This is introduction, acknowledgements and dedication part from Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes. Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is a collection of select peer-reviewed scholarly articles developed from concepts and positions presented and generated at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (ISLSP) celebrated on April 13–14, 2012 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (United States). The symposium gathered 31 speakers and over 80 participants from all over the nation and other parts of the world. Each speaker brought a unique perspective of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), which was essential to pave the way to enlightening, fruitful and engaging discussions throughout the 2–day symposium. ; To cite the digital version, add its Reference URL (found by following the link in the header above the digital file). ; Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes Lourdes Sánchez-López Editor UAB Digital Collections Birmingham, Alabama, March 2013 Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes ISBN 978-0-9860107-0-5 UAB Digital Collections Mervyn H. Sterne Library University of Alabama at Birmingham March 2013 Editor Lourdes Sánchez-López University of Alabama at Birmingham Production Manager Jennifer Brady University of Denver Editorial Board Julia S. Austin University of Alabama at Birmingham William C. Carter University of Alabama at Birmingham Alicia Cipria University of Alabama Sheri Spaine Long United States Air Force Academy / University of Alabama at Birmingham Jesús López-Peláez Casellas University of Jaén Clara Mojica Díaz Tennessee State University Malinda Blair O'Leary University of Alabama at Birmingham Susan Spezzini University of Alabama at Birmingham Rebekah Ranew Trinh University of Alabama at Birmingham Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon University of Alabama at Birmingham Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & DEDICATION Lourdes Sánchez-López . x ON LSP THEORETICAL MODELS Continuing Theoretical Cartography in the LSP Era Michael S. Doyle . 2 ON THE CURRENT STATE OF LSP Language for Specific Purposes Job Announcements from the Modern Language Association Job List: A Multiyear Analysis Mary K. Long . 15 ON LSP PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES Spanish for the Professions: Program Design and Assessment Carmen King de Ramírez and Barbara A. Lafford . 31 Spanish for Professional Purposes: An Overview of the Curriculum in the Tri-state Region Leticia Barajas . 42 The Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate (SSPC) Program: Meeting the Professional Needs of Students and Community Lourdes Sánchez López . 62 French for International Conference at The University of the West Indies, Mona: Total Simulation in the Teaching of Languages for Specific Purposes Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo and Gilles Lubeth . 73 ON THE UNEXPECTED LSP PARTICIPANT The Unexpected Spanish for Specific Purposes Professor: A Tale of Two Institutions Sheri Spaine Long . 88 A Doctoral Student's Shift from Modified AAVE to Academic English: Evidence for Establishing a Language for Specific Purposes Focus Susan Spezzini, Lisa A. La Cross, and Julia Austin . 99 ON METHODOLOGY Teaching Business Chinese: The Importance and Methodology of Building Pragmatic Competence and the Case of Buhaoyisi Yahui Anita Huang . 110 Enhancing Language for Specific Purposes through Interactive Peer-to-Peer Oral Techniques Susan Seay, Susan Spezzini, and Julia S. Austin . 121 Orchestrating a Job Search Clinic for International Scholars and Students Kristi Shaw-Saleh, Susan Olmstead-Wang, Helen Dolive, and Kent D. Hamilton . 129 iii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Contributors Julia S. Austin, PhD is Director of Educational Services for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Graduate School and has been a university administrator and a teacher educator for 25 years. She has been continuously funded since 2000 by the US Department of Education National Professional Development grant program to prepare teachers to effectively serve English learners. Dr. Austin has published and presented on effective teaching practices, academic writing, authorship ethics, and collaborative mentoring. Leticia Barajas, MA is a doctoral student in the Second Language Studies program at the University of Cincinnati where she also teaches academic ESL. Her areas of expertise are Language for Specific Purposes, Spanish for professional purposes and Academic English. Prior to this position, she worked for the Spanish department at the University of Kentucky and developed curriculum for Business Spanish and Spanish for Law Enforcement courses in Mexico and Spain. Leticia Barajas is currently writing her dissertation on Spanish for professionals and working on teacher training for professional development. Jennifer Brady, PhD is the Assistant Managing Editor of Hispania and Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Denver where she teaches all levels of Spanish language and Iberian Culture and Civilization. Her research interests include masculinities in contemporary Spain, doubling and repetition in contemporary Spanish fiction, and modification and illness in physical bodies in Spanish fiction. William C. Carter, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His biography Marcel Proust: A Life was selected as a ―Notable Book of 2000‖ by The New York Times, a ―Best Book of 2000‖ by the Los Angeles Times, and a ―Best Biography of 2000‖ by the Sunday Times of London. Harold Bloom has written that Carter's book, Proust in Love is ―a marvelous study of the comic splendor of the great novelist's of human eros and its discontents.‖ He co-produced the award-winning documentary Marcel Proust: A Writer's Life. His website is http://www.proust-ink.com. Alicia Cipria, PhD is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include theoretical and applied issues of tense, aspect and aktionsart (Spanish and English), teaching methodology, Spanish/English contrasts, translation, and contact of Spanish with other non-indigenous languages. Helen Dolive, MA is the International Student Advisor at Birmingham-Southern College. She previously worked as an Immigration Advisor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She holds Master's degrees in English from Xavier University (Cincinnati, Ohio) and in teaching English as a Second Language from UAB. A British citizen, Helen completed her undergraduate studies in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, during which she lived for a year in Belgium. Her research interests include ESL for adult learners, English for Specific Purposes, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, and orienting new international students. iv Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Michael S. Doyle, PhD is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he chaired the Department of Foreign Languages from 1993–1999. He has also served as Graduate Coordinator (1999–2003 and 2005–2009), Director of the Certificate in Business Spanish (1998–) and Director of the undergraduate and graduate Certificates in Translating and Translation Studies (2000–2012). He received his PhD in Spanish from the University of Virginia in 1981. His specialties are Spanish for Business and International Trade, Business Language Studies (BLS), Translating and Translation Studies (TTS: language, discourse, and transcultural studies, literary and non-literary), and 20th-century Spanish literature. Kent D. Hamilton, MA Ed is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Master of Education in ESL/EFL and is currently working southern Thailand at The Prince of Songkla University, Trang Campus as a lecturer in the Department of Languages. His teaching responsibilities include classes in listening, speaking, grammar, and assisting with professional and staff development classes to improve their English language proficiency. Before entering the field of education he had successful careers as a firefighter/paramedic and as an attorney Yahui Anita Huang, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Modern Foreign Languages Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Her principal academic specializations include Chinese linguistics, Semantics, Pragmatics, and language pedagogy. Her research includes the form and meaning of Chinese conditionals with a focus on quantification, presupposition, modal implications, pronoun occurrence as compared to English ―whatever‖ and ―whoever‖ sentences, and teaching Chinese for specific purposes with an emphasis on building students' pragmatic competence. She teaches Chinese language, culture, and linguistics courses and works as an interpreter and translator. Carmen King de Ramírez, PhD is Clinical Assistant Professor and coordinator for the Spanish for the Professions Program at Arizona State University. She teaches Latin American Culture for the Professions, Spanish in US Communities, Introduction to Interpretation, and Spanish for Health Care. Dr. King de Ramírez specializes in community based learning and professional internship placements for undergraduate students. Her current research interests include LSP programs, heritage learners, digital pedagogy, and service learning/community engagement. Lisa A. La Cross, MA is currently in a doctoral program in Linguistics at the University of Georgia. Her recent research has examined the sociolinguistic implications of the use of the schwa in French and the syntactical structure of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Her future projects include investigating the role of the social variety of French and AAVE within education. Before moving to Georgia, she taught English as a Second Language (ESL) in an urban, public, high school in Birmingham, Alabama. Barbara A. Lafford, PhD is Professor of Spanish linguistics and heads the Faculty of Languages and Cultures for the School of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU). Since arriving at ASU she has published in the areas of Spanish sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, Spanish applied linguistics, computer assisted language learning, v Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) and Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), including the 2012 focus issue on LSP that she edited for the Modern Language Journal. In her administrative role, she has overseen the creation of a Spanish for the professions minor/certificate focused on programs offered on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus (e.g., education, healthcare, criminology, social work, journalism). Mary K. Long, PhD is Senior Instructor and Director of the International Spanish for the Professions major in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her publications in this area focus on cross-cultural communication and cultural sustainability in the global setting as well as LSP program development. She has also published about the role of artists and writers in the nation-building projects of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico and is co-editor of the volume Mexico Reading the United States (Vanderbilt UP, 2009), which explores the dialogue between the two countries from the Mexican point of view. Sheri Spaine Long, PhD is Professor of Spanish at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the US Air Force Academy (2011–2013). At the US Air Force Academy, she is engaged in research focused on the integration of foreign languages and leadership development. From 2006–2009, Long served as Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Language Annals, the journal of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In 2010, she began serving as Editor of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese's (AATSP) Hispania, where she is in her second term as Editor. Long's publications include eight coauthored college textbooks as well as over 40 scholarly articles, notes and reviews on literature, culture, and language education. Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, PhD is Professor of English and Comparative literatures at the Universidad de Jaén (Spain). Currently Research Project Manager, he coordinates an international team of scholars studying the construction of English early modern identities. He has published internationally on early modern English and Spanish literature, popular culture, Joyce, and comparative literature, and he has been visiting fellow at Michigan State University, Arizona State University, and Penn State University, and at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Between 1999 and 2006 he was Vice-rector for International Relations at his university. He is a Corresponding Member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE). Gilles Lubeth, MA is a native of Guadeloupe and a graduate from the Université Antilles-Guyane (UAG). He worked at The University of the West Indies, Mona as Assistant Lecturer from 2005–2010 where he taught French language from beginners to advanced level. At the advanced level, he taught the Translation into French module and French for International Conferences. He was the advisor for exchange students going to the UAG and International Relations students participating in the joint-degree program with University of Bordeaux IV-IEP/UWI/UAG. He is currently based in New York. Clara Mojica-Díaz, PhD is Professor of Spanish at Tennessee State University. She has taught elementary through advanced Spanish, foreign language teaching methods, culture and civilization, and studies in linguistics. She has presented papers on discourse analysis, cultural vi Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) issues, second language acquisition, and language teaching at national and international conferences. She is co-author of the Pueblos Activities Manual (Cengage) and various professional articles. Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo, PhD is Associate Professor of French at The University of the West Indies, Mona and the former Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (2005–2011). She is specialized in the Teaching of French as a Foreign Language and a researcher in the literature and culture of the French-speaking Caribbean. In 2004, she received the French order of the Palmes académiques (Chevalier). She is a past President of the Haitian Studies Association (2005–2006), and the recipient of the 2013 Principal's Award for Research for her article ―The Haitian Short-Story: An Overview‖ (Journal of Caribbean Literatures, 6[3]). Malinda Blair O'Leary, PhD is Assistant Professor of Spanish. At UAB, Dr. O'Leary teaches introductory, intermediate and advanced courses on Spanish language and cultures as well as Spanish for the professions and business. In addition to teaching, Dr. O'Leary serves as the foreign language student teacher supervisor in the UAB School of Education. Susan Olmstead-Wang, PhD an applied linguist, focuses on teaching English as an International Language and developing curriculum for English for Specific Purposes at the School of Education, University of Alabama, Birmingham. She is also adjunct instructor at the Paul J. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, where she teaches advanced graduate writing. Research interests include Mandarin-English code-switching and English for Medical Purposes especially in Chinese-speaking environments. Rebekah Ranew Trinh, MA is the Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she is responsible for development and oversight of the Intensive English Program and English for occupational purposes programs, advocacy for issues related to second language learners at the university, and management of ESOL teachers. She holds an MA-TESOL from the University of Alabama. Lourdes Sánchez-López, PhD is Associate Professor of Spanish and founding director of the Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She directed the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (UAB, 2012). Her scholarship/teaching areas include: Spanish for specific purposes; second language acquisition; applied linguistics; cultural studies and foreign language pedagogy. She is co-author of a Spanish intermediate textbook and student activity manual and has published articles in various scholarly national and international journals. She is the editor of Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013). Susan Seay, PhD is Assistant Professor in the School of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her main research interests are reading instruction and English as a Second Language. She has been a classroom teacher, a reading program director, an ESL Resource teacher, and a family literacy teacher, and she has been involved in the field of education for over 25 years. vii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Kristi L. Shaw-Saleh, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Master's Program for Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her current research interests include identity, gender, and hybridity among distinct immigrant populations in Alabama in an effort to develop best practices for teaching English to these diverse groups of adult language learners. She is especially interested in the effectiveness of interactive teaching strategies and in addressing the need to identify and meet the goals of adult English language learners through job clinics and community-based programs. Susan Spezzini, PhD is Associate Professor of English Language Learner Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the School of Education, University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is also program director of Secondary Education and the principal investigator on two federal grants for training classroom teachers in the effective instruction of English learners. Her main research interest is promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning through collaborative mentoring, visual analogies, and oral interactive techniques. Before coming to UAB, Dr. Spezzini had been a teacher educator in Paraguay for over 20 years. Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds a BA in English from L'École Normale Supérieure of Sousse in Tunisia and an MA and a PhD in English from Michigan State University. Her areas of specialization are post-coloniality, feminist theory and African literature with a specific emphasis on the Maghreb. Her current research projects are: the Holocaust in North African Literature and Tunisian women during WWII. She is author of The Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History and Ideology (Lexington Press, 2005). viii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) INTRODUCTION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND DEDICATION ix Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Introduction Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is a collection of select peer-reviewed scholarly articles developed from concepts and positions presented and generated at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (ISLSP) celebrated on April 13–14, 2012 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (United States). The symposium gathered 31 speakers and over 80 participants from all over the nation and other parts of the world. Each speaker brought a unique perspective of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), which was essential to pave the way to enlightening, fruitful and engaging discussions throughout the 2–day symposium. The keynote address was given by Business Language Studies and Translation Studies renowned scholar Dr. Michael S. Doyle (Theory and Method in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS): Illustrative Considerations for LSP in American Higher Education and Beyond). He accurately approached the need for a stronger research agenda in LSP studies (particularly in non-English LSP) while strengthening pedagogies and resources. Because of the discussions that occurred during and after the symposium, participants concluded the first ISLSP may have prepared a solid ground for something larger, collaborative and long-lasting, with strong national and international repercussions. To contextualize the current state of LSP it is helpful to briefly examine its history. The teaching of LSP originated in the 1960s in the United Kingdom and was established as a discipline as English for Specific Purposes (ESP). A landmark publication, The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens, 1964), called for linguists to carry out research based on samples of language in specific contexts to develop appropriate pedagogical materials. Moreover, the focus of the teaching of LSP has as its primary goal to fulfill the communicative needs of a specific group of people (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Since the 1960s, slow but steady global attention has been given to LSP in both research and the development of pedagogical materials for the classroom for the professions, such as medicine, law, sciences, social work, business, translation and interpretation, among others. However, the specificity of these types of programs does not root in the teaching of a specific language, neither it is determined by the specific professional context. The specificity of LSP depends largely on the students themselves. Courses vary depending on the students taking them, that is, a needs assessment analysis prior to the course development is paramount. Generally, these courses were—and today still are—geared towards adult learners (both traditional or regular/degree seeking and non-traditional or non-regular/non-degree seeking learners) preferably with a basic language background, who clearly necessitate the language in specific professional or academic contexts. Courses are usually developed according to: 1) the student level of communicative competence, 2) the urgency to use the language in a professional context, 3) the specific characteristics of such context, and 4) the design of a program that promotes the learning process (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). For all these reasons, LSP represents the teaching of languages according to learners' characteristics, and its teaching is closely determined by these elements. Typically, the offering of LSP programs is mostly limited to adult or college students for two reasons: 1) the students must have a basic general target language background, and 2) the university system allows for more flexibility or experimentation in course offerings than elementary and secondary education (Almagro, 1997). Therefore, LSP is not considered a discipline separate from the teaching and learning of languages for general purposes, but x Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) rather, it is as an extension (Sánchez-López, 2006). Most researchers agree that LSP pedagogy has been consistently learner-centered, long before the term became main-streamed in pedagogy. By definition, LSP ―attempts to give learners access to the language they want and need to accomplish their own academic or occupational goals.‖ (Belcher, 2004, p. 166) Overall, LSP has a number of weaknesses in terms of institutional recognition and teacher training (Swales, 2000). There are still few professorial positions worldwide in LSP. The majority of the instruction is delivered by adjunct instructors. However, this situation is slowly changing, and, most likely, will continue to change, as the demand for languages for the professions increases in light of recent data (―Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,‖ 2007; ―Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature,‖ 2009). Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes is divided into five sections. In the first section, On LSP Theoretical Models, Michael S. Doyle expands on his previous work of constructing a theoretical framework in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS). He calls for the development of non-English LSP theory development working groups to further develop theoretical cartographies and narratives, which the gathering era of global LSP will require in American higher education. He urges non-English LSP scholars and educators to expand on their work in theory and methodology to devise a general non-English Language for Specific Purposes theoretical model, essential to the maturation of the field. The second section, On the Current State of LSP, Mary K. Long presents findings on a recent study of the LSP job announcements posted in the MLA Foreign Language Job Information List. Her study seeks to find answers to the new state of the foreign language profession in light of above mentioned MLA report ―Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World‖ (2007), which recommended that the language disciplines decenter away from literature and design programs that are more directly related to everyday life and applied contexts. Long's article sheds new light on foreign language professions by presenting a multiyear analysis of LSP MLA job announcements. The third section, On LSP Programs and Practices, includes four chapters, each depicting an LSP program or curriculum currently offered in higher education. Carmen King de Ramírez and Barbara Lafford provide an overview of the Spanish for the Professions minor/certificate (SPMC) program at Arizona State University (ASU) and discuss student-learning outcomes. Leticia Barajas's study investigates whether the field of LSP has been influential in conceptualizing the design of the college-level Spanish curriculum in her region of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Her findings shed light on the principal factors that affect the development of Spanish for Specific Purposes in the overall Spanish curriculum. Lourdes Sánchez-López describes the history, design, implementation and outcomes of the Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate (SSPC) program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The goal of the SSPC is to fulfill the needs of its dynamic millennial students and of the increasingly diversified community. In the last chapter of this section, Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo and Gilles Lubeth present a general overview of the LSP context in the Caribbean region—as well as recent additions to the French for Specific Purposes courses offered at the University of The West Indies, Mona—the methodological choices made, and their implication for assessment. Section four, On the Unexpected LSP Participant, explores two different cases of unexpected LSP participants. Sheri Spaine Long chronicles her transition from professor of xi Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Spanish for general purposes (SGP) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to professor of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP, with a military emphasis) at the United States Air Force Academy. Her reflection documents two transitions that mirror current curricular changes in undergraduate language programs in the United States. She urges foreign language educators to find common ground between SSP and SGP as they design hybrid programs to respond to multiple demands of today's Spanish learners. Susan Spezzini, Lisa A. La Cross and Julia S. Austin explore how a Language for Specific Purposes focus in a presentation skills course helped a doctoral student from a disadvantaged urban background shift from modified African-American Vernacular English to Academic English when giving course presentations. Their study suggests establishing an LSP focus when teaching, assessing, and researching speakers of social varieties who are learning to use an oral academic variety in a professional context. Finally, section five, On Methodology, presents three different methodological aspects of LSP. Yahui Anita Huang discusses issues in teaching Chinese to American college students for professional purposes while focusing on building students' pragmatic competence. Using the multivalent buhaoyisi as an example, Huang argues that in order to use and understand the language appropriately in a business context, pragmatic classroom-based methodology must be woven into the curriculum. Susan Seay, Susan Spezzini and Julia S. Austin propose Peer-to-peer, Oral Techniques (IPOTs) as a methodological tool to help learners understand and use language specific to a certain field or occupation. In their article, these authors describe several IPOTs that can help instructors implement effective strategies to promote interaction in the LSP classroom. And finally, Kristi Shaw-Saleh, Susan Olmstead-Wang, Helen Dolive and Kent D. Hamilton explore how a job search clinic for international scholars and students was conceptualized and implemented at their university. The goal was to help international students in negotiating a job search process in the context of the United States. Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes intends be an important contribution to the LSP field. It is our wish to follow the path of previous, well-respected collections in the disciple (Lafford, 2012; Long, 2010). Collaboration, integration and unity are key elements for the success of our growing field. If this volume helps generate debate, thoughts, new ideas and fresh energy in the LSP profession, it will have achieved its purpose. Lourdes Sánchez-López Editor xii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) References Almagro, A. (1997). La relación entre el inglés para fines específicos y su proceso instructivo en la etapa de estudios universitarios. The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, 4, 39–52. Belcher, D. (2004). Trends in teaching English for specific purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 165–186. Doyle, Michael S. (2012). Theory and method in Translation Studies (TS) and Business Language Studies (BLS): Illustrative considerations for LSP in American higher education and beyond. Keynote address given at the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (April 13–14, University of Alabama at Birmingham). First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes. Retrieved from http://www.uab.edu/languages/symposium Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. (2007) MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages. Profession published by the Modern Language Association. (May). Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/flreport Halliday, M., McIntosh, A. & Strevens P. O. (1964). The linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longman. Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A learning centered approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lafford, B., ed. (2012). Languages for specific purposes in the United States in a global context: Update on Grosse and Voght (1991) [Special Issue]. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 1–226. Long, S. S., ed. (2010). Curricular changes for Spanish and Portuguese in a new era. Hispania, 93(1), 66–143. Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature. (2009). MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages. Profession published by the Modern Language Association (February). Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/pdf/2008_mla_whitepaper.pdf Sánchez-López, L. (2006). ―La implementación de nuevos programas de español para fines específicos en la universidad estadounidense‖. Revista ALDEEU (Asociación de Licenciados y Doctores en Estados Unidos), 11, University of Jaén Publications. Swales, J. M. (2000). Languages for Specific Purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 59–76. Acknowledgments First, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the colleagues who participated in the First International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes and who contributed to its success. I am deeply grateful to the UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and to the following individuals for their critical role in the planning and implementation of the symposium: Sheri Spaine Long, John K. Moore, Brock Cochran, Malinda O'Leary, Yahui Anita Huang, Rebekah Ranew Trinh, Susan Spezzini, Mike Perez, Niki Cochran and Karl McClure. I am also indebted to the symposium sponsors: UAB xiii Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, College of Arts and Sciences; UAB Office for Research and Economic Development; UAB School of Medicine; Cengage Learning; and Pearson. I would also like to thank the colleagues who conducted the peer anonymous reviews of the proposals and to the colleagues who served as session chairs. Last but not least, I will always be indebted to Michael S. Doyle for promptly accepting my invitation to give the keynote address and for honoring us with his presence, expertise and leadership. I have no doubt that he was the perfect keynote speaker for the inaugural ISLSP. I am profoundly grateful to the Editorial Board of Scholarship and Learning on Languages for Specific Purposes who served as anonymous readers and offered invaluable feedback: Julia S. Austin, William C. Carter, Alicia Cipria, Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, Clara Mojica Díaz, Malinda Blair O'Leary, Sheri Spaine Long, Susan Spezzini, Rebekah Ranew Trinh, and Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon. I would like to offer my sincere appreciation to Jennifer Brady for her exceptional and upmost professional work as production manager of this anthology. I would like to thank the UAB Mervyn H. Sterne Library for publishing this volume and to Heather Martin, who facilitated the process. And finally, I am most appreciative of my family, who is the source of my energy and motivation every day. Dedication This book is dedicated to all Languages for Specific Purposes educators and researchers around the world. xiv Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013)
In the past decade, Latin America and the Caribbean has achieved impressive social and economic successes. For the first time in history, more people are in the middle class than in poverty. Inequality, although still high, declined markedly. Growth, jobs and effective social programs have transformed the lives of millions. In a striking departure from the crisis-prone Latin America of the past, the region has shown it is better prepared to weather the brunt of the global economic slowdown. Now, the region faces the challenge of maintaining and expanding its hard won gains in an adverse context of low growth. This is caused in part by a decrease in commodity prices and reduced economic activity in major commercial partners such as China. In such a scenario, achieving development results - and learning from them - becomes more important. This publication showcases stories about people and how their lives have been improved through better health and education, youth employment, disaster recovery and preparedness, infrastructure, and more.
