agree that its intensive language
training and its advice for living and working
with other peoples are its major contribu-
tions to diplomacy in today's troubled world.
The down-to-earth tutoring goes much
deeper than protocol or the right clothes
for Rangoon. The young Officers, their wives
and clerical personnel are all* urged to keep
up their hobbies abroad or develop some, for
many doors to friendships will thereby be
2989
opened. They are told about the consul who
was assigned to Lourenco Marques, the capi-
tal of Portuguese Mozambique. He was an
avid amateur ornithologist and was delighted
to find that few places in the world had so
great a variety of strange birds as this out-
post. He made contacts with the local orni-
thologists and won their gratitude by giving
his leisure time to helping out at the natu-
ral-history museum. Then there was the
diplomat's wife who was a ham radio opera-
tor. When an earthquake tumbled buildings
in Quito, Ecuador, and disrupted commu-
nications, she was able to send out messages
and assist rescue expeditions. She was deco-
rated by the Ecuadoran Government for her
services.
The young people who will leave shortly
for their first foreign posts are warned
against yearning for London, Paris or one of
the other great capitals. The work at a
smaller embassy may be much more reward-
ing and important. They are also cautioned
against being disappointed if they are as-
signed to consular work, as 60 percent of
them are sure to be. The consul's job may
not seem dashing, but it deals closely with
people.
"We've got an American dying here. What
shall we do?" is one of the more troublesome
inquiries a consul may have from a hotel or
boardinghouse. In a case some years ago a
lazy but imaginative consul in Indochina
solved his problem by persuading an Ameri-
can at death's door to take out French citi-
zenship, "to avoid being a damned nuisance
to me when you pop off." That sort of thing
is frowned on these days. The consul is
supposed to see that a fellow citizen felled by
Illness has proper medical attention and, if
the worst happens, to locate the deceased's
relatives, perhaps arrange a funeral, or to
settle his estate.. One consul found himself
handling the sale of a large herd of cattle.
Live Americans abroad, however, are even
more of a problem than dead ones?at least
to a consul. They may demand anything on
earth, including funds to go home. The
Foreign Service is trained to help as much as
It can, but there are limits. That is why
one of the most respected rules taught its
students by the PSI is: "Never lend your own
money."
Mr. SALTONSTALL. Mr. President,
the Foreign Service Institute offers what
is perhaps the best intensive training in
more foreign languages than is avail-
able in any other educational institu-
tion in the United States.
The purpose of the bill (S. 1243) which
I have introduced with the Senator from
Montana [Mr. MANSFIELD] is in part to
establish standards of foreign language
proficiency for our Foreign Service and
to assure utmost use of the Institute's
facilities in achieving and maintaining
such standards.
While it is important to recognize that
foreign language proficiency will not in
and of itself assure high-caliber per-
formance of oversea service, it is hard
to conceive of such service being effec-
tively rendered by Americans who are
blind, mute and deaf to the language of
people of the countries where they serve.
Secretary of State Dulles wrote as fol-
lows in the 19th semiannual report to
Congress on the international education
exchange program:
True communication among people of dif-
ferent cultures is greatly enhanced by the
ability to speak and to read each others'
language.
Surely no one can disagree with this
statement.
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2990 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
In this connection, I am reminded of
a statement by the great German poet,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who
wrote:
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages
is ignorant of his own.
Goethe's statement, probably made
with only semantics in mind, has spe-
cial subtlety and wisdom as applied to
the task of communication in our over-
sea representation. The same is true
of a statement by Samuel Johnson, which
all of us who travel from Washington
by train have seen many times over the
entrance to Union Station.
He that would bring home the wealth of
the Indies must carry the wealth of the
Indies with him. So it is in traveling: a
man must carry knowledge with him if he
would bring home knowledge.
The application of these statements
to our people who go abroad is dramati-
cally illustrated in the much-publicized
book "The Ugly American." This book
has done much to focus public attention
on the deficiencies in the international
orientation of our people and the handi-
caps which these deficiencies impose on
our oversea operations.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous con-
sent to have printed in the RECORD some
excerpts which I have made from the
last chapter of "The Ugly American."
There being no objection, the excerpts
were ordered to be printed in the REC-
ORD, as follows:
[Excerpts from ch. 22, "A Factual Epilog,"
of "The Ugly American," by William J.
Lederer and Eugene Burdick]
It would seem a simple fact of life that
Ambassadors to at least the major nations
should speak those languages. Yet in France,
Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Norway, and Turkey, our Ambassadors cannot
speak the native tongue (although our Am-
bassador to Paris can speak German and our
Ambassador to Berlin can speak French). In
the whole of the Arabic world?nine na-
tions?only two Ambassadors have language
qualifications. In Japan, Korea, Burma,
Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and else-
where, our Ambassadors must speak and be
spoken to through interpreters. In the en-
tire Communist world, only our Ambassador
to Moscow can speak the native language.
If Ambassadors were mere figureheads sur-
rounded by experienced, linguistically
trained career diplomats, their inability to
speak or read on the job would be little more
than an insulting inconvenience to the local
officials. * * * Unfortunately, Ambassadors
are more than figureheads; they are in charge,
and, like Sears, their misunderstandings can
have grave consequences. Moreover, the ca-
reer men on their staffs are generally not
linguistically trained for their jobs. * * ?
In his masterful analysis of the Foreign
Service, John Osborne states that the most
important element in a good Foreign Service
officer is the faculty of communication.
Yet, as James Reston reported in the New
York Times of March 18, 1958, "50 percent
of the entire Foreign Service officer corps
do not have a speaking knowledge of any
foreign language. Seventy percent of the
new men coming into the Foreign Service
are in the same state." These figures rep-
resent those Who can speak no language
other than their own?not even French,
Spanish, German, or Italian. The number
of Americans in the Foreign Service who can
speak any of the more difficult languages is
miniscule.
In addition to our Foreign Service staffs,
we have more than a million servicemen
overseas. Only a handful can speak the
language of the country in which they are
stationed, and when difficult military and
scientific data are involved this handful
shrinks to almost zero. So be it, but that
our trained representatives in Asia are little
better qualified in languages is unacceptable.
On the other hand, an estimated 9 out of
10 Russians speak, read, and write the lan-
guage before the arrive on station. It is a
prior requirement. The entire functioning
staff of Russian Embassies in Asia is Rus-
sian, and all the Russians?the officials,
stenographic help, telephone operators,
chauffeurs, servants?speak and write the
language of the host country.
In the American Embassies the servants,
the messengers, and the interpreters are
locally hired. The telephone operator in al-
most every American mission and agency
in Asia is an Asian. It is, of course, a
maxim of espionage that one of the most
useful agents is the planted employee. * * *
Because we must rely on interpreters who
are almost always non-Americans, our on-
the-spot information is both secondhand and
subject to minor censorship and editing
without our knowledge. The recent turmoil
in Indonesia emphasized this handicap. We
had to rely on native translators to interpret
the press, the radio, and personal conversa-
,
tion. Following Asian etiquette, by which
one avoids telling one's employer of matters
which would distress him, the interpreters
gave our diplomats rose-tinted reports of
local sentiment and events. Only after a
dangerous delay did it seep through to our
soundproofed representatives that Indonesia
was in the grip of political upheaval. In
Indochina our military and diplomatic mis-
sions could speak only to the French, whose
view of the rebellion against them was one-
sided, to say the least. One of the authors
seeking to hear the Vietnamese side of the
question without using either a French
or Vietnamese interpreter succeeded only
through an American priest, who, like the
Father Finian of our book, was fluent in
the native tongue. Like the Russians, but
unlike ourselves, the church realizes that
its work in Asia cannot be done without close
communication with Asians.
Blockage of information itself is not the
only penalty we pay. Think, for a moment,
what it costs us whenever an official Ameri-
can representative demands that the native
speak English or be not heard. The Rus-
sians make no such mistake. The sign on
the Russian Embassy in Ceylon, for exam-
ple, identifies it in Sinhalese, Tamil, Eng-
lish, and Russian. The American Embassy
is identified only in English.