This global report examines the opportunity for special economic zones to promote women's economic empowerment and boost zone and enterprise competitiveness in developing countries. The research covers Bangladesh, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Jordan, Kenya, and the Philippines. The study focuses on women's economic empowerment in the context of zones at three levels: (i) fair employment and working conditions for female employees; (ii) equal access to opportunities for professional advancement; and (iii) investment opportunities for female entrepreneurs. The study also examines gender-friendly policies and practices that support these three main goals, which include a wide range of options around laws, regulations, labor policies, gender-sensitive professional development programs, family support mechanisms, women's health programs, and supplier diversity and capacity-building initiatives. This study establishes the business case for investments in women's economic empowerment in SEZs, and identifies good-practice examples of recommended enablers to address this investment opportunity. Enablers are defined as efforts to counteract the negative impact of the obstacles women face in economic participation, and can include policies and programs at the government, zone, and enterprise level. The study provides background, evidence of challenges and success stories, comprehensive recommendations, and a suite of tools and tips to implement the recommendations successfully.
Despite its volatile history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has performed well on social indicators, especially in providing basic services such as health care and education. Iran's fertility decline may have proceeded in two stages, the first beginning in the late 1960s. The Iranian government introduced a family planning program during the 1960s with explicit health and demographic objectives. Between 1967 and 1977, fertility declined-mainly in urban areas-to an average of 4 children per woman. Although the family planning program continued after the 1979 Islamic revolution, it was suspended after war broke out with Iraq in 1980. During the war, the government pursued a pronatalist population policy, including incentives for childbearing. The fertility decline coincided with improvements in primary and secondary education, possibly affecting the rapid decline in adolescent fertility during 1997-2006, especially when compared to other Middle East and North Africa region countries. Today regional disparities in fertility exist with higher fertility in less developed districts. Yet Iran's example shows how good public policy interventions in health (including family planning) and education can reduce fertility and contribute to human development.
Although Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the worst nutrition indicators in the world, nutrition remains a low priority on the policy agendas of many African governments. This despite the fact that proven interventions are known and available and that investment in them is considered a cost-effective strategy for poverty reduction. This case study is one in a series seeking to understand (1) what keeps African governments from committing fully to reducing malnutrition, and (2) what is required for full commitment. It documents how the Ghanaian government has addressed the issue of malnutrition since Independence, examines what political and institutional factors have prevented full commitment, and identifies what conditions have moved the nutrition agenda forward at different points in time. The primary objective of this study as well as the series as a whole is to help African governments, development partners, and nutrition and health practitioners identify, understand and address the political and institutional obstacles preventing sustainable progress in nutrition.
In: Decision analysis: a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, INFORMS, Band 8, Heft 4, S. 322-327
ISSN: 1545-8504
Ali E. Abbas (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering (1998), an M.S. in engineering economic systems and operations research (2001), a Ph.D. in management science and engineering (2003), and a Ph.D. (minor) in electrical engineering, all from Stanford University. He worked as a lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and in Schlumberger Oilfield Services, where he held several international positions in wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He has also worked on several consulting projects for mergers and acquisitions in California, and cotaught several executive seminars on decision analysis at Strategic Decisions Group in Menlo Park, California. His research interests include utility theory, decision making with incomplete information and preferences, dynamic programming, and information theory. Dr. Abbas is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He is also an associate editor for the Decision Analysis and Operations Research journals of INFORMS. Address: Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 117 Transportation Building, MC-238, 104 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: aliabbas@illinois.edu . J. Eric Bickel (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an assistant professor in both the Graduate Program in Operations Research (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, Professor Bickel is a fellow in both the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy and the Center for Petroleum Asset Risk Management. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering–Economic Systems at Stanford University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering with a minor in economics from New Mexico State University. His research interests include the theory and practice of decision analysis and its application in the energy and climate-change arenas. His research has addressed the modeling of probabilistic dependence, value of information, scoring rules, calibration, risk preference, education, decision making in sports, and climate engineering as a response to climate change. Prior to returning to academia, Eric was a senior engagement manager for Strategic Decisions Group. He has consulted around the world in a range of industries, including oil and gas, electricity generation/transmission/delivery, energy trading and marketing, commodity and specialty chemicals, life sciences, financial services, and metals and mining. Address: Graduate Program in Operations Research, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C2200, Austin, TX 78712-0292; e-mail: ebickel@mail.utexas.edu . Vicki M. Bier (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis" and "Target-Hardening Decisions Based on Uncertain Multiattribute Terrorist Utility ") is a full professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is currently department chair and also directs the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis. She is also the president of the Decision Analysis Society. Her research interests include applications of operations research, risk analysis, and decision analysis to problems of homeland security and critical infrastructure protection. Address: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Mechanical Engineering Building, Room 3270A, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: bier@engr.wisc.edu . David V. Budescu (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is the Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology at Fordham University. He held positions at the University of Illinois and the University of Haifa, and visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Gotheborg, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Hebrew University, and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). His research is in the areas of human judgment, individual and group decision making under uncertainty and with incomplete and vague information, and statistics for the behavioral and social sciences. He is on the editorial boards of Applied Psychological Measurement; Decision Analysis; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition (2000–2003); Multivariate Behavioral Research; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (1992–2002); and Psychological Methods (1996–2000). He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (2000–2001), fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychologists. Address: Department of Psychology, Fordham University, Bronx, New York, NY 10458; e-mail: budescu@fordham.edu . John C. Butler (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a clinical associate professor of finance and the academic director of the Energy Management and Innovation Center in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is the secretary/treasurer of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. Butler received his Ph.D. in management science and information systems from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. His research interests involve the use of decision science models to support decision making, with a particular emphasis on decision and risk analysis models with multiple performance criteria. Butler has consulted with a number of organizations regarding the application of decision analysis tools to a variety of practical problems. Most of his consulting projects involve use of Visual Basic for Applications and Excel to implement complex decision science models in a user friendly format. Address: Energy Management and Innovation Center, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1178; e-mail: john.butler2@mccombs.utexas.edu . Stephen P. Chambal (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") earned a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in industrial engineering and is vice president for the Perduco Group responsible for strategic business development for federal services. The Perduco Group provides high-end operations research and business intelligence support to the Department of Defense. Dr. Chambal recently retired from the U.S. Air Force after more than 24 years of honorable service. Most recently, he served as the director of Operational Analysis for the Air Force Institute of Technology. Dr. Chambal enlisted in the Air Force in 1986 and obtained his commission from the Air Force Academy in 1993. He held various assignments within the scientific analysis career field, including test, space, and special programs and has authored or coauthored numerous articles, white papers, and conference presentations. Address: 256 Earlsgate Road, Dayton, OH 45440; e-mail: stephen.chambal@theperducogroup.com . Philippe Delquié (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an associate professor of decision sciences at the George Washington University and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Delquié's teaching and research are in decision, risk, and multicriteria analysis. His work addresses behavioral and normative issues in preference assessment, value of information, nonexpected utility models of choice under risk, and risk measures. Prior to joining the George Washington University, Delquié held academic appointments at INSEAD, École Normale Supérieure, France, and the University of Texas at Austin, and visiting appointments at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Address: Department of Decision Sciences, The George Washington University, Funger Hall, Suite 415, Washington, DC 20052; e-mail: delquie@gwu.edu . Alex J. Gutman (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is a research associate for the Air Force Institute of Technology's (AFIT) Center for Operational Analysis. He holds an M.S. and B.S. in mathematics from Wright State University and is currently a Ph.D. student at AFIT. His research interests include decision analysis, algorithm design, and design of experiments. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), and the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA). Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, OH 45433; e-mail: agutman@afit.edu . David J. Johnstone (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is the National Australia Bank Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney. His research is primarily in the statistical foundations of financial markets and financial decisions. His professional activities involve more conventional subjects in finance, particularly business valuation and capital budgeting. Address: Discipline of Finance H69, University of Sydney Business School, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia; e-mail: david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au . Victor Richmond R. Jose (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is an assistant professor of Operations and Information Management in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. His main research interests lie in decision analysis and the use of Bayesian statistical methods in management science, operations research, and risk analysis. Address: Operations and Information Management Department, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057; e-mail: vrj2@georgetown.edu . Yucel R. Kahraman (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is a recent graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he received his M.Sc. in operations research. He graduated from ISIKLAR Military High School in Bursa in 1985 and entered the Turkish Air Force Academy in Istanbul. He graduated in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. He completed pilot training at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas, and has flown fighter aircraft for the Turkish Air Force for 10 years. Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, 2950 Hobson Way, WPAFB, Ohio 45433-7765; e-mail: yucelrkahraman@gmail.com . L. Robin Keller (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor of operations and decision technologies in the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.B.A. in management science and her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research is on decision analysis and risk analysis for business and policy decisions and has been funded by NSF and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her research interests cover multiple attribute decision making, riskiness, fairness, probability judgments, ambiguity of probabilities or outcomes, risk analysis (for terrorism, environmental, health, and safety risks), time preferences, problem structuring, cross-cultural decisions, and medical decision making. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of INFORMS and has held numerous roles in INFORMS, including board member and chair of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society. She is a recipient of the George F. Kimball Medal from INFORMS. She has served as the decision analyst on three National Academy of Sciences committees. Address: Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125; e-mail: lrkeller@uci.edu . Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr. (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is an assistant professor who teaches quantitative analysis courses in Darden's MBA program at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on eliciting, evaluating, and combining expert probability forecasts for use in dynamic decision situations. His current research projects include the performance of inference in Bayesian models of dynamic expert forecasts and the formulation optimal strategies in forecasting competitions. Lichtendahl joined the Darden faculty in 2006. Previously, he served as a visiting instructor in the economics department at Duke University. Currently, he also serves as a business consultant and director for the Tradewinds Beverage Company, which he cofounded in 1992. Address: Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903; e-mail: lichtendahlc@darden.virginia.edu . Jason R. W. Merrick (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a D.Sc. in operations research from George Washington University. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and simulation. His research is primarily in the area of decision analysis and Bayesian statistics. He has worked on projects ranging from assessing maritime oil transportation and ferry system safety, the environmental health of watersheds, and optimal replacement policies for rail tracks and machine tools. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the American Bureau of Shipping, British Petroleum, and Booz-Allen-Hamilton, among others. He has also performed training for Infineon Technologies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Capital One Services. He is an associate editor for Decision Analysis and Operations Research. He is the information officer for the Decision Analysis Society. Address: Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284; e-mail: jrmerric@vcu.edu . Ahti Salo (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") is a professor of systems analysis in the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis at Aalto University. His research interests include topics in portfolio decision analysis, multicriteria decision making, risk management, efficiency analysis, and technology foresight. He is currently president of the Finnish Operations Research Society (FORS) and represents Europe and the Middle East in the INFORMS International Activities Committee. Recently, he has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the EURO Journal on Decision Processes, launched by the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO). Professor Salo has been responsible for the methodological design and implementation of numerous high-impact decision and policy processes, including FinnSight 2015, the national foresight exercise of the Academy of Finland and the National Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations (Tekes). Address: Systems Analysis Laboratory, Aalto University, P.O. Box 11100, 00076 Aalto, Finland; e-mail: ahti.salo@aalto.fi . Chen Wang (" Target-Hardening Decisions Based on Uncertain Multiattribute Terrorist Utility ") is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She holds a master's degree in industrial engineering also from the same department. Chen works as a research assistant in the Center for Human Performance and Risk Analysis, under the supervision of Professor Vicki M. Bier. Her research interests include application of operations research and decision analysis in security problems and critical infrastructure protection. Address: 3239 Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706; e-mail: cwang37@wisc.edu . Jeffery D. Weir (" A Practical Procedure for Customizable One-Way Sensitivity Analysis in Additive Value Models ") is an associate professor in the Department of Operational Sciences at the Air Force Institute of Technology. He has a Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from Georgia Tech. He teaches courses in decision analysis, risk analysis, and multiobjective optimization. His research interests are in the areas of decision analysis and transportation modeling. A former officer in the U.S. Air Force, he has worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from scheduling and routing aircraft, determining the value of future intelligence information, assessing the impact of FAA regulation changes to passenger and aircrew safety, and mode selection for multimodal multicommodity distribution networks. He has received grants from the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Transportation Command, Air Force Material Command, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, Air Force Research Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, among others. Address: Department of Operational Sciences, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, OH 45433; e-mail: jweir@afit.edu . Robert L. Winkler (" Tailored Scoring Rules for Probabilities ") is James B. Duke Professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and also holds an appointment in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke. His primary research areas include decision analysis, Bayesian statistics, probability forecasting, competitive decision making, and risk analysis. Address: Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 100 Fuqua Drive, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120; e-mail: rwinkler@duke.edu . George Wu (" From the Editors: Probability Scoring Rules, Ambiguity, Multiattribute Terrorist Utility, and Sensitivity Analysis ") has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since September 1997. His degrees include A.B. (applied mathematics, 1985), S.M. (applied mathematics, 1987), and Ph.D. (decision sciences, 1991), all from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Professor Wu was on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Wu worked as a decision analyst at Procter & Gamble prior to starting graduate school. His research interests include descriptive and prescriptive aspects of decision making, in particular, decision making involving risk, cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation, and managerial and organizational decision making. Professor Wu is a coordinating editor for Theory and Decision, an advisory editor for Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and an associate editor of Decision Analysis. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and is a former department editor of Management Science. Address: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60636; e-mail: wu@chicagobooth.edu . Alexander Zimper (" Do Bayesians Learn Their Way Out of Ambiguity? ") is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Pretoria and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Mannheim. He started out as a specialist on iterative solution concepts for strategic games, but his current research interests concern topics in economic theory in the broadest sense. He does not believe that there is one big truth out there but rather that classical as well as bounded-rationality approaches provide us with structures that may improve—within their respective limits—our understanding of reality. His most recent work is on plausible refinements of Roy Radner's rational expectations equilibrium, existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium price function in a Lucas fruit-tree economy with ambiguous beliefs, overreaction and underreaction in asset markets, and optimal liquidity provision under demand deposit schemes. His work in decision theory mainly concerns dynamically inconsistent behavior arising from ambiguity attitudes and, in particular, Bayesian learning modeled within nonadditive probability spaces. Address: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa; e-mail: alexander.zimper@up.ac.za .