John Foster Dulles stated what was in
our minds when we wrote the stories of
Colonel Hillandale, the Ragtime Kid, and
John Colvin, on the one hand, and of Sears
and Swift and Joe Bing, on the other. He
said, "Interpreters are no substitute. It is
not possible to understand what is in the
minds of other people without understand-
ing their language, and without understand-
ing their language it is impossible to be sure
that they understand what is on our minds."
* *
Americans like Swift, who cannot speak
the language, can have no more than an aca-
demic understanding of a country's customs,
beliefs, religion, and humor. Restricted to
communication with only that special, small,
and usually well-to-do segment of the na-
tive population fluent in English, they re-
ceive a limited and often misleading picture
of the nation about them. A recent Ameri-
can ambassador to Ceylon?an able, ex-
tremely popular diplomat?had an experi-
ence which pointed up this dilemma. He
had become intimate with the leaders of the
political party, in power, a group relict of
colonial days composed largely of the rich
and English-educated upper class. The am-
bassador apparently got all his information
March
from them, because he gave no warning to
our State Department before the national
istic political upheaval occurred which sud-
denly left his friends with but 8 of 101 seats
in the government.
On the other side of the ledger, we have
told the seory of the ugly engineer and
Colonel Hillandale who, speaking the lan-
guage, were able to go off into the country-2
side and show the idea of America to the
people. These characters are based on actual
Americans known to the authors. There
are others. like them; but by and large they
are not beloved of the American officials in
the various Asian' capitals, and are a wild
exception to the rule.
While a few Hillandales and the many
Russians roam the barrios and the boon-
docks, most Americans are restricted, both
by official tethers and by language barriers,
to communion with each other. * * *
* * ? * *
Vice President NixoN, in his National Press
Club speech on his tour of Latin America,
said, "I could have concentrated on a whole
round of cocktail parties and white-tie din-
ners. If we continue to concentrate on that
area we can figure we will lose the battle."
What our diplomats need to do, he said, is
to get out and mingle with students, labor
leaders, and opinion makers, who comprise
the "wave of the future."
? ? ? *
In the stories of Major Wolchek and Major
Monet, "The Iron of War" and "The Lesson
of War," we have tried in fiction to describe
a condition of avoidable ignorance. For
years both we and OUT allies have put in
much expensive effort trying to ferret out in
advance the Communist plan for both tacti-
cal maneuvers and great conquests. Yet,
during the struggle in Indochina the authors
could find no American (or French) military
or civilan official who had read, or even
studied a precis of, the overall Communist
operation plan contained in "The Selected
Works of Mao Tse-Tung," published by
Lawrence Wishart, Ltd., London, and Inter-
national Publishers in the United States. A
four-volume edition was published in 1954
but the basic material was available in print
as early as 1934. (A useful shorter study is
"The Organizational Weapon: A Study of
Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics," by Philip
Selznick, McGraw-Hill, 1952J
In his remarkable work Mao, one of the
brilliant tacticians of our time, analyzes
almost every campaign and battle in which
his Red Armies fought. He dissects every
defeat (very few) and most victories, and he
explains what they taught him. In doing so
he lays down a pattern of strategy and tactics
which the Communists of southeast ,Asia
have followed undeviatingly.
The battles which led to Dien Bien Phu
were classic examples of the Mao pattern
And yet our military missions advised, and
the French went down to defeat, without
having studied Mao's writings.
Why our representatives abroad have not
learned the languages they need or studied
basic sources of information such as Mao'
writings is a question which involves the
entire American Nation. Whatever the rea-
sons, our overseas services attract far too fe
of our brightest and best qualified college
graduates. * * *
? ? ?
We do not need the horde of 1,500 Ameni
cans?mostly amateurs?who are now work-
ing for the United States overseas. What w
need is a small force of well-trained, well
chosen, hard-working, and dedicated profes-
sionals. They must be willing to risk their
comforts and, in some lands, their health
They must go equipped to apply a positivc
policy promulgated by a clear-thinking Gov
ernment. They must speak the language o
the land of their assignment, and they must
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959 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
le more expert in its problems than are the
atives.
? ? ? ? ?
Actually, the state in which we find our-
s elves is far from hopeless. We have the
aterial and, above all, the human re-
s2urces to change our methods and to win.
It is not the fault of the Government or its
leaders or any political party that we have
acted as we have. It is the temper of the
whole Nation. If knowledge of the problem
becomes widespread, and if the enthusiasm
of the people can be aroused, then we can
succeed. As Cordell Hull once said, "The
Government of the United States is never
far ahead of the American public; nor is it
very far behind."
Mr. SALTONSTALL. Mr. President,
the bill which I have filed with the Sena-
tor from Montana [Mr. MANSFIELD]
would insert in the Foreign Service Act
of 1946 a statement of policy to govern
the appointment of chiefs of mission
and Foreign Service officers which could
profitably be adopted by all Americans
who go overseas. In a very real sense,
any of us who goes abroad is represent-
ng the United States, regardless of our
purpose. Whether such representation
of our country will serve her well or ill
will largely depend on the extent to
hich we 'apply to ourselves the policy
which the bill would prescribe for the
ppointment of chiefs of mission and
reign Service officers.
Mr. President, the policy declaration ?
ontained in section 1 of my bill reads
follows:
It is the policy of the Congress that chiefs
f mission and Foreign Service officers ap-
pointed to serve the United states in foreign
ountries shall have, to the maximum prac-
icable extent, among their qualifications a
seful knowledge of the principal language
3r dialect of the country in which they are
o serve, and knowledge and understanding
f the history, the culture, the economic, and
olitical institutions, and the interests of
uch country and its people.
The responsible officials of the Depart-
ent of State have unquestionably, in
y judgment, been working hard at the
ask of improving the foreign language
roficiency of our Foreign Service offi-
ers. Because of the limited funds for
alaries and administrative and training
xpenses which the Congress appropri-
tes to the State Department, the rate of
rogress possible in this vital aspect of
raining leaves much to be desired. Sec-
ion 2 of my bill would add to the Foreign
ervice Act a new -section to establish
e framework within which a more vig-
rous program of foreign language
aining could be established, assuming.
at the Congress appropriates the funds
ecessary for its full implementation.
Sections 3 and 4 of the bill would make
gnificant additions to the authority of
e Secretary of ttate in order further
facilitate tapping to the full the ex-
llent training activities of the Foreign
ervice Institute and to create incentives
r all Foreign Service personnel to take
dvantage of such activities.
Mr. President, we must leave no stone
nturned in our efforts to assure that
ur Foreign Service personnel have the
tmost in qualifications that institution-
ized training can give?especially in the
eld of foreign languages. In addition
) their ramified duties as representa-
tives of the United States, the people of
our Foreign Service are our first line of
defense and the strongest offensive force
which our peace-loving society can
muster.
Mr. President, in closing, I ask unani-
mous consent to have printed in the REC-
ORD a number of articles relating to tne
subjects I have discussed.
There being no objection, the articles
were ordered to be printed in the RECORD,
as follows:
[From the Neiv Bedford (Mass.) Standard-
Times, Jan. 21, 1959] ? ?
SILENT SPOKESMEN ABROAD
John B. Fisher, former administrative as-
sistant and chief political aid to Senator
SALTONSTALL, Republican, Massachusetts, re-
cently returned from his fourth trip to the
Middle East with some forthright criticism
of the U.S. Foreign Service.
A New Bedford audience heard Mr. Fisher
direct particular attention to the language
training of State Department representa-
tives abroad, which he described as so ele-
mentary as to be no training at all?in our
embassies abroad fewer than five or six
Americans in an Embassy can speak the
language of the country ilrwhich they serve.
In Belgrade, only 3 of 44 Americans can
speak the Yugoslav national tongue.
In Athens, only 6 of 79 Americans in the
Foreign Service can speak modern Greek
dialects fluently.
In New Delhi, the United States has no
personnel who can speak the several Indian
dialects required for effective communica-
tion there. By contrast, the Russians have
specific training courses in Moscow devoted
exclusively to training diplomats for Indian
service.
As Mr. Fisher concluded on the basis of
this unenviable record, "In other words, our
spokesmen abroad can't speak?hence, are
no spokesmen at all."
This is a dangerous, if not tragic, situa-
tion in a world in which nations must
know in precise detail what is going on
virtually every minute. To be uninformed
could mean failure to survive in the present
East-West power struggle of the cold war.
If, as Mr. Fisher declared, "the State De-
partment almost automatically rejects every
proposal to improve our Foreign Service,"
Congress should embark upon a study of the
situation, aimed at overriding and overhaul-
ing the State Department system. The pro-
gram for training Foreign Service officers
should be broadened and intensified.
With regard to language abilities of Amer-
icans in general, there is another approach
that might be made, Dr. James Bryant
Conant, president emeritus of Harvard, has
been studying America's high schools for
the last 2 years. Dr. Conant commented,
"Almost without exception, I found a de-
plorable state of affairs in regard to foreign
languages. Too many students with limited
ability were studying a foreign language for
2 years; too few able students were studying
one language long enough."
Americans mu,st devote earnest attention
to this problem, all the way from the high
school class to the level of the Secretary
of State. To misunderstand or to be mis-
understood in the delicately balanced family
of nations is riskier than ever these days.
[From the Reading (Mass.) Chronicle,
Feb. 5, 1959]
OUR REPRESENTATIVES ABROAD
Our foreign policy has many b,ngles. It
is criticized by many who know very little
about the actual situation in many of the
countries involved. Then again, it is some-
times constructively criticized by someone
with some real knowledge of foreign coun-
tries.
2991
"A little simple honesty in our relations
abroad?a little old-fashioned patriotism at
home:'?these words of wisdom were recently
spoken by John B. Fisher, a partner in
Joyce & Fisher Associates of Washington and
Boston before a joint service clubs lunch-
eon in Washington. Fisher is a former ad-
ministrative assistant and chief political
aid to Senator SALTONSTALL and has recently
returned from his fourth trip to the Middle
East in the past 12 months. He was em-
phatic in his criticism of the Department of
State and of our Foreign Service in that
part of the world. ?
"East is East and West is West, but the
twain have met?long since," said Fisher, "a
fact of which our diplomatic representa-
tives abroad seem wholly unconscious. Our
policies and practices in Greece, Turkey and
Iran, for example, threaten disaster for us
and for them. We seem to do even the right
things in the wrong way.
"I found our Department of State disliked
and distrusted throughout this area. I
found our Foreign Service personnel con-
sidered fearfully ill-equipped to deal with
the people and problems among which they
work. And this, I know from other travel-
lers abroad, is not an unusual situation.
"Our Foreign Service is, on the whole, in-
adequate to America's vital needs abroad?
inadequate in its recruitment program, in
the training of its personnel and in its pro-
tocol-ridden, ingrown operations in count-
less cities around the world.
"The Department of State almost auto-
matically rejects every proposal to improve
our Foreign Service. The dangerous impli-
cations of this are beyond description:
"The recommendation that a Foreign Serv-
ice Academy be established comparable to
West Point and Annapolis is dismissed for
the most absurd of reasons.
"The language training of our Foreign
Service personnel is so elementary as to be
no training at all?in our embassies in a
dozen major capitals abroad fewer than five
or six Americans on embassy duty can speak
the language of the country in which they
serve.
"For example: In Belgrade, the capital of
Yugoslavia, only 3 of 44 Americans on duty
in that Embassy there can speak Serb-Croat,
the Yugoslav national tongue; in Athens,
not more than half a dozen of our 79 Amer-
icans in Foreign Service can speak modern
Greek dialects fluently; in New Delhi, the
capital of India, we have no personnel who
can speak the several Indian dialects re-
quired for effective communication there,
whereas the Russians are known to have
specific training courses in Moscow for Indian
service alone.
"In other words, our spokesmen abroad
can't speak?hence are no spokesmen at all.
This is worse than a crime; it is a political
blunder of the first magnitude?and we, as
American citizens, are to blame for not in-
sisting on the very best representation
abroad, in our own interest, in our own
defense.
"Most important of all, perhaps, is our
Government's failure to make use of our able,
well-informed businessmen in these nations.
[From the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal,
Mar. 30, 19581
AN AMBASSADOR NEEDS THE POWER OF SPEECH
Senator SALTONSTALL, of Massachusetts,
believes it is important for American officials
in Foreign Service to speak the language of
the country in which they are serving. He
has introduced a bill to advance his idea.
He would require that certain posts in cer-
tain countries be filled by Foreign Service
officers who can speak the native tongue.
This might seem elementary in diplomacy,
aS it would in business. But Senator SAL-
TONSTALL had apparently read a recent story
by James Reston of the New York Times.
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CONGRESSIONAL
It revealed that 50 percent of our. Foreign
Service officers have no speaking knowledge
of any foreign language. These are men and
women, remember, who sought a lifetime
career in diplomacy. Mr. Reston further
disclosed that our Ambassador in Moscow,
Llewellyn Thompson, is the only one we have
in a Communist country who speaks the
native language; that only two American
Ambassadors in the nine Arab States speak
Arabic; and that even in the West, we have
Ambassadors in eight NATO countries who
suffer from a similar handicap.
Such language failure puts us at a severe
disadvantage, by comparison with the Rus-
sians and all other leading nations. We are
the only ones who do not demand language
proficiency for Foreign Service. We are the
ones, too, who are most likely to be thought
arrogant and superior when we ignore the
languages of other nations.
The Saltonstall bill may start something
of a revolution in our Foreign Service. The
reform is painfully overdue. Daniel Defoe
determined long ago that he would venture
the injury of giving a woman more tongues
than one. Our Foreign Service could hardly
venture less, in sending men and women -out
to represent us in the capitals of a troubled
and sensitive world.
[From the Foreign Service Journal, June
1957]
OUR TONGUETIED FOREIGN SERVICE
(By Leon and Leila Poullada)
An editorial in the October 1956 issue of
the Journal, from which the title of this
article is shamelessly borrowed, pointed up
the need to develop adequate language skills
in the Foreign Service: While the Depart-
nient has been making noteworthy progress
in the matter of language and area training
at the Foreign Service Institute more vigor-
ous efforts are required if we are really to
untie the tongues of our Foreign Service em-
ployees.
Language training programs can, like Gaul,
be divided into three parts:
1. Programs designed to arouse the interest
of Foreign Service employees and their de-
pendents in languages: The Foreign Service
Institute has done commendable work on
programs of this type and they are gradually
gaining momentum and popularity. No
matter how well-conceived this type of pro-
gram may be, however, its limitations should
be recognized. Its principal values lie in the
psychological effect on the foreign population
of having Americans sufficiently interested
in their country to try to learn their lan-
guage, and the satisfaction the student feels
in being able to communicate with servants,
shop in the bazaar, and so forth. By its
very nature, however, this type of general
program cannot produce a corps of fluent
language experts.
2. Programs designed to meet the need for
Foreign Service officers to acquire and retain
fluent command of at least one world lan-
guage (French, Spanish, German, Russian,
Arabic, Chinese) : It has been axiomatic in
the diplomatic services of all countries (in-
cluding until recently our own) that anyone
who aspired to enter the career ranks would
come equipped with command of at least one
world language. It is disturbing to learn
from a recent survey that 50 percent of the
officers in our Foreign Service are not ade-
quately equipped (even by their own self-
appraisal) in any world language. It also
revealed that language deficiencies are largely
concentrated in three groups of officers;
(a) A few senior officers who have allowed
their language skills to lapse; (b) officers,
recently integrated under the Wriston pro-
gram, whose previous employment did not
require foreign language proficiency; and (c)
new entrants to the bottom ranks of the
service who, under relaxed standards of
admission, have been admitted on the under-
RECORD ? SENATE March
standing that they will make up their lan-
guage deficiency within a stated period.
It is interesting to contrast briefly the de-
ficiencies in language studies in the United
States with the extensive programs report-
edly being carried on in the Soviet Union.