Desde hace mucho tiempo, los Estados Unidos y Canadá tienen experiencia con la migración a gran escala, y siguen acogiendo a grandes flujos de inmigrantes legales. Las mujeres representan un porcentaje creciente de estos flujos internacionales. En ambos países, la mayoría de los inmigrantes legales son elegibles para la plena ciudadanía, y pueden acceder rápida o automáticamente a derechos políticos y mercados de trabajo, aunque los derechos estratificados son una realidad para los inmigrantes temporales e irregulares, también en el ámbito de la protección social. En el plano formal, las mujeres y los hombres disfrutan de estos derechos en igualdad de condiciones, pero la desigualdad de género persiste tanto en la política gubernamental como en los mercados de trabajo. Asimismo, el marco político y de política establecido recientemente en ambos países está influido por principios ideológicos neoliberales, lo que contribuye a la introducción de cambios en la política de migración, los mercados de trabajo y las prestaciones sociales que aumentan la vulnerabilidad de las mujeres migrantes ante las desigualdades estructurales. En la primera parte del documento se comparan los regímenes de migración establecidos en ambos países. El número de mujeres inmigrantes está incrementándose tanto en Estados Unidos como en Canadá, aunque la mayoría de ellas sigue dependiendo de los hombres. Los cambios en la política de migración que apoyan cada vez más la admisión de migrantes altamente cualificados han tenido lugar a mayor escala en Canadá; en la actualidad, el número de migrantes en ambos países que pertenecen a categorías "económicas" muy cualificadas supera el número de migrantes que ha llegado a estos países en el marco de categorías humanitarias de reunificación familiar y de asilo a los refugiados. Los requisitos en materia de admisión que ponen de relieve el capital humano perjudican a las mujeres procedentes de países en los que los recursos están principalmente en manos de los hombres. En los Estados Unidos, los migrantes correspondientes a la categoría humanitaria siguen prevaleciendo, aunque la competencia profesional es un medio "encubierto" para que un migrante temporal alcance la categoría de permanente. En el ámbito de las admisiones de refugiados, los cambios introducidos en las normas que rigen la selección de refugiados han fomentado la sensibilidad ante la situación de las mujeres en Canadá, pero el número de personas afectadas sigue siendo poco elevado. En ambos países, el número de migrantes correspondientes a categorías de entrada temporales ha aumentado en el último decenio. Las mujeres están presentes en categorías de entrada temporales que abarcan migrantes tanto muy cualificados como poco cualificados, cuyas perspectivas difieren considerablemente dependiendo de la ubicación del mercado de trabajo. Las iniciativas de política emprendidas en los últimos tiempos en ambos países proponen conceder la categoría temporal a los migrantes irregulares; tales propuestas podrían acercar los regímenes de migración norteamericanos a los modelos europeos del "trabajador invitado", aun cuando estos modelos hayan demostrado ser insostenibles en Europa. A continuación se examinan los entornos de trabajo. En los Estados Unidos y Canadá, la liberalización de los mercados de trabajo ha reforzado las jerarquías profesionales marcadas por la desigualdad de género, en las que las mujeres inmigrantes están con frecuencia en una situación de desventaja. Aunque las mujeres inmigrantes están presentes entre los trabajadores muy cualificados, inclusive en los países en desarrollo, también están desproporcionadamente presentes en las categorías más bajas de los servicios estratificados, en el sector manufacturero, y el comercio al por menor. Pueden observarse claramente patrones similares en lo que respecta al desempleo, el subempleo, las condiciones de trabajo y los ingresos. Derechos sociales reducidos que enfatizan la prestación de cuidados en la esfera privada brindan numerosas pero precarias oportunidades de empleo, a la vez que incrementan la carga de las mujeres en su propio ámbito familiar. El hecho de que los órganos competentes en la concesión de licencias no reconozcan los títulos adquiridos en el extranjero constituye un gran problema en Canadá, y contribuye a las descualificación y el subdesempleo de las mujeres inmigrantes. En ambos países, la acción afirmativa y la legislación relativa a la igualdad en el empleo que tienen por objeto combatir y rectificar la discriminación en el mercado de trabajo por motivos de raza y sexo se han visto perjudicadas por el compromiso político decreciente, la aplicación limitada de la legislación y un alcance restringido. Los derechos sociales se examinan en la última sección del documento. En el ámbito de los servicios de sentamiento, la devolución y descentralización de los servicios han trasladado la responsabilidad de los gobiernos federales a los gobiernos estatales y provinciales, que en muchos casos se asocian con empresas y organizaciones no gubernamentales. A pesar de los cambios que reconocen la creciente necesidad de las mujeres de recibir educación lingüística en Canadá, los fondos destinados a tales fines no han variado desde mediados del decenio de 1990. Una cuestión que afecta particularmente a las mujeres inmigrantes en lo que respecta a la disminución de los derechos de los inmigrantes es la elegibilidad para recibir una pensión de jubilación. A pesar de que se les otorgan pensiones reducidas, universalmente adjudicadas, a las personas mayores en ambos países; los migrantes que trabajan en el hogar, en los sectores informales, o las personas que llegan al país de acogida en una etapa posterior de su vida, muchas veces no son elegibles para los regímenes de pensión gubernamentales relacionados con el trabajo. La estratificación de las prestaciones sociales es más destacada en los Estados Unidos, en gran parte a consecuencia de dos características del régimen estatal de protección social establecido en este país. La primera es la considerable privatización del sistema de atención de salud, por lo que muchas veces los pobres no están asegurados y dependen únicamente de las prestaciones del programa Medicaid concedidas a personas supeditadas a un tope en los ingresos, o tienen que pagar en efectivo una onerosa atención médica. La segunda característica son los cambios en el ámbito de la asistencia social que niegan el acceso a las prestaciones sociales a las mujeres solteras que no trabajan; que limitan el acceso durante toda la vida a dichas prestaciones a un período de cinco años, y que niegan completamente el acceso a tales prestaciones a los residentes permanentes legales que no han alcanzado la categoría de ciudadanos legales. En ambos países, la degradación de la protección social asociada con el énfasis neoliberal en la austeridad fiscal del gobierno y en una dependencia de la prestación de los servicios en el mercado tiene consecuencias desproporcionadamente negativas en los pobres, en particular en los inmigrantes pobres con un déficit educativo o lingüístico. Combinados con la liberalización de los mercados de trabajo, estos cambios pueden menoscabar el compromiso con los principios de la redistribución económica en América del Norte, y amenazar el bienestar de las mujeres que emigran a estos países. ; Abstract. The United States and Canada have long histories of large-scale migration, and they continue to welcome large flows of legal immigrants. Women make up an increasing proportion of these international flows. In both countries, the majority of legal immigrants are eligible for full citizenship rights and entitlements, with rapid or automatic access to both political rights and labour markets, although stratified entitlements are present for temporary and irregular migrants, and in the realm of social provision. Formally, women partake of these rights equally with men, but gender inequality persists both in government policy and in labour markets. In both countries, moreover, recent political and policy environments are influenced by neoliberal ideological principles, contributing to changes in migration policy, labour markets and social provisions that make female migrants increasingly vulnerable to structural inequalities. In the first part of the paper, migration regimes in the two countries are compared. Women are entering both countries in increasing numbers, though still primarily as dependants of men. Changes to migration policy that increasingly favour admissions of highly educated migrants have been enacted more extensively in Canada; entry in high-skill "economic" categories now exceeds entry through the humanitarian categories of family reunification and refugee asylum. Admission requirements that emphasize human capital penalize women who come from countries in which resources are highly concentrated in male hands. In the United States, humanitarian category entries still predominate, although high-skill temporary entry increasingly functions as a "back door" route to permanent status. In the realm of refugee admissions, changes in rules that govern refugee selection have increased gender sensitivity in Canada, but the numbers affected remain low. In both countries, numbers of migrants within temporary categories of entry have increased over the last decade. Women are present in temporary categories that encompass both high and low skill streams, with very different prospects depending on labour market location. Recent policy initiatives in both countries propose the granting of temporary status to irregular migrants; such proposals have the potential to move North American migration regimes closer to European "guest worker" models, even as these models have proved untenable in Europe. Next, gendered work environments are examined. In the United States and Canada, deregulation of labour markets has reinforced gendered occupational hierarchies in which immigrant women often hold disadvantaged places. While immigrant women, including those from the developing world, are present among highly skilled workers, they are also disproportionately visible at the bottom rungs of stratified service, retail and manufacturing sectors. Similar patterns are evident with respect to unemployment, underemployment, working conditions and earnings. Diminished social entitlements that emphasize private provision of care provide abundant, but also precarious, employment opportunities, while increasing women's burdens within their own families. Lack of recognition of credentials acquired abroad by licensing bodies is a serious issue in Canada, contributing to deskilling and underemployment among immigrant women. In both countries, affirmative action and employment equity legislation that seeks to oppose and redress labour market discrimination based on race and sex has been hobbled by waning political commitment, limited enforcement, and restricted reach. Social entitlements are examined in the final section of the paper. In the realm of settlement services, devolution and decentralization of services have relocated responsibility from federal governments to state and provincial governments, which frequently partner with businesses and non-governmental organizations. Despite changes that recognize women's greater need for language instruction in Canada, funding has remained static since the mid-1990s. One area of diminished entitlements for immigrants that particularly affects immigrant women is eligibility for pensions. Although small, universally awarded pensions are given to the elderly in both countries, migrants who work at home, in informal sectors, or who enter the country late in life are frequently ineligible for government pension plans that are work-related. It is in the United States that stratification of social benefits is most marked, largely as a result of two features of US welfare state provision. The first is the largely private health care system, in which the poor are often uninsured and must rely on means-tested Medicaid benefits, or pay cash for expensive medical care. The second is changes to social assistance that deny welfare access to single, non-working mothers, limit lifelong access to welfare to five years, and deny welfare completely to legal permanent residents who have not become legal citizens. In both countries, the erosion of social provision associated with neoliberal emphases on government fiscal austerity and a reliance on market provision of services is disproportionately felt by the poor, and especially poor immigrants with educational or language deficits. Combined with deregulation of labour markets, such changes both undermine commitment to principles of economic redistribution in North America, and threaten the well-being of women who migrate to these countries. ; Résumé. Les Etats-Unis et le Canada ont une longue expérience des migrations à grande échelle et continuent d'accueillir des flux importants d'immigrants réguliers. Les femmes tiennent une place croissante dans ces flux internationaux. Dans les deux pays, la majorité des immigrants réguliers remplissent les conditions requises pour jouir pleinement des droits liés à la nationalité et entrer dans le système de protection sociale. Ils ont un accès rapide ou automatique à la fois aux droits politiques et au marché du travail, bien qu'il existe une stratification des droits pour les immigrés temporaires et clandestins. Officiellement, les femmes jouissent de ces droits au même titre que les hommes, mais l'inégalité entre les sexes persiste, tant dans la politique gouvernementale que sur les marchés du travail. De plus, l'environnement politique et les politiques récentes ont été influencées dans les deux pays par les principes de l'idéologie néolibérale, qui contribuent, par les changements apportés à la politique de l'immigration, aux marchés du travail et aux dispositions sociales, à rendre les femmes immigrées de plus en plus vulnérables aux inégalités structurelles. La première partie du document compare l'immigration dans les deux pays. Les femmes sont de plus en plus nombreuses parmi les immigrants, bien qu'encore principalement en qualité de personnes à charge. Le Canada, plus que les Etats-Unis, a modifié peu à peu sa politique de l'immigration pour favoriser l'entrée de migrants hautement spécialisés; les immigrants "économiques" hautement qualifiés sont maintenant plus nombreux que les demandeurs d'asile et les migrants accueillis pour raison humanitaire au titre de la réunion des familles. Des conditions d'admission qui privilégient le capital humain pénalisent les femmes originaires de pays caractérisés par une forte concentration des ressources aux mains des hommes. Aux Etats-Unis, les entrées relevant de la catégorie humanitaire prédominent encore, bien que l'immigration temporaire soit pour beaucoup de travailleurs hautement qualifiés "l'entrée de service" qui leur permet de s'établir définitivement. Pour ce qui est des réfugiés, les changements apportés aux règles qui régissent leur sélection ont rendu le Canada plus sensible au sort des femmes, mais le nombre des réfugiées accueillies reste bas. Dans les deux pays, le nombre des immigrés qui arrivent en qualité de migrants temporaires a augmenté depuis dix ans. Il y a des femmes dans cette catégorie de migrants temporaires, dans laquelle entrent à la fois des professionnelles hautement qualifiées et des travailleuses