In all South Asian countries where the writ-
ters have served, the number of Soviet diplo-
mats fluent in the local language has been
impressive. A recent article in the New
York Times revealed the full scope of the
Soviet language effort. According to this
article not only are foreign languages' a
compulsory part of the curriculum in the
elementary and secondary schools of the
U.S.S.R. but a drag-net system of scholar-
ships brings the ablest language students
into institutes of higher learning such as
the National Institute of Foreign Languages,
where they are subjected to a strenuous 5-
year course in which one or more foreign
languages constitute the core of the curricu-
lum. It is from schools of this kind that
the Soviet diplomatic service draws many of
its officers and the results already observ-
able abroad are indeed impressive.
However, the only forthright solution is
for the Foreign Service to provide a com-
bination of adequate study facilities coupled
with a system of sanctions and incentives.
Taking into account the heavy work-load
and social duties (also work) of most officers,
the penalties for failure to acquire minimum
language skills will have to be considerable
to arouse the necessary individual effort.
On the basis of experience both in learning
and teaching languages, the writers have
reluctantly concluded that Draconian meas-
ures will be needed to bring all officers in
the Service up to the required mark. In the
writers' opinion nothing less than a time
limit for passing required examinations
(given on a servicewide basis) coupled with
loss of promotion eligibility for failure to
pass, will achieve the desired results. Some
measures in this direction have already been
taken by the Department in recent instruc-
tions to the field such as that requiring
efficiency reports to include specific state-
ments about the officers' efforts to improve
his language ability. These measures will
no doubt stimulate the more conscientious,
but for the Service as a whole stiffer re-
quirements will be needed.
So much for the stick approach. Any ef-
fective program of personnel management
must also include the "carrot." In the long
run, the latter will, of course, produce more
lasting results. Incentives should therefore
be devised for rewarding employees who
achieve fluency in certain languages. The
Foreign Service Institute should prepare a
list which would include all the world lan-
guages plus other languages of importance
to the Foreign Service in which an actual or
potential sohrtage of fluent speakers exists.
In the writers' opinion. Arabic and perhaps
Chinese and Russian, should be considered
world languages for this purpose?in addi-
tion to French, Spanish and German. No
special incentive would be offered to For-
eign Service officers for fluency in only one of
these world languages, since this should be
considered a basic requirement for employ-
ment. But fluency in any additional lan-
guage on the list should receive special
recognition. -
What form should these incentives take?
Two possibilities are suggested here. No
doubt others can be devised. A number of
European countries offer monetary "lan-
guage bonuses" to their diplomatic officers.
The systems vary from country to country
but the British method is fairly typical.
Anyone who feels qualified, applies for an
examination in the language of his choice.
The test is both oral and written. Different
tests are given for varying levels of proficien-
cy, additional cash bonuses being awarded
for each examination successfully passed.
The bonus is an increment to yearly salary
usually averaging about 100 pounds. This is
a permanent increment and is not lost wit
promotion to a higher salary bracket.
Thedepartment might do well- to investi-
gate, if it hasnot already done so, the various -
incentive programs- of other countries and
devise a suitable one for our Foreign Service.
Perhaps a better incentive than money would;
be to offer "language preference" points to-
wards promotion. This might work as fol-
lows: A separate language dossier could be
prepared on each officer, listing the lan-
guages on which- he has successfully passed
examinations and for which he is entitled to
receive a certain number of promotion points.
After selection boards have rated all eligible
candidates on a, competitive basis without
reference to language ability, the language
dossiers would be handed to the boards and
additional points would be awarded to those
officers entitled to language Credit. Thus, of
two officers originally rated at the same level,
the one with superior language qualifications
would earn preference for promotion. This
would indeed be. a. powerful incentive and
stimulus to serious language study. It would
also spur officers to gain ever higher language
proficiency since this would progressively en-
hance promotion opportunities throughout
their entire career. A similar system could
be worked out for the staff corps. Adminis-
trative details would admittedly present some
difficulties but if, the need for developing lan-
guage skills is. as great as everyone seems to
agree it is, the obstacle could be overcome.
3. The Foreign Service also faces a critical
shortage of language and area experts, par-
ticularly in the so-called exotic areas which
have in recent times become increasingly im-
portant to the foreign relations of the United
States. To improve the quantity and quality
of language and area training will require
a greater effort than has thus far been made.
To be really, effective a language and area
specialist should acquire a deep understand-
ing of the history, art, religion, social struc-
ture, and economy of the region. He mnst
also have a. good command of the language.
Unless he can converse with government
officials, businessmen, merchants and leaders
of religious and minority groups, and can at
least read the local press in the vernacular,
his specialized training will not pay full
dividends. Measured by these standards,
language and area specialization programs,
in south Asia, at least, have in the past been
indequate though we understand that greater
emphasis is now being given to reading espe-
cially during the latter stages of specialist
training.
The problems involved in establishing an
effective corps of language and area special-
ists are many and complex. To surmount
them will, in the writers' opinion, require
improved training programs. The following
minimum considerations are suggested: (a)
recognition of the special difficulties involved
in the study of, the so-called exotic languages;
(b) improvement of initial and follow-
through training programs; (c) improve-
ment of teaching methods; (d) provision of
special incentives,
It is a fact that- most of the exotic lan-
guages in which the Foreign Service is de-
ficient are languages which are not easily
learned by Westerners in general or Amer-
icans in particular. The structure, syntax
and the cultural concepts embedded in these
languages are quite unfamiliar to the Amer-
ican student. Often the student is faced
with a bewildering multiplicity of local lan-
guage variants and dialects. South Asia
alone, according . to some linguists, offers
17 major language groups and several hun-
dred variants. To be really effective in this
area a south Asia language officer should know
well at least three basic languages: Hindu-
stani (which is really two languages, Urdu
and Hindi, with- a common spoken vocabu-
lary of perhaps 40 percent, but different roots
and scripts), Bengali; and at least one south
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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE 2993
idian language, probably Tamil (a Dravid-
n language of different ancestry from
industani and Bengali which are Indo-
European). In addition to these three major
'anguages, he would also find at least a basic
"nowledge of Persian essential in Afghani-
tan and important in Pakistan as well as
1 Muslim areas of India.
In addition to multiple languages, the
a'rea specialist is often confronted with dif-
ferent levels of speech within the same
language. These exist in nearly all lan-
guages but rarely in so exaggerated a form
as in the exotic ones. Within one language,
different vocabularies and, forms are often
matters of rigid social' prescription and wide
variances are found in classical as against
contemporary literature with still different
forms used for official occasions, everyday
polite speech and colloquial conversation.
It is difficult to find equivalent examples
in any Western language unless we hark
back to Roman times and compare the
classical Latin of Horace with the contem-
porary Vulgate and the still more common
idiom of the plebeian masses. The language
and area specialist must somehow command
the major languages of his region and sort
out the various speech levels for the proper
social occasions and groups.
Recognition of these special problems
points the way to the improvements which
should be made in language and area train-
ing. Perhaps the first and most important
step is to gain acceptance for the concept
hat once an officer is selected for language
and area specialization he becomes part of
a marked group whose needs and problems
necessarily differ from those of other officers.
outine administrative and personnel prac-
tices cannot meet these peculiar require-
ments. Special consideration will have to
be given to this group with the Foreign
Service Institute playing a more prominent
and controlling role in such matters as
assignments, tours of duty, advanced train-
ing details, etc.
Until recently, initial training for most
anguage and area specialists eonsisted of
year's study at a university. Both area
nd language studies had to be compressed ,
into this relatively short time. After the
tudy tour, the specialist was largely on his
awn. He often had to scramble by his own.
,fforts for an assignment where his training
could be put to use/ In some cases lack of
acancies and shortage of personnel resulted
n assignments to posts where his newly
Icquired language was not generally spoken.
ai many cases what had been learned be-
eme rusty from disuse and ground was lost
nstead of gained.
Then again there appeared to be no at-
empt at career planning for the language
nd area specialist as such. There was, and
till seems to be, no planned program of
tssigrunents aimed at safeguarding and de-
'eloping the Government's initial invest-
ent in the specilized training. Assign-
. ents to future posts depended, and still
io, on the vagaries of existing vacancies,
osition classifications, coincidence of home-
eave and transfer schedules of officer re-
lacements and all the usual paraphernalia
,f personnel redtape. Recently there have
een signs of improvement. The initial
raining period has been lengthened and is
sually preceded by intensive language train-
ag at the Foreign Service Institute. Lan-
uage schools, such as the one for Arabic in
eirut, have been set up in a country where
he language is spoken to give the student
ractical experience along with academic
raining. A number of other improvements
ave been instituted or are on the way. But
auch more is needed.