peu qualifiées, et leurs perspectives sont très différentes selon leur situation sur le marché du travail. Dans les deux pays, des initiatives politiques récentes proposent d'accorder un permis temporaire aux migrants clandestins; de telles propositions pourraient rapprocher les régimes d'immigration nord-américains des modèles européens, même si ceux-ci se sont révélés intenables en Europe. Les auteurs étudient ensuite l'environnement de travail pour chaque sexe. Aux Etats-Unis et au Canada, la déréglementation des marchés du travail a renforcé la hiérarchie des métiers, dans laquelle les femmes immigrées sont souvent défavorisées. S'il existe des femmes immigrées, notamment de pays en développement, parmi les travailleurs hautement qualifiés, elles sont surtout visibles, et en nombre disproportionné, aux échelons les plus bas des services, du commerce de détail et des industries manufacturières. Le même schéma est patent pour ce qui est du chômage, du sous-emploi, des conditions de travail et des gains. Un système où les droits sociaux sont réduits et dans lequel l'accent est mis sur l'origine privée des soins offre de nombreux emplois précaires tout en alourdissant la charge des femmes dans leur famille. Au Canada, la non-reconnaissance de diplômes et qualifications acquis à l'étranger est un problème grave, qui contribue à la déqualification et au sous-emploi chez les femmes immigrées. Dans les deux pays, une volonté politique affaiblie a réduit l'application et la portée des mesures d'action positive et des lois relatives à l'équité dans l'emploi, adoptées pour combattre et compenser la discrimination fondée sur la race et le sexe sur le marché du travail. La dernière section du document est consacrée aux droits sociaux. S'agissant de l'aide à l'établissement, la décentralisation des services a entraîné un transfert des responsabilités du gouvernement fédéral à celui de l'Etat ou de la province, qui souvent s'allie avec des entreprises et des organisations non gouvernementales. Bien que l'on ait compris au Canada que les femmes avaient plus besoin de cours de langue que les hommes, le financement n'a pas augmenté depuis le milieu de la décennie 90. Si les droits sont parfois réduits pour les immigrants, il est un domaine dans lequel les femmes immigrées sont particulièrement touchées: celui des retraites. Bien que dans les deux pays, de modestes pensions soient versées à toutes les personnes âgées, les immigrés qui travaillent à domicile, dans l'économie informelle ou qui arrivent dans le pays à un âge avancé ne réunissent souvent pas les conditions requises pour bénéficier du régime de retraite public, qui dépend des années de travail. C'est aux Etats-Unis que la stratification des avantages sociaux est la plus marquée, en grande partie à cause de deux caractéristiques du système de prévoyance de ce pays. D'une part, le système des soins de santé est en grande partie privé, ce qui fait que les pauvres sont souvent sans assurance et dépendent des prestations de Medicaid, soumises à des conditions de ressources ou ils doivent payer comptant des soins médicaux coûteux. D'autre part, des modifications ont été apportées à l'assistance sociale, qui ont pour effet d'en refuser l'accès aux mères célibataires qui ne travaillent pas, de limiter à cinq ans la durée totale pendant laquelle on peut en bénéficier pendant sa vie et de la refuser totalement aux résidents établis régulièrement mais n'ayant pas acquis la nationalité du pays. Dans les deux pays, l'érosion de la prévoyance sociale, alliée à l'importance que prend l'austérité budgétaire dans un contexte néolibéral et à la confiance faite au marché pour fournir les services voulus, a des effets disproportionnés sur les pauvres, et plus particulièrement sur les immigrés pauvres peu instruits et handicapés par la méconnaissance de la langue. Avec la déréglementation des marchés du travail, ces changements à la fois ébranlent l'attachement aux príncipes de la redistribution économique en Amérique du Nord et menacent le bien-être des femmes qui y immigrent.
Threats To International Peace And Security. The Situation In The Middle East ; United Nations S/PV.8225 Security Council Seventy-third year 8225th meeting Monday, 9 April 2018, 3 p.m. New York Provisional President: Mr. Meza-Cuadra . (Peru) Members: Bolivia (Plurinational State of). . Mr. Inchauste Jordán China. . Mr. Wu Haitao Côte d'Ivoire. . Mr. Tanoh-Boutchoue Equatorial Guinea. . Mr. Ndong Mba Ethiopia. . Mr. Alemu France. . Mr. Delattre Kazakhstan. . Mr. Umarov Kuwait. . Mr. Alotaibi Netherlands. . Mr. Van Oosterom Poland. . Mr. Radomski Russian Federation. . Mr. Nebenzia Sweden . Mr. Skoog United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . Ms. Pierce United States of America. . Mrs. Haley Agenda Threats to international peace and security The situation in the Middle East This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the translation of speeches delivered in other languages. The final text will be printed in the Official Records of the Security Council. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room U-0506 (verbatimrecords@un.org). Corrected records will be reissued electronically on the Official Document System of the United Nations (http://documents.un.org). 18-09955 (E) *1809955* S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 2/26 18-09955 The meeting was called to order at 3.05 p.m. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted. Threats to international peace and security The situation in the Middle East The President (spoke in Spanish): In accordance with rule 37 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to participate in this meeting. In accordance with rule 39 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure, I invite the following briefers to participate in this meeting: Mr. Staffan de Mistura, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, and Mr. Thomas Markram, Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. Mr. De Mistura is joining today's meeting via video-teleconference from Geneva. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. I now give the floor to Mr. De Mistura. Mr. De Mistura: This emergency meeting of the Security Council underscores the gravity of the events in recent days in Syria, of which there are severe consequences for civilians. It takes place at a time of increased international tensions, drawing national, regional and international actors into dangerous situations of potential or actual confrontation. It is an important meeting. There is an urgent need for the Council to address the situation with unity and purpose. How did we reach this point? The month of March saw devastating violence in part of eastern Ghouta, which resulted in at least 1,700 people killed or injured in opposition-controlled areas, dozens and dozens of people killed or injured in Government-controlled areas and, ultimately, the evacuation of 130,000 people, including fighters, family members and other civilians. However, in Douma there was a fragile ceasefire, which continued for most of March. The United Nations good offices played an important role in that regard. Since 31 March, the United Nations has no longer been able to be involved in talks, since, at that time, the Syrian Government did not agree to our presence, although we made efforts to propose concrete ways to address the issues that we understood were arising in the continuing contacts, including the proposal to activate the detainee working group agreed in Astana. However, that proposal was not taken up at the time. From 2 April, the evacuation of some 4,000 fighters, family members and other civilians from Douma to northern Syria took place. However, on 6 April there was a major escalation in violence. There were reports of sustained air strikes and shelling against Douma, the killing of civilians, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and attacks damaging health facilities. There were also reports of shelling on Damascus city, which reportedly again killed or injured civilians. Jaysh Al-Islam requested our involvement in emergency talks in extremis, but there was no positive response to that request when it conveyed the same message to the other side. At approximately 8 p.m. local time on 7 April, reports of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma started to emerge. Pictures immediately circulated on social media showing what appeared to be lifeless men, women and children. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground claimed to have received hundreds of cases of civilians with symptoms consistent with exposure to chemical agents. The same NGOs claimed that at least 49 people had been killed and hundreds injured. I wish to recall what the Secretary-General, Mr. António Guterres, noted, namely, that the United Nations "is not in a position to verify these reports". However, he also made it very clear that he cannot ignore them and that he "is particularly alarmed by allegations that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in Douma" once again. He further emphasized "that any use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, is abhorrent and requires a thorough investigation". I note that a number of States have strongly alluded to or expressed the suspicion that the Syrian Government was responsible for the alleged chemical attack. I also note that other States, as well as the Government of Syria itself, have strongly questioned the credibility of those allegations, depicting the attacks as a fabrication or/and a provocation. My comment is that this is one more reason for there to be a thorough independent investigation. 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 3/26 The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said that it has made the preliminary analysis of the reports of the alleged use of chemical weapons and is in the process of gathering further information from all available sources. My colleague Mr. Thomas Markram, Deputy of the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, who is with us in the Chamber today, will further address this matter. But I urge the Security Council, in accordance with its own mandate to maintain international peace and security and uphold international law, to, for God's sake, ensure that a mechanism is found to investigate these allegations and assign responsibility.Returning to the narrative of the events, at around midnight on 7 April, hours after the alleged chemical-weapons attack, Jaysh Al-Islam informed the United Nations that it had reached an agreement with the Russian Federation and the Syrian Government. The Russian Federation Ministry for Defence stated that the agreement encompasses a ceasefire and Jaysh Al-Islam fighters laying down their arms or evacuating Douma. The Russian Federation also reported that up to 8,000 Jaysh Al-Islam fighters and 40,000 of their family members were to evacuate.As I brief the Security Council now, we understand that additional evacuations from Douma are already under way. We have also received reports that some detainees — the ones we had heard about before — had begun to be released from Douma today. We note reports that the agreement provides for civilians who decide to stay to remain under Russian Federation guarantees, with the resumption of services in coordination with a local committee of civilians.I urge the Syrian Government and the Russian Federation to ensure the protection of those civilians so that as many civilians as possible can stay in their homes if they choose to, or leave to a place of their own choosing or return as per international law. I urge that there be, for there should be, an immediate refocusing for the implementation of resolution 2401 (2018). What we have see is basically an escalation before a de-escalation.Clearly, the dangers of further escalation arise from situations beyond Ghouta as well. We have received reports of missiles targeting the Syrian Government's Tiyas, or T-4, airbase early this morning. No State has claimed responsibility for that reported strike. The United States and France have explicitly denied any involvement. The Syrian Government, the Russian Federation and Iran have suggested that Israel could have carried out the attack, with Iranian State media reporting that over a dozen military personnel were killed or injured, including four Iranian military advisers. The Government of Israel has not commented. The United Nations is unable to independently verify or attribute responsibility for that attack, but we urge all parties to show their utmost restraint and avoid any further escalation or confrontation.We are also concerned about the dynamics in other areas of Syria. Syrians in Dar'a, northern rural Homs, eastern Qalamoun, Hamah and Idlib have all expressed to us their own fears that they may soon face escalations similar to what we have seen in eastern Ghouta. We therefore urge the Security Council and the Astana guarantors and those States involved in the Amman efforts to work towards reinstating de-escalation in those areas and elsewhere in Syria. The indications are the opposite at the moment.Meanwhile, following its operations in Afrin, the Turkish Government has indicated the potential for further operations in other areas of northern Syria if Partiya Yekitiya Demokrat and Kurdish People's Protection Units forces are not removed from those areas. Military operations in such areas have the potential of raising international tensions. We therefore urge all parties concerned to de-escalate, show restraint and find means to implement resolution 2401 (2018) through dialogue and fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria. Let me also highlight the fact that we have recently seen — and this is particularly tragic when we consider the efforts all of us, including all members of the Security Council, have made in the last year — the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant launch new operations within Syria, south of Damascus, in rural Damascus, in remote areas near the Iraqi border.I would like to conclude with some bottom lines, if I may.First, civilians are paying a very heavy price for the military escalation. We are not seeing de-escalation; we are seeing the contrary. Today our first priority must be to protect civilians from the war, from the conflict, from chemical weapons, from hunger. We call on all sides to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and human rights law, including humanitarian access across Syria to all people in need. We urge once S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 4/26 18-09955 more for concrete respect for resolution 2401 (2018) throughout Syria, which is, after all, a resolution of the Security Council.Secondly, continued allegations of the use of chemical agents are of extremely grave concern. Those allegations must be independently and urgently investigated. Any use of chemical weapons is absolutely prohibited and constitutes a very serious violation of international law, the Chemical Weapons Convention and resolution 2118 (2013). Preventing impunity and any further use of chemical weapons and upholding international law must be an utmost priority for all members of the Security Council.Thirdly, I have to say this very slowly because today is the first time, in over four years of briefing the Security Council in person, that I have reached a