In the writers' opinion, an adequate train-
g program for a language and area spe-
ialist (particularly for south Asia) would
ansist of a period of initial training and
period of followthrough training. The
itial training would include;
1. Three months' full-time intensive lan-
guage training at the Foreign Service Insti-
tute.
2. One full year of academic language and
area studies at a university.
3. Eighteen months of travel, residence,
and study in the area, nine months of which
could be at a university with a specific re-
search assignment to fulfill.
4. Assignment to a post in the area where
the language is widely spoken.
This initial training period should be fol-
lowed by a 10-year planned program of as-
signments which would constitute the
followthrough training. This career-plan-
ning phase should be started as soon as the
officer is selected for training. Before he
finishes his university assignment both the
Department and he should know in a rather
definite way what his assignments for the
next 10 years will be. The objective of this
plan would be to insure that this period of
followup training will develop the language
and area skill acquired during the initial
training period. The career planning office
recently established in the Department could
make an excellent start by giving priority
to planning the careers of language and area
specialists in whom the Government already
has a very substantial investment which
should not be dissipated by haphazard as-
signments. To insure that future slots exist
at the right time and place for language
and area officers, would it not be possible
to establish one or more unclassified positions
at appropriate posts and in the Department?
This would permit assignments in accord-
ance with career-planning needs rather than
as dictated by the fortuitous existence of va-
cancies in the right grades at the right
times. At present it is only rarely and by
bare chance that the right officer and the
right vacancy coincide. Only by creating
extra positions not subject to rigid personnel
classification can this difficulty be overcome.
The actual duties of an officer occupying one
of these positions would depend on his rank
and special abilities. To establish such po-
sitions will require understanding and co-
operation from the personnel and budget
offices in the Department and perhaps spe-
cial congressional action, but this or some
similar plan is an indipensable step. .
Another problem which requires more
study than can be given to it in this article is
the question of language teaching methods.
This is a murky and somewhat controversial
field in which one risks drawing down the
wrath of the linguistic scientists who 'have
strongly influenced language teaching since
the last war. Not being linguistic scientists,
the writers are not qualified to enter into the
merits of this controversy from a scientific
viewpoint. Our comments are simply based
on actual field experience in learning and
teaching languages and we are interested in
the practical question: What actually pro-
duces the best results from the standpoint
of the student? These observations have
led us to conclude that the new teaching
techniques have much to commend them
and are especially effective for students who
want a quick useful but not necessarily ac-
curate, command of a language. They are
therefore better suited for general language
programs than for training language and
area specialists whose needs are of a different
order.
The new systems of language teaching have
discarded traditional methods in favor of
shortcut or direct teaching courses in which
the primary emphasis is on the spoken lan-
guage. These lessons are often written in
transliterative systems which employs so
many diacritical marks to represent the
strange sounds of the exotic language that
in many cases it is just as easy to learn the
foreign script as to learn the romanized
transliteration.
Language schools for missionaries in South
Asia with many years of experience in lan-
guage teaching have long ago concluded that
for students who careers are to be-1n the
area, it is just as easy and ultimately far
more fruitful, to teach the local scripts from
the beginning. Their language tests are
therefore written in the native alphabets.
Progress at first may be slower but in the
long run the ability to read fluently gives
the student a deeper and broader knowledge
of the language. This principle is perhaps
even more applicable to the language and
area specialist whose language needs are of
the same long-range nature but even nittre
demanding than those of the missionary.
A similar argument can be made for the
study of grammar. It is sometimes over-
looked that grammar 'itself is a short-cut to
language. It can be learned empirically or
inductively from numerous examples, but for
many adult students it is much quicker to
learn the rule which is the essence of the
many instances and then apply it to indi-
vidual cases, rather than the other way
around. A great deal depends, too, on the
propensities of each student. It is the
writers' feeling that these differences in sus-
ceptibility to various teaching methods have
not been sufficiently recognized. Just as ed-
ucational psychologists now recognize that
some students are eye-minded and some ear-
minded, experience in teaching languages
shows that some students learn more readily
by methods which side-step grammar and
rely heavily on direct spoken exercises where-
as others can advance further and more
quickly by learning the basic rules of the
language and applying them to individual
speech situations.
As the reader may have guessed, this is a
plea that the teaching methods now in gen-
eral use for the training of language and
area specialists, be carefully reviewed. Not
all traditional ways of learning a language
are necessarily bad, any more than all the
new methods are necessarily good. Perhaps
the solution lies in a reasonable synthesis
of the two systems which, after testing in
the crucible of experience rather than in
speech laboratories, would incorporate the
best aspects of both.
Lastly, the problem of providing adequate
incentives to language and area specialists
must be tackled. Judging from appeals
which have been 'periodically circulated to
the field, the Department encounters consid-
erable difficulty in attracting sufficient-num-
bers of candidates for language and area
training. This has been especially true for
those regions of the world, such as the
Middle East and south Asia, where needs for
specialists are growing. The reasons for the
reluctance of Foreign Service officers to vol-
unteer for this training are clear. To the
candidate for language and area training,
many disadvantages and few advantages are
visible. If he applies for this training he
must take 1 or 2 years out of his regular'
career while his colleagues in substantive
assignments presumably enhance their
chances for promotion. After his training
he and his family have to look forward to a
lifetime of service in a series of hardship
posts with only occasional relief by assign-
ment to Washington, which to many in the
Service, is just another hardship post. In
spite of references in the precepts to selec-
tion boards there has been little in the per-
formances of past boards to indicate that the
language and area specialist serving in
Madras, Jidda, or Vientiane is viewed with
any particular preference for promotion over
his nonspecialist colleagues in Madrid,
Buenos Aires, or Sydney. Furthermore, he
may discover that prolonged service in one
area will adversely affect his finances. He
will find that his household appliances,
- clothing, and car wear out much faster than
they would in nonhardship areas and that
cost-of-living allowances will seldom cover
these added expenses. Not only must he re-
equip himself and his family more frequently
but he will find this process is more expen-
sive than for his nonspecialist colleague. ?
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2994 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE March 5
An illustration will make this clear: Offi-
cer X, an area specialist, and officer Y, a
nonspecialist, serving at Lahore are trans-
ferred. Following normal Foreign Service
practice they order from the United States
a car and other items needed to equip
themselves at their next post. As an area
specialist, X is transferred within his area
to Bombay. As a nonarea specialist, Y is
available for worldwide assignment and is
transferred, let us say, to Rome. X at once
finds that he must buy many, items for
Bombay which Y does not need to purchase
for Rome. But even worse, in accordance
with Foreign Service Regulations, X must
pay the difference between what it would
have cost to ship his purchases Lahore-Bom-
bay and the actual shipping cost New York-
Bombay.
All these considerations add up to rather
powerful deterrents, even for those whose
natural interests attract them to these un-
comfortable areas of the world. The lan-
guage and area specialist thus finds himself
a member of a select group but one that
is singled out for penalty more often than
for privilege. This, of course, has its psy-
chological advantages in creating a certain
?n and esprit de corps among the spe-
cialist group. The Marine Corps and the
Foreign Legion have found it advantageous
to elevate this masochism (latent to some
extent in all men) to heights of heroism.
But although this may have some appeal to
the language and area candidate, the task
of building a solid and effective corps of
specialists will require powerful and pos-
itive incentives.
These incentives should be both psycho-
logical and material. The former category
could include some of the reforms suggested
in this article such as effective initial train-
ing and a planned follow through series of
assignments. The language and area officer
should be given the feeling, supported by
tangible evidence, that he belongs to a spe-
cially selected group over which the Depart-
ment, and particularly the F.S.I? maintain a
vigilant eye.