point in which I have to express a concern about international security, not just regional or national or Syrian security, but international security. Recent developments have more than ever before brought to the surface the dangers that the Secretary-General warned about recently at the Munich Security Conference, when he spoke of "different faultlines" in the Middle East that are interconnected and crossing each other, of conflicting interests of both global and regional Powers, and forms of escalation that can have absolutely devastating consequences that are difficult for us to even imagine. The Council cannot allow a situation of uncontrollable escalation to develop in Syria on any front. Instead, it must find unity and address the concrete threats to international peace and security in Syria today.I am sorry to have been this brief, but I wanted to focus on one specific concern, namely, the threat to international security related to what we are seeing now in Syria and the danger of the alleged chemical-weapons attacks being repeated. Next time I will brief the Council on humanitarian and other issues and on the political process, which I know we are all interested in focusing upon, but today is the day for talking about security — international security — and peace.The President (spoke in Spanish): I thank Mr. De Mistura for his very informative briefing.I now give the floor to Mr. Markram.Mr. Markram: I thank you for the opportunity to address the Council again today, Mr. President. The High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mrs. Izumi Nakamitsu, is away on official travel.It has been less than a week since I last briefed the Council (see S/PV.8221) on the issue of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic. In the intervening period, new and deeply disturbing allegations of the use of chemical weapons have come to light. Over the past weekend, there have been reports on the alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma, in the Syrian Arab Republic. According to reports that came in yesterday, it is alleged that at least 49 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a chemical-weapon attack. More than 500 other individual cases reportedly presented with symptoms consistent with such an attack. The Office for Disarmament Affairs has been in touch with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the matter. The OPCW, which implements the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is a State party, is gathering information about the incident from all available sources, through its Fact-finding Mission in Syria. After completing its investigation, the Fact-finding Mission will report its findings on the alleged attack to the States parties to the Convention.Sadly, there is little to say today that has not already been said. The use of chemical weapons is unjustifiable. Those responsible must be held to account. That those views have been stated on many previous occasions does not lessen the seriousness with which the Secretary-General regards such allegations. Nor does it lessen the truth behind them, which is that what we are seeing in Syria cannot go unchallenged by anyone who values the decades of effort that have been put in to bring about the disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As the body charged with the maintenance of international peace and security, the Council must unite in the face of this continuing threat and fulfil its responsibilities. To do otherwise, or simply to do nothing, is to accept, tacitly or otherwise, that such a challenge is insurmountable. The use of chemical weapons cannot become the status quo, nor can we continue to fail the victims of such weapons.Just over one year ago, in responding to the attack on Khan Shaykhun, the Secretary-General called for those responsible to be held accountable, stating that there can be no impunity for such horrific acts. Just over one week ago, speaking on behalf of the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, I noted that unity in the Security Council on a dedicated mechanism for accountability would provide the best foundation for success in that regard. I reiterate that belief here, as 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 5/26 well as the readiness of the Secretary-General and the Office for Disarmament Affairs to assist.The President (spoke in Spanish): I thank Mr. Markram for his informative briefing.I now give the floor to members of the Security Council who wish to make statements.Mr. Nebenzia (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): If you imagine, Mr. President, that I derive pleasure from the subject of my statement today, or from speaking at great length, you are wrong. Unfortunately, however, the situation is such that I have a lot to say today. And you will have to listen to me.We thank Mr. De Mistura and Mr. Markram for their briefings.The Russian Federation asked that this meeting be convened under the agenda item "Threats to international peace and security" because we are deeply alarmed about the fact that a number of capitals — Washington first and foremost, with London and Paris blindly following its lead — are purposely steering a course designed to supercharge international tensions. The leadership of the United States, Britain and France, with no grounds and no thought for the consequences, are taking a confrontational line on Russia and Syria and pushing others towards it too. They have a broad range of weapons in their arsenal — slander, insults, bellicose rhetoric, blackmail, sanctions and threats of the use of force against a sovereign State. Their threats against Russia are brazen, and the tone they take has gone beyond the limits of the permissible. Even during the Cold War their predecessors did not express themselves so crudely about my country. What next?I remember the rhetorical question that President Putin of Russia put to our Western partners, and especially the United States, from the rostrum of the General Assembly in 2015 (see A/70/PV.13), about their careless geopolitical experiments in the Middle East, when he asked them if they at least realized what they had done. At the time, the question went unanswered. But there is an answer, and it is that no, they do not realize what they have done. As they do not realize what they are doing now. It is not only we who are perplexed at their lack of any coherent strategy on any issue. It perplexes most of the people in this Chamber. They just do not want to ask them about it openly. Wherever they go, whatever they touch, they leave behind chaos in their wake in the murky water where they have gone fishing for some kind of fish. But the only fish they catch are mutants. I will ask them another rhetorical question. Do they understand the dangerous place they are dragging the world to?One of the areas where the hostility manifests itself most strongly is Syria. The terrorists and extremists supported by external sponsors are being defeated. Let me remind those responsible that these are the terrorists and extremists whom they equipped, financed and dumped into the country in order to overthrow the lawful Government. Now we can see why this is causing hysteria among those who have invested their political and material capital in such dark forces.In the past few weeks, thanks to Russia's efforts to implement the Security Council's resolutions, a massive operation has been carried out to unblock eastern Ghouta, whose residents have been forced to endure the humiliation of the rebel militias for several years. More than 150 thousand civilians were evacuated from this suburb of Damascus, completely voluntarily and under the necessary security conditions. Tens of thousands of them have already been able to return to liberated areas and many have been taken in by relatives. The changes in their demographic composition that the defenders of the Syrian opposition have been screaming about have not happened. That is a lie. Some extremely complex negotiations were conducted with the leaders of the armed groups, as a result of which many left the neighbourhoods they were occupying, with full guarantees for their security. Incidentally, there were several attempted acts of terrorism during these transport operations when militias tried to bring suicide belts onto the buses and were prevented. Others preferred to regulate their status with the Syrian authorities. Thanks to the presidential amnesty, they will now be able to return to civilian life, and may even eventually be able to join Syria's security forces. That represents the implementation of the United Nations principle of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration.However, not everyone is so keen on such positive dynamics. The outside sponsors — that is, the leading Western countries — were ready to grasp at any straw in order to hang on to any centre of terrorist resistance, however tiny, within striking distance of the Syrian capital, so that the militias could continue to terrorize ordinary residents, taking their food and begging humanitarian aid from the international community. Incidentally, they were not about to S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 6/26 18-09955 share medicines with those ordinary civilians, as an inspection of the strongholds left behind by the fighters revealed. As happened previously in eastern Aleppo, the improvised hospital facilities in basements were full of medicines that thanks to Western sanctions were not to be had for love or money in Damascus and other Government-controlled areas. Mass graves and bodies that showed evidence of torture were also discovered. The dimensions of the tunnels that the jihadists used were astonishing. Some of them could easily accommodate small trucks travelling in both directions. Those impressive underground facilities connected the positions of groups that some view as moderate to the strongholds of Jabhat Al-Nusra.On 6 April, at their sponsors' instructions, Jaysh Al-Islam's new ringleaders prevented the fourth group of militia fighters from evacuating Douma and resumed rocket and mortar fire on residential areas of Damascus, targeting Mezzeh, Mezzeh 86, Ish Al-Warwar, Abu Rummaneh and Umayyad Square. According to official data, eight civilians were killed and 37 were wounded. It is regrettable that we seen no statements from Western capitals condemning the shelling of a historic part of Damascus.The next day, 7 April, militias accused the Syrian authorities of dropping barrel bombs containing a toxic substance. However, they got their versions mixed up, referring to it sometimes as chlorine and sometimes as sarin or a mixture of poison gases. In a familiar pattern, the rumours were immediately seized on by non-governmental organizations financed by Western capitals and White Helmets operating in the guise of rescue workers. These so-called reports were also just as quickly disseminated through media outlets. I should once again point out that many of these dubious opposition entities have an accurate list of the email addresses of the representatives of Security Council members, which leads us to conclude that some of our colleagues, with a reckless attitude to their position, have been leaking sensitive information to those they sponsor. Incidentally, we all should remember the incident in which the White Helmets accidentally posted on the Internet a video showing the preparation stages for filming the next so-called victim of an attack allegedly perpetrated by the Syrian army. The chemical "series" that began in 2013 has continued to run, with each subsequent episode designed to top the impact of the previous one.In Washington, London and Paris, conclusions have immediately been reached as to the guilt of the Syrian authorities, or regime, as they call it. Has no one wondered why Damascus needs this? While the Syrian leadership has received its share of insults, the main burden of responsibility has been laid at the door of Russia and Iran, to no one's surprise, I believe. As is now customary, it has occurred at lightning speed and without any kind of investigation. On 8 April, Syrian troops searching the village of Al-Shifuniya, near Douma, discovered a small, makeshift Jaysh Al-Islam chemical-munitions factory, along with German-produced chlorine reagents and specialized equipment.The Istanbul-based opposition journalist Asaad Hanna posted a video on his Twitter feed that was allegedly from the area of the incident. In it, an unidentified individual in a gas mask, presumably from the White Helmets, is posing against a backdrop of a homemade chemical bomb that allegedly landed in a bedroom in a building in Douma. It is accompanied by commentary about what it calls another of the regime's attacks on civilians. There can be no doubt that this production was staged. The trajectory of the alleged bomb is entirely unnatural. It fell through the roof and landed gently on a wooden bed without damaging it in any way and was clearly placed there before the scene was shot.In an interesting coincidence, the chemical act of provocation in Douma on Saturday, 7 April, occurred immediately after the United States delegation in the Security Council was instructed to call for expert consultations for today, Monday, 9 April, on its draft resolution on a mechanism for investigating incidents involving chemical weapons. Today far-reaching changes were made to the initial text. In such murky circumstances, of course, we have to determine what happened. But we have to do it honestly, objectively and impartially, without sacrificing the principle of the presumption of innocence and certainly not by prejudging the process of an investigation.Despite this provocation, the Russian specialists have continued their efforts to resolve the situation in eastern Ghouta. On Sunday afternoon, 8 April, according to new agreements, the evacuation of Jaysh Al-Islam combatants was resumed. Following Douma's liberation from militants, Russian radiological, chemical and biological protection specialists were sent there to collect evidence. They took soil samples that showed no presence of nerve agents or substances 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 7/26 containing chlorine. Local residents and combatants who were no longer fighting were interviewed. Not one local confirmed the chemical attack. At the local hospital, no one with symptoms of sarin or chlorine poisoning had been admitted. There are no other active medical facilities in Douma. No bodies of people who had died from being poisoned were found, and the medical staff and residents had no information about where they might have been buried. Any use of sarin or chlorine in Douma is therefore unconfirmed. By the way, representatives of the Syrian Red Crescent refuted statements allegedly made on their behalf about providing assistance to victims of toxic gases. I call on those who plan to denounce the regime when they speak after me to assume that there was no chemical-weapon attack.Sweden has drafted a resolution calling for the incident to be investigated. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) does not need a resolution to investigate it, but we are willing to consider it. Today we propose to do what is envisaged in the draft resolution, which is to let the OPCW, which Mr. Üzümcü, Director-General of its Technical Secretariat, has announced is ready to deal with the situation, fly to Damascus immediately, if possible tomorrow. There the Syrian authorities and the Russian military will ensure the necessary conditions so that the OPCW experts can travel to the site of the alleged incident and familiarize themselves with the situation. That, by the way, is what President Trump and other Western leaders have been urging us to do.The Syrians have repeatedly warned that there might be chemical provocations. At the Russian Centre for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in the Syrian Arab Republic they are saying that the equipment needed to film the next purported chemical attack has already been brought in. We have also made statements to that effect in the Security Council. Everyone has heard those warnings, but has deliberately ignored them because they do not correspond to the doctrinal positions espoused by those who dream of seeing the legitimate Government of yet another Arab country destroyed.There has still been no attention given to the discovery in November and December 2017 of a significant quantity of chemical munitions on Syrian territory that had been liberated from militias. In terrorist warehouses in Az-Zahiriya and Al-Hafiya in Hama governorate, 20 one-ton containers and more than 50 pieces of ordnance containing toxic chemicals were discovered. In Tel Adel in Idlib governorate, 24 tons of toxic chemical, presumed to be chlorine, were discovered. At a storage site in Moadamiya, 30 kilometres to the north-east of Damascus, 240- and 160-millimetre-calibre munitions and plastic canisters of organo-phosphorous compounds were found. In the area around As-Suwayda in Idlib governorate, an manufacturing facility for synthesizing various toxic substances was found, along with 54 pieces of chemical ordnance and 44 containers of chemicals that could be used to manufacture toxic substances.Since the beginning of this year alone, four instances of militias using toxic chemicals against Government troop positions have been established in Suruj and Al-Mushairfeh districts, and more than 100 Syrian troops have been hospitalized. On 3 March, during the liberation of Khazram and Aftris in eastern Ghouta, soldiers from a sub-unit of Government troops discovered an auxiliary workshop for homemade chemical munitions. This far from exhaustive list is an indication of the misdeeds of the still unreconciled opposition. And yet we have seen no eagerness to send OPCW expert groups there to collect evidence of these events. We demand that the OPCW verify all of these areas. They are accessible. We are also seeing information that American instructors in the Al-Tanf camp have trained a number of groups of fighters to carry out provocations using chemical weapons in order to create a pretext for a rocket strikes and bombings.It has been clear to us that sooner or later there would be an attempt to bring the jihadists out of harm's way and at the same time to punish the regime that some Western capitals hate. The talking heads on television have thrown themselves into urging a repeat of last year's effort at a military attack on Syria. This morning there were missile strikes on the T-4 airfield in Homs governorate. We are deeply troubled by such actions.The provocations in Douma are reminiscent of last year's incident in Khan Shaykhun, with their shared element being the planned nature of the attacks. Analysis of the operations conducted by the United States in April 2017, on the eve of the incident in Khan Shaykhun and after it, shows that Washington prepared its operation in advance. From 4 to 7 April of last year — in other words, from the day that a toxic substance was used in Khan Shaykhun until the strike on the Al-Shayrat airbase — the USS Porter and Ross naval destroyers S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 8/26 18-09955 were already present in the Mediterranean Sea, where they were engaged in planned operations. They did not call into any ports where an exchange of munitions could have been effected as a way to increase their quantity of cruise missiles.Specifically, from 4 to 5 April, the USS Porter was located south-east of Sicily and the Ross was en route from the Rota naval base to an area south of Sardinia. Later, on 6 April, both ships were observed moving at accelerated speed towards the area of the firing positions to the south-west of Cyprus, from where they launched a massive strike on Al-Shayrat on 7 April. However, the 59 Tomahawk missiles that were launched would have exceeded the two destroyers' total munitions capacity if they had actually been engaged in the anti-missile defence operations that they were assigned to, which required only 48 units. That means, therefore, that even before the chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun, these United States naval vessels undertook a military operation with a strike capability above the number of cruise missiles necessary for their anti-missile defence operations, which could be evidence of advance planning by Washington of an action against Damascus.Among other things, Saturday's fake news from Douma was aimed at diverting the public's attention from the circus that is the Skripal case, in which London has become terminally mired, hurling completely unproven accusations at Russia and accomplishing its basic purpose of extracting solidarity from its allies in order to construct an anti-Russian front. Now the British are shifting away from a transparent investigation and concrete responses to the questions they have been asked while simultaneously covering their tracks.At the Security Council meeting on 5 April on the Skripal case (see S/PV.8224), we warned the Council that the attempt to accuse us, without proof, of involvement in the Salisbury incident was linked to the Syrian chemical issue. There was an interesting new development regarding the issue yesterday. As Britain's Foreign Minister Boris Johnson was continuing his display of rapier wit "exposing" Russia, another gem emerged. The Times informed us that Royal Air Force experts in southern Cyprus had intercepted a message sent from outside Damascus to Moscow on the day of the Skripals' poisoning that contained the phrase "the package has been delivered" and said that two people had "successfully departed". Apparently this formed part of the intelligence that London provided to its allies before expelling our Russian diplomats. Is not it obvious to everyone that there is an irrefutable Syria-Russia-Salisbury connection? I will give the British intelligence services one more huge hint, for free. Why do they not assume that the Novichok they are so thrilled about reached Salisbury directly from Syria? In a package. To cover its tracks. How pathetic.Ambassador Haley recently stated that Russia will never be a friend of the United States. To that, I say that friendship is both reciprocal and voluntary. One cannot force a friendship and we are not begging the United States to be friends. What we want from it is very little — normal, civilized relations, which it arrogantly refuses, disregarding basic courtesy. However, the United States is mistaken if it thinks that it has friends. Its so-called friends are only those who cannot say no to it. And that is the only criterion for friendship that it understands.Russia has friends. And unlike the United States, we do not have adversaries. That is not the prism through which we view the world. It is international terrorism that is our enemy. However, we continue to propose cooperating with the United States. That cooperation should be respectful and mutual, and aimed at resolving genuine problems, not imaginary ones, and it should be just as much in the interests of the United States. Ultimately, as permanent members of the Security Council, we have a special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.Through the relevant channels, we already conveyed to the United States that military action conducted on false pretences against Syria, where Russian troops are deployed at the request of its legitimate Government, could have extremely serious repercussions. We urge Western politicians to temper their hawkish rhetoric, seriously consider the possible repercussions and cease their feeble, foolhardy efforts, which merely produce challenges to global security. We can see very good examples of what becomes of the military misadventures of the West in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. No one has invested Western leaders with the power to take on the roles of the world's policeman and its investigators, prosecutors, judges and executioners as well. We urge them to return to the world of legality, comply with the Charter of the United Nations and work collectively to address the problems that arise rather than attempting to realize its own selfish geopolitical dreams at every step. All our energy should be focused on supporting the political process in Syria, and for that, all stakeholders with influence must unite in a 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 9/26 constructive effort. Russia is always ready for that kind of cooperation.In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to request a briefing of the Security Council on the results of the United Nations assessment mission in Raqqa and on the situation in the Rukban camp. We can see how the coalition members are trying to complicate a resolution of the problems resulting from their actions in Syria, particularly the carpet-bombing operation designed to wipe out Raqqa. No chemical provocations will distract our attention from that issue.Mr. Van Oosterom (Netherlands): We thank Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and Deputy High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Thomas Markram for their briefings.Only five days ago, here in this Chamber (see S/PV.8221), we mourned as we remembered the sarin attack at Khan Shaykhun that occurred a year ago. This weekend another devastating gas attack was carried out in the city of Douma, killing more than 45 civilians and injuring more than 500. It was another in a series of chemical-weapon attacks in Syria. That is unacceptable. The Kingdom of the Netherlands is one of nine Security Council members that requested today's emergency meeting because we all believed that it was critically important to address this horrific attack. We must reinstate the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. We must underscore the basic norms of the international legal order and stop the ongoing tragedy in eastern Ghouta and Douma.We almost met twice today because one permanent member of the Council seemed not to want a focused discussion on the issue at hand, the chemical attack in Douma. That begs the question of whether that particular member State would prefer the international community to stand by and watch like a spectator while it covers for the crimes of its ally, the Syrian regime, some of which amount to serious war crimes. The Council must not stand idly by. It is high time for us to act in three ways, condemning, protecting and holding to account. First, today we should condemn in the strongest possible terms any use of chemical weapons. International law has been trampled on. Silence and impunity are not an option. However, condemnation alone is not enough.Secondly, we must deliver on our responsibility to protect. The protection of civilians must remain an absolute priority. We call on the Astana guarantors to use their influence to prevent any further attacks. They must ensure a cessation of hostilities and a de-escalation of the violence, as per resolution 2401 (2018). An immediate ceasefire is needed in Douma so that humanitarian and medical aid can reach the victims of the attack and so that humanitarian personnel can continue their life-saving work. We owe it to the men, women and children of Douma and of Syria. We owe it to our own citizens.Furthermore, the Kingdom of the Netherlands would also like to point out that the majority of the States Members of the United Nations count on the permanent members of the Council not to use their veto in cases of mass atrocities. The international community should be able to count on the Council to uphold international humanitarian law and the international prohibition on the use of chemical weapons, and to act when international law is trampled. Let me be clear. We support the humanitarian work of the White Helmets. They do extremely important humanitarian work for civilians in Syria in dire circumstances.Thirdly, all members of the Council regularly stress the importance of accountability for perpetrators who use chemical weapons. Yet the Council has not been able to move forward on that issue for months owing to one permanent member's use of the veto. We have been unable to tackle this crisis because one permanent member is a direct party to the conflict and has proved that it will defend the Syrian regime at all costs. We must intensify our efforts to establish a mechanism that can continue the meticulous work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) and investigate and identify perpetrators independently of the politics in the Council. The JIM has identified both the Syrian regime and a non-State actor as responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. As I said last week (see S/PV.8221), the discontinuation of the JIM mandate cannot be the end of the story — all the more so because since the JIM ceased to operate, we have received reports that the regime has carried out at least six more chemical-weapon attacks and perhaps even more. For those who claim that chemical-weapon attacks have not taken place or that such accounts have been fabricated, I have a clear message. The establishment of an effective, impartial and independent attribution and accountability mechanism must not be vetoed.Let us not forget that the United Nations is bigger than the Council alone. We have strong leadership at the helm of Organization and a powerful General S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 10/26 18-09955 Assembly. Both must consider all instruments to advance accountability for the use of chemical weapons. The work should build on the important work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fact-finding Mission and the JIM. We welcome the Fact-finding Mission's immediate investigation of the terrible incident in Douma this weekend. It should be given full access and cooperation by all parties. We reiterate our strong support for, first, the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Those Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011; secondly, the Commission of Inquiry; thirdly, the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, initiated by France; and fourthly, a referral of the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court in The Hague as the most appropriate path to accountability and justice.In conclusion, the Council must act. The OPCW Fact-finding Mission must complete an investigation as soon as possible, and there can be no impunity for the use of chemical weapons. To do otherwise is tantamount to condoning such appalling attacks, failing in our responsibilities and undermining the international architecture that we have collectively designed to stop such attacks. It is time for the Council and the international community as a whole to act.Mrs. Haley (United States