In the category of material incentives, the
logical first step should be to remove or
minimize some of the obvious ineauities
which now accompany the mere fact of being
a language and area specialist. In addition
to correcting obviously discriminatory pro-
cedures, positive incentive, either in the
form of pay increments or through some sys-
tem of promotion preference similar to that
suggested for general language programs in
the first part of this article, should be in-
stituted. In this case too, separate dossiers
could be prepared on language and area spe-
cialists which would be handed to selection
boards only after all eligible officers have been
rated, so that as between two officers of
equal ability, the language and area spe-
cialist would receive promotion preference.
Incidentally, a specialist officer who was ex-
traordinarily gifted in language might thus
earn a double promotion credit, one for his
language and area specialization and one
along with other officers who had success-
fully passed examinations in language listed
for promotion credit. The languages of his
area of specialty would, of course, not earn
him credit in the general language incentive
program.
To sum up, the problem which faces the
Foreign Service in its attempt to untie the
tongues of its employees is a complex and
difficult one. Different types of programs
will be needed for the different groups that
have to be reached: one for employees in-
terested only in acquiring a useful knowl-
edge of the local language; another for all
officers who need to have a command of at
least one world language; and again another
for the particular needs of language and
area specialists. The key to the solution of
these problems lies in the formulation and
institution of adequate training programs
? and of incentive systems tailored to the re-
sults which the Department hopes to
achieve.
[From the Foreign Service Journal,
February 1959]'
FOREGN LANGUAGE: CHINK IN AMERICA'S
ARMOR?
(By Jacob Ornstein)
"The United States is probably weaker in
foreign language abilities than any major
country in the world," declared Marion Fol-
som, former Secretary of Health, Education,
and Welfare, before a Senate committee in
January 1958.' He added, "If we are to gain
and hold the confidence and good will of
peoples around the world, we must be able
to talk to them not in our language but in
theirs." In recent months a growing number
of statements of this kind by public leaders
has caused thinking Americans to become
more than a little concerned about the
shocking state of our foreign language prep-
aration.
In the pre-sputnik days warnings about
the poor state of our linguistic preparedness
were greeted by yawns, or at best, mild in-
terest. The Soviet satellites circling about
the earth brought us face to face with
some very disquieting facts. One of the
most upsetting of these has been the news
that of the 1,400 or so Soviet technical
journals received by our libraries, less than
50 have until now been regularly translated.
Does it matter? In 1951 an article on
contact relay networks appeared in the
Journal Of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences.
So few of 'our scientists, read Russian that
it was not noticed until 1955. In the opin-
ion of Dr. William Locke of the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology, this oversight
cost us at least $200,000 in duplicated re-
search, not to mention the time-lag.
A survey by the author published last
year by the State Department's External Re-
search Staff _revealed that of our 1,800 or so
colleges less than 180 were teaching Rus-
sian?to about 5,000 students. By contrast,
in the U.S.S.R. an estimated 10 million Rus-
sians of all ages are busy mastering English.
World War II left the United States in a
position of leadership for which we were
ill-prepared linguistically. Decades of neg-
lect had brought language training to its
lowest level in our history. When Hitler in-
vaded Poland in 1939 about 20 colleges were
teaching Russian, while an insignificant
number offered the languages of Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and other stra-
tegic areas. The Armed Forces and the Gov-
ernment scrambled to set up emergency
teaching programs where weary-eyed GI's
raced against time to get a smattering of
Japanese, Norwegian, Bulgarian, and some
40 other tongues urgently needed to conduct
the war on Our farfiung battlefronts.
. The postwar period brought an aggrava-
tion of the language problem. The tasks of
occupation and of dealing with new states
created an unprecedented demand for lin-
guistic know-how. Since the end of the war
at least 15 sovereign states have been born,
many employing languages not offered by
any American school. India alone has at
least 100 dialects and 14 official tongues. Of
these, Hindi, spoken by about 150 million
persons, is taught by a mere half dozen
American universities.
Those whose stock answer to this problem
is "Let 'em learn English" are simply blind
to the international facts of life. The dan-
gers of linguistic ignorance are dramatically
shown by a story which has become well-
known in Foreign Service circles. When the
American Embassy was set up in a certain
new Far Eastern State, we had not a single
officer with competence in the language and
had to hire local interpreters. Wishing to
please their employers, they translated ev-
erything to sound very flattering to the
United States.
When we were able to train and send ou
our own linguists, we were horrified to fin
that anti-American sentiment was raging
fiercely in that country.
Secretary of State Dulles, in requesting ad-
ditional funds for language training at the
85th Congress last year, pointecl'out that less
than half of our Foreign Service officers had
a practical sepaking and reading knowledge
of French, German, or Spanish, while barely:
25 percent of the incoming trainees had a
working knowledge of these tongues. For
this reason, he observed, the State Depart-
ment had been obliged to relax severely its
language requirement in recruiting new offi-
cers. Perhaps the mos/ telling commentary
on these figures has been provided by Secre-
tary Dulles himself when he asserted that
"the effectiveness of our efforts to create a
stable pattern of international relations
hinges to an important degree on the estab-
lishment of understanding between peoples.
Language can both aid and obstruct this
vital understanding."
While American high school students have
been enrolled in driver education, basket-
weaving, and telephone techniques, the So-
viets have left no stone unturned to provide
their citizens with the ordnance of foreign
language. Writing in the New York Times,
Mr. Theodore Shabad a few months ago de-
scribed the ambitious network of schools
being established throughout the Soviet Un-
ion where at the tender age of 8 bright
youngsters are launched on all-out programs
of language mastery. In Moscow there are
three schools where youngsters are getting
their three R's exclusively in French, Ger-
man, or English. In Leningrad two elemen-
tary boarding schools put the children
through their paces in Chinese and Hindi.
Special schools have been established in the
Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan to introduce
youngsters to Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and
other languages.
In vivid contrast to the intense Soviet lan-
guage drive, the linguistic picture in the
United States is a depressing one. Accord-
ing to Modern Language Association figures,
of the 24 major languages of the world, each
spoken by more than 20 million persons,
only Spanish and French are studied by an
appreciable number of Americans. It is
hardly any wonder, therefore, that of our
representatives abroad perhaps 1 out of 40
can speak effectively any language but
English. ,
That this problem reared its ugly head as
early as the Colonial Period is revealed by
John Adams in a letter addressed to the
Treasury Board. In it he commented:
"I found myself in France ill-versed in the
language, the laws, customs, and manners of
the country, and had the mortification to
find my colleagues little better informed
than myself, vain as this may seem."
Referring to Benjamin Franklin, he noted
that the latter "spoke the language imper-
fectly and was able to write bad French."
However, the language needs of. those earl
diplomats appear trifling compared with
those of today. At a conference in linguis
tic needs in government, held by the U.S
Office of Education in March, 1957, it was
learned that a total of 106 foreign tongues
are required for our government agencies
and armed services. As our schools hay-
simply not been producing enough qualifie
linguists, the services and many governmen
agencies have been obliged to create special
schools. At the Army Language School, for
example, intensive training, lasting from 6
to 15 months, is provided in 29 languages
ranging from French to Vietnamese.
Despite the acute need for Americans whc
can speak languages, few students enrolled
in college language courses go far enoug
in their study to be able to carry on a simpl
conversattion or read a newspaper editorial:
worse yet, too few colleges provide course
which give insight into the background o
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1959 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
areas other than Western Europe. The Con-
ference on Asian Affairs recently reported
that fully forty percent of our colleges have,
no courses on the Far East where over half
the world's population resides.
Condemning the short-sightedness of
many of our universities, Dr. Grayson Kirk,
president of Columbia University, last year
stated, "We must make an effort to know
more of the life and thought of the great
Asian leaders who have had such profound
influence on the lives of hundreds of millions
of men and women. It will be a long time,"
he added, "before Asoka and Akbar and the
Gupta Kings are commonplace terms along
with Julius Caesar, Henry IV of France, and
the Tudor Kings of England."
The Modern Language Association of
America, in a four-year study supported by
the Rockefeller Foundation, has revealed
facts and figures on language in our schools
which give little reason for complacency.
Surveying 971 American colleges and univer-
sities, the Association found that more than
half of these schools offer no language other
than French, Spanish, or German. It con-
cluded that three-quarters of the world's
population speaks languages not taught in
American universities.
While the Soviets are busy courting the
uncommitted neutrals through a never-
ending series of cultural, scientific missions,
dance groups and sports teams?all well
supplied with linguists?we have the doubt-
ful distinction of sending more tonguetied
persons abroad than any other modern
country. Unhappily, this is not limited to
the average citizen who invests in a summer
cruise, but applies to our intellectual and
school leaders as well. Commenting on this,
the distinguished teacher and writer, Henri
Peyre, of Yale University, has written:
"Americans have taken refuge in the easy
but paralyzing prejudice?totally groundless,
in fact?that they are not gifted for lan-
guages. * * They have been afflicted by
shyness when confronted by the need to
master another tongue and have cultivated
inhibitions which a little courage would
soon dispel. American scientists, scholars,
and diplomats have thus done incalculable
damage to the prestige of their country
abroad, through their placid assumption
that everyone should understand English."
Is there any way out of the language
muddle? Indeed, the situation has become
so critical that Government leaders have
decided to take action. Public Law 85-864,
passed by the 85th Congress, authorizes $887
million for a 4-year program of development
in science, mathematics, and languages.
The plan proposes some daring innova-
tions. It calls for a system of language
institutes to be established at colleges for
the purpose of providing language teachers
and supervisors with training intended to
improve the quality and effectiveness of in-
struction. In addition, the proposal pro-
vides for the development of foreign-lan-
guage training and service centers at selected
institutions to furnish instruction in rare
but strategic tongues rarely or never taught
in the United States.
This is certainly a step in the right direc-
tion. However, despite the merit of such a
plan, it is still an emergency measure which
does not attack the problem at the very core.
The solution to our linguistic dilemma can
come only through a thorough overhauling
of our language teaching system.
First of all, it is necessary to streamline
our teaching methods. Most of the Nation's
25,000 language instructors are capable and
devoted individuals. Unfortunately, there
are still a considerable number who teach
a language by the well-known expedient of
keeping one page ahead of the class. Else-
where, well qualified teachers find themselves
hamstrung by a rigid program of study
stressing grammatical analysis and transla-
No. 36-10
tion of literary classics. This has resulted
in drab, uninteresting instruction which has
caused many generations of Americans tti
abhor language study, recalled by them as a
tortured exercise in the memorization of ir-
regular verbs and adjectives.
Part and parcel of the improvement of
teaching methods is the need for increased
use of audiovisual aids and laboratories.
Although no panacea for language problems,
the use of magnetic tape recorders and other
equipment in soundproof laboratories has
proved to be a boon to the teaching of for-
eign languages, especially for the speaking
and understanding phases.
A sweeping change must be made with re-
gard to the age at which young Americans
are introduced to foreign languages. In no
Other civilized country is the mistake made
of presenting a second language to the indi-
vidual so late in his school career. The
findings of physiological, psychological, and
linguistic researchers indicate clearly that
by the age of 5 a child has mastered his own
tongue and ? is ready to learn one or several
foreign tongues.
Fortunately, America is witnessing the de-
velopment of a vigorous trend?the move-
ment to introduce foreign languages in the
elementary schools, known as FLES by edu-
cators. Sparked by Earl J. McGrath while he
was U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1952,
the movement has had a meteoric career. In
5 years, the number of grade-school young-
sters has risen from insignificant numbers to
some 300,000 junior linguists enrolled in
French, Spanish, German, Italian, and other
languages. Even so, at the present time, less ?
than one youngster out of a hundred can
get started in a foreign language at a time
when he can learn it perfectly and effort-
lessly.
In the modern program of language in-
struction which America so badly needs to-
day, the youngster would begin the study of a
foreign language by the third grade and con-
tinue it through high school and into col-
lege, until he has a good speaking, writing,
and reading knowledge. Let it be remem-
bered that a Soviet youngster who wishes to
attend college must present at least 6 years
of a modern language and that he `must
usually continue it there for several years
more.
In addition to increasing the number of
years that a foreign language is studied, it is
essential that we expand greatly the range of
languages taught in our schools. Most high
schools and colleges are still offering the
same languages which they taught 30 years
ago. There is an urgent need to introduce
important world languages like Russian,
Polish, Czech, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian,
Arabic, Swahili, and others.
Moreover, the language profession needs to
be made much more attractive. Dr. H. B.
Wells, president of Indiana University, has
called attention to the declining number of
students going into thelinguistic field.
"Last year," he noted in 1957, "of the entire
graduating class a mere 1.6 percent was spe-
cializing in languages, a mere drop in the
bucket compared to our needs." It is, how-
ever, little wonder that present day youth is
giving this field a cold shoulder, when incen-
tives are so poor. The training of a language
teacher or translator requires from 7 to 10
years. Consequently, many youngsters pre-
fer to go into fields where the training is less
rigorous and rewards are greater.
In the final analysis, there can be no last-
ing solution to the language problem until
the general public is made aware of the
linguistic problem and demands from its
schools the type of language training suited
for a jet-propelled world where borders are
constantly shrinking.
A start has been made in acquainting
Americans at the grass roots with language
problems. The U.S. Commission for UNESCO,
2995
in cooperation with the Modern Language
Association, has, during the past few years
held several hundred "citizen consultation"
meetings intended to acquaint laymen and
leaders in typical American communities
with the facts and figures on our language
snarl. Electrified into action, many indivi-
duals and civic groups have acted through
their school boards and administrators to
improve language facilities at the local level.
Americans are beginning to wake up to our
dangerous language lag?a weak chink in the
Nation's armor. As a leader in the free
world, the United States cannot afford to
continue to be tonguetied in the world arena.
Language?the verbal stuff of international
communication?deserves a new deal in the
American classroom.
[From the New York Times, Mar. 19, 19581
FOREIGN .SERVICE WOES: A COMMENT ON IN-
ABILITY OF U.S. ENVOYS To TALK LANGUAGE
OF NATIONS THEY'RE IN
(By James Reston)
WASHINGTON, March 18.?Sometimes a
small incident tells more about the problems
of U.S. foreign policy than a month's debate
in the Senate. President Eisenhower's
luncheon yesterday with the Advisory Com-
mittee of the Foreign Service Institute is a
case in point. The purpose of the meeting
was to discuss the sad state of language
training in the Foreign Service, which is pri-
marily responsible for the administration of
U.S. foreign policy at home and overseas.
Actually, what it turned out to be was a
briefing session, primarily by men outside
the Government, for the President on just
how poorly trained in languages his staff is.
The facts are as follows:
Fifty percent of the entire Foreign Service
officer corps do not have a speaking knowl-
edge of any foreign language.
Seventy percent of the new men coming
into the Foreign Service are in the same
state.
Llewellyn E. Thompson, U.S. Ambassador
in Moscow, is the only U.S. Ambassador in a
Communist country who speaks the lan-
guage of the country to which he is assigned.
In the nine Arabic-speaking countries,
the only U.S. Ambassadors who speak Arabic
are Raymond Hare in Egypt and Parker T.
Hart in Jordan.
In the non-English-speaking countries of
the North Atlantic Treaty nations, the U.S.
Ambassadors do not have a workable knowl-
edge of the language in Belgium, France,
Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Portugal,
Turkey, and Greece.
Vinton Chapin, the Ambassador in Luxem-
bourg, is fluent in French; Val Peterson, in
Copenhagen, claims a fair knowledge of
Danish; Frances E. Willis, in Oslo, says she
can speak fair Norwegian, and James D.
Zellerbach, in Rome, says merely that he is
studying Italian.'
The same state of affairs, or worse, exists
in the U.S. embassies of Asia, and naturally
enough, the President was not only
interested but 'enthusiastic about doing
something about it.
Those at the White House luncheon were
Gen. Alfred M. Gruenther, of the Red Cross;
Robert Calkins, of the Brookings Institu-
tion; Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of
Foreign Affairs; Dr. Clyde K. Kluckhohn of
the Peabody Museum; Charles E. Saltzman,
former Assistant Secretary of State; and
Henry M. Wriston, former president of
Brown University.
Also, for the administration, Under Sec-
retary of State Christian A. Herter; Deputy
Under Secretary of State Loy Henderson;
Gen. Robert Cutler, an assistant to the
President; Harold B. Hoskins, director of
the Foreign Service Institute; and the newly
appointed Director of the Bureau of the
Budget, Maurice H. Stans.
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2996 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD ? SENATE
It is the function of the Foreign Service
Institute to provide language training for
Foreign Service officers, but its funds have
repeatedly been cut, with little or no effort
by the President to do anything about it.
Though he is responsible for the appoint.
rnent of ambassadors, and though the For-
eign Service officers who head our embassies
overseas are his personal representatives, the
President's attitude was reported to be:
''Why didn't somebody tell me about this?"
He was sincerely disturbed, and even an-
gry, about the difficulty in getting adequate
funds to provide the necessary language
training; He observed that a former secre-
tary of his was recently given a 4-year
training course at a university on Air Force
funds, and he wondered why it was not pos-
sible to get even a few months' training
for the men who were involved in one of
the most lively periods of diplomatic ac-
tivity in recent years.
REPRESENTATIVE ROONEY INVOLVED
His visitors told him in plain and simple
terms. The reason, as almost everybody fa-
miliar with the State Department's prob-
lems knows, is Representative JOHN J.
ROONEY, Democrat, of the 14th District of
New York (Kings County).
Mr. ROONEY is chairman of the House Ap-
propriations subcommittee that presides
over the State Department budget. He has
been slashing that budget for years, is less
than enthusiastie about giving ambassadors
the necessary language training or repre-
sentation allowances, and is generally re-
garded, despite his obscurity, as one of the
most powerful men in America, in a nega-
tive way, so far as U.S. foreign policy is con-
cerned.
The President was interested in Mr.
ROONEY and offered to do something about
talking to him. He could not have been
more sympathetic to the problems placed be-
fore him and his visitors came away con-
vinced that they had had a most useful
luncheon.
But at least some of them wondered why
the language and training problem had not
been discussed and dealt with at the highest
level of the Government more than 5 years
ago, or at least in 1956, when the embassies
were filled with presidential appointees who
could not speak the language of the coun-
tries to which they were assigned.
[From the Christian Science Monitor,
July 5, 19591
WHERE AMERICA IS LAST
Recently when some Americans were visit-
ing a school in Moscow a Russian girl of
high school age arose and addressed the
visitors in English.
It was rather broken English, but it was
intelligible. And one of the American
visitors, Jenkins Lloyd Jones of the Tulsa
Tribune, confessed to sadness that there
was not a public school in the United States
where a single pupil could welcome Russian
visitors in the Russian language.
While English is taught in most of the
leading schools of Russia the Russian lan-
guage is taught in few public schools in the
United States.
A few weeks ago a convoy of three Russian
airplanes landed at the capital city of one
of the countries of the southwestern Pacific.
Every one of the 125 visiting Russians was
able to speak the native language. They
had been trained in that language before
they undertook their mission. But in the
American Embassy in that island capital
there was only one employee who could
speak the native language, and he was a
native of the island, an interpreter em-
ployed by the United States.
It is unusual for an American Ambassador
to be able to speak the language of the
country to which he is assigned. This ig-
norance of foreign languages has its
handicaps. To begin with it is a positive
embarrassment, because an ability to speak
many languages is considered\ the hallmark
of an educated person in most of the world's
capitals.
Hence no matter how skilled the Ameri-
can representative may be in the language
of his own country he is written down as
ignorant when he shows his inability to
speak another tongue.
It has been argued for years that no one
should be sent abroad to represent the
United States officially unless he is able to
speak the language of the country to which
he is assigned. But nothing important has
ever resulted from the argument. Primarily
the United States is simply unable to find
competent diplomats who are acquainted -
with foreign languages. go we continue to
send into the capitals and cultural centers
of the world men who are unable to
understand one word of the language they
hear in councils or on the streets.
Nothing corrective is likely to be done
about this for a long time. You can imag-
ine what would happen to the American
lawmaker who launched a movement to re-
quire the teaching of the Russian language
in all American schools. Yet Russian
speech is gradually becoming the court
language of half the world (Daily Okla.
homan.)
IMPORTANCE OF THE RAILROAD
INDUSTRY
Mr. JOHNSTON of South Carolina.
Mr. president, sometimes we are prone
to forget and to neglect a word of tribute
or praise to an industry?and to the men
who are engaged in it?which plays so
important a role in the lives of every one
of us and which is so essentially a funda-
mental part of our progress and develop-
ment as a Nation. We are fortunate in
the great and diversified types of our
American industry. Our past develop-
ment has been possible because of the
progress these industries have made
through their growth and expansion.
We owe them much for that.
Our future progress may well depend
upon the preservation and continued
healthy existence of these vital indus-
tries. Too many of our citizens have
their private funds invested in them for
that investment to be neglected. Too
many workers depend upon their con-
tinued employment in all our industries
for us to allow any one to be the object
of discriminatory practices or policies.
In my opinion, one of the most vital
of our industries today is our railroads.
To neglect this segment of our economic
system would indeed have dire and far-
reaching consequencies. Thousands of
workers depend upon our great railway
system for their employment?track-
workers, repairmen, engineers, brake-
men, conductors, station agents, office
workers, and executives. So we must
not overlook any of them when such a
vital industry requires our thoughtful
consideration for its future well-being.
I have prepared a brief statement rel-
ative to this great industry, and I desire
to have my statement incorporated in
the RECORD. Later, I shall expand my
remarks, for this vital and ingenious
American enterprise deserves our most
careful consideration.
TRIBUTE TO A VITAL INDUSTRY
For the past few years, I have become
increasingly concerned about the physi-
Mccrch 5
cal and financial condition of our great
American railroad industry. I followed
with much interest the hearings which
were held last winter under the able
leadership of our colleague, the Senator
from Florida [Mr. SMATHERS1. I was
much encouraged, of course, when the
Congress, in August, enacted the Trans-
portation Act of 1958, and removed the
onerous 3 percent excise tax on freight
shipments.
These two pieces of legislation were, of
course, very helpful, and, in my opinion,
constituted a good beginning. We must,
however, continue to look for a complete
solution to the still present problems of
discriminatory regulation, subsidization,
and excessive taxation?all of which still
plague this great industry. The ulti-
mate solution of these problems can be
accomplished only when the Congress
acts to take into account the railroads'
essentiality and importance to the econ-
omy of this country.
More than $35. billion of private capi-
tal has been invested in an immense rail-
road plant of shops, signals, communica-
tions, and rolling stock. More than 2
million freight and passenger cars weave
in and out across the 220,000-mile net-
work of rails, and carry almost half of the
Nation's intercity freight traffic and
nearly one-third of its commercial pas-
senger load.
The accomplishments of the railroads
are staggering. In just a 60-minute
period, more than 1,000 freight and pas-
senger trains start on scheduled runs all
over the Nation, and the same number
pull into terminals. More than 31/2 mil-
lion tons of goods will move some 20
miles during the same hour. On the
passenger side, trains will perform trans-
portation equivalent to carrying 3 mil-
lion people 1 Mile. Yet, even in the light
of these facts, some persons think that
the railroads are dying.
Let me say a word about the human
side of railroading. At the end of 1956,
more than 1 million persons were reg-
ularly employed in our railroad indus-
try. Today, because of the problems
which are still hanging around the necks
of the railroads, and because of the
recession, railroad employment has
dropped to about 825,000 people, who
receive about $5 billion a year in wages,
Another half-million people work for
companies which are directly dependent
upon the $3 billion the railroad industry
spends in an average year for materials,
supplies, new plants, and equipment.
Still more people?a million, in fact?
have invested, their savings in railroad
stocks and bonds.
What about the financial support the
railroads give to local and State govern-
ments and to the Federal Government?
More than $1 billion is paid by the in-
dustry in a normal year in the form of
taxes which help the States build and
maintain our schools and other impor-
tant projects. All of this makes Amer-
ica a better place in which to live. Some
of the railroads' tax money even finds its
way into the construction of highways,
waterways, airways, and airports. This
is a remarkable benefit to competing
carriers.
So this is a vital industry which
reaches into Hometown, U.S.A. Hun-
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/08/07 : CIA-RDP61-00357R000100180003-9