of America): I thank Mr. De Mistura and Mr. Markram for their briefings.Almost exactly one year ago, I stood on the floor of the Security Council and held up pictures of dead Syrian children (see S/PV.7915). After that day, I prayed that I would never have to do that again. I could; there are many truly gruesome pictures. Many of us have worked hard to ensure that one day we would not have to see images of babies gassed to death in Syria. However, the day we prayed would never come, has come again. Chemical weapons have once again been used on Syrian men, women and children. And once again, the Security Council is meeting in response.This time I am not going to hold up pictures of victims. I could; there are many, and they are gruesome. Worse are the videos imprinted in our minds that no one should ever have to see. I could hold up pictures of babies lying dead next to their mothers, brothers and sisters — even toddlers and infants still in diapers, all lying together dead. Their skin is the ashen blue that is now tragically familiar from chemical-weapon scenes. Their eyes are open and lifeless, with white foam bubbles at their mouths and noses. They are pictures of dead Syrians who are unarmed, not soldiers and fit the very definition of innocent and non-threatening. Rather, they are women and children who were hiding in basements from a renewed assault by Bashar Al-Assad. They are of families who were hiding underground to escape Al-Assad's conventional bombs and artillery, but the basements that Syrian families thought would shelter them from conventional bombs were the worst place to be when chemical weapons fell from the sky. Saturday evening, the basements of Douma became their tombs.It is impossible to know for certain how many have died, because access to Douma is cut off by Al-Assad's forces. Dozens are dead that we know of, and hundreds are wounded. I could hold up pictures of survivors — children with burning eyes and choking for breath. I could hold up pictures of first responders washing the chemicals off of the victims and putting respirators on children, or of first responders walking through room after room of families lying motionless with babies still in the arms of their mothers and fathers. I could show pictures of a hospital attacked with chemical weapons. I could show pictures of hospitals struck by barrel bombs following the chemical attack. Ambulances and rescue vehicles have been repeatedly attacked, maximizing the number of dead civilians. Civil defence centres have been attacked in order to paralyse the medical response so as to increase the suffering of the survivors. Who does that? Only a monster does that. Only a monster targets civilians, and then ensures that there are no ambulances to transfer the wounded, no hospitals to save their lives and no doctors or medicine to ease their pain.I could hold up pictures of all of that killing and suffering for the Council to see, but what would be the point? The monster who was responsible for those attacks has no conscience, not even to be shocked by pictures of dead children. The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims. We have tried that before. We must not overlook Russia and Iran's roles in enabling the Al-Assad regime's murderous destruction. Russia and Iran have military advisers at Al-Assad's airfields and operation centres. Russian officials are on the ground helping direct the 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 11/26 regime's starve-and-surrender campaign, and Iranian allied forces do much of the dirty work.When the Syrian military pummels civilians, they rely on the military hardware given by Russia. Russia could stop that senseless slaughter if it wanted, but it stands with the Al-Assad regime and supports without any hesitation. What is the point of trying to shame such people? After all, no civilized Government would have anything to do with Al-Assad's murderous regime. Pictures of dead children mean little to Governments like Russia, who expend their own resources to prop up Al-Assad.The Council, which saw the pictures last year, has failed to act because Russia has stood in its way every single time. For a year we have allowed Russia to hold the lives of innocent Syrians hostage to its alliance with the Al-Assad regime. That also allowed Russian to weaken the credibility of the United Nations. We are quick to condemn chemical weapons in the Security Council, but then Russia prevents any action. It vetoed five draft resolutions on this issue alone and used 11 vetoes all together to save Al-Assad. Our lives go on as usual.The Council created the Joint Investigative Mechanism. It found the Syrian regime responsible for the attack at Khan Shaykhun a year ago. Because Russia supported Al-Assad and his actions, Russia killed the Mechanism. We condemned it, and our lives went on as usual. We pushed for a ceasefire. The Council unanimously agreed, but it was immediately ignored by Russia and Al-Assad. We condemned it, and our lives went on as usual. Now here we are, confronted with the consequences of giving Russia a pass in the name of unity — a unity that Russia has shown many times before it does not want. Here we are, in a world where chemical-weapons use is becoming normalized — from an Indonesian airport to an English village to the homes and hospitals of Syria. Since the Al-Assad regime used chemical weapons at Khan Shaykhun one year ago, chemical weapons have been reportedly used dozens of times, and the Council does nothing.What we are dealing with today is not about a spat between the United States and Russia. It is about the inhumane use of chemical agents on innocent civilians. Each and every one of the nations in the Council is on record opposing the use of chemical weapons. There can be no more rationalizations for our failure to act. We have already introduced and circulated to the Council a draft resolution demanding unrestricted humanitarian access to the people of Douma. Al-Assad is doing all he can to assure maximum suffering in Douma. Our priority must be to help the starving, the sick and the injured who have been left behind. We also call on the Council to immediately re-establish a truly professional and impartial mechanism for chemical-weapons attacks in Syria, including the attack this weekend. We hope that our colleagues on the Council will join us, as they have before.That is a very minimum we can do in response to the attack we just witnessed. Russia's obstructionism will not continue to hold us hostage when we are confronted with an attack like that one. The United States is determined to see the monster who dropped chemical weapons on the Syrian people held to account. Those present have heard what the President of the United States has said about that. Meetings are ongoing. Important decisions are being weighed, even as we speak. We are on the edge of a dangerous precipice. The great evil of chemical-weapons use, which once unified the world in opposition, is on the verge of becoming the new normal. The international community must not let that happen. We are beyond showing pictures of dead babies. We are beyond appeals to conscience. We have reached the moment when the world must see justice done. History will record this as the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrated its utter and complete failure to protect the people of Syria. Either way, the United States will respond.Mr. Delattre (France) (spoke in French): I thank the Peruvian presidency for having convened this emergency Security Council meeting, at the request of France, together with eight other Council members. I also wish to thank the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, Mr. Staffan de Mistura, and the Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Thomas Markram, for their insightful briefings.There are times in the lives of nations where what is essential is at stake: life or death; peace or war; civilization or barbarism; the international order or chaos. That is the case today following the dreadful chemical carnage that once again pushed the boundaries of horror on Saturday in Douma. We are aware that two new and particularly serious chemical-weapons attacks took place in Douma on 7 April. The provisional toll of human life is appalling. There are nearly 50 dead, including a number of children, and 1,000 wounded. S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 12/26 18-09955 That toll is likely to be even higher, as assistance cannot reach some areas. Once again, toxic substances have been dropped to asphyxiate, to kill and to terrorize civilians, reaching them even in the basements where they sought refuge. Chlorine gas has the particular characteristic of being a heavy gas, capable of entering basements. For that reason, it is used. That is the level of deadly cynicism that has been reached in Syria.There are no words to describe the horror of the images that surfaced on 7 April, nearly one year after the Khan Shaykhun attack, which killed nearly 80 people. What we see in the thousands of photos and videos that surfaced in the course of several hours after the 7 April attacks reminds us of the images we have seen far too often: children and adults suffocating due to exposure to concentrated chlorine gas. What we also see are people suffering from violent convulsions, excessive salivation and burning eyes, all of which are symptomatic of exposure to a potent neurotoxin mixed with chlorine to heighten the lethal effect. As I mentioned, in total more than 1,000 people were exposed to that deadly chemical compound.The experience and the successive reports of the Joint Investigative Mechanism leave no room for doubt as to the perpetrators of this most recent attack. Only the Syrian armed forces and their agencies have the requisite knowledge to develop such sophisticated toxic substances with such a high degree of lethality. And only the Syrian armed forces and its agencies have a military interest in their use. This attack took place in Douma, an area that has been subjected to relentless shelling by the Syrian armed and air forces for several weeks. Unfortunately, the use of such weapons enables much swifter tactical progress than conventional weapons.We are all aware that the Syrian regime has already been identified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism as the party responsible for the use, on at least four occasions, of chlorine and sarin gas as a chemical weapon. There are no illusions as to the sincerity of the declaration delivered by Syria on the state of its chemical stockpiles in 2013. Unfortunately, we once again we have proof in the form of empirical evidence. This dovetails with the regime's strategy of terror against civilians. We have already experienced this. At the worst, this is bad faith or, even worse, complicity. The Damascus regime clearly seeks, by sowing terror, to accelerate the capture of other urban areas that it wishes to control. What could be more effective to prompt those who resist the regime to flee than sieges, a tactic worthy of the Middle Ages, in addition to chemical terror. Let us make no mistake: the children frozen in an agonizing death are not so-called collateral victims. They are deliberate targets of these chemical attacks, designed and planned for the purpose of waging terror. The Damascus regime is conducting State terrorism, with its litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity.The offensive and the shelling conducted by the regime, as well as by its Russian and Iranian allies, over the past 48 hours prove the degree to which they have engaged in a military race without any consideration of the human cost. This latest escalation of violence, punctuated by a new instance of the use of chemical weapons, brings us face to face with the destructive madness of a diehard regime that seeks to destroy its people completely. And that regime's Russian and Iranian allies are either unable or unwilling to stop it. We are aware of the fact, and the Russian authorities have confirmed this on several occasions, that Russian military forces have a presence on the ground and in the air in eastern Ghouta. On 7 April, as the second chemical attack took place in Douma, Russian aircraft were also taking part in air operations in the Damascus region. Russian and Iranian military support is present on the ground and at all levels of the Syrian war machinery. No Syrian aircraft takes off without the Russian ally being informed. These attacks took place either with the tacit or explicit consent of Russia or despite its reluctance and military presence. I do not know which is more alarming when it comes to our collective security.The stakes revolving around this recent attack are extremely grave. This is the latest proof of the normalization of chemical weapons use, which we should attribute not only to a regime that has become uncontrollable and continues to gas civilians with complete impunity, but also to its supporters, including a permanent member of the Security Council. That member failed in its commitment to implement resolution 2118 (2013), which it, itself, co-sponsored. That member's responsibility in the endless tragedy that is the war in Syria is overwhelming.France therefore of course turns towards Russia today in order to put forward two demands. The first demand is a cessation of hostilities and the establishment of an immediate ceasefire in Syria, in line with resolution 2401 (2018), adopted on 24 February, 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 13/26 which to date has never been upheld by the Damascus regime. France deeply deplores the fact that, although it was unanimously adopted, it was not possible to implement that resolution, which provides for a truce and emergency humanitarian access. The second demand is the establishment of a new international investigative mechanism that will be able to document all of the factors of the attack in Douma and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. The end of the Joint Investigative Mechanism last November due to two successive Russian vetoes has stripped us of an essential tool of deterrence. For that reason, we support any initiative to bridge that gap. And in that spirit France has committed to a partnership to combat impunity for the use of chemical weapons. In that same spirit, we endorse the draft resolution that has been put forward today by the United States.With this attack the Al-Assad regime is testing yet again the determination of the international community to ensure compliance with the prohibition against chemica-weapons use. Our response must be united, robust and implacable. That response must make it clear that the use of chemical weapons against civilians will no longer be tolerated, and that those who flout that fundamental rule of our collective security will be held accountable and must face the consequences. The Al-Assad regime needs to hear an international response, and France stands ready to fully shoulder its role alongside its partners.Ultimately, we know that only an inclusive political solution will bring an end to the seven-year conflict, which has claimed the lives of 500,000 people and pushed millions to take the route of exile. That is why France will remain fully committed alongside the United Nations Special Envoy and in line with the Geneva process. However, in the light of this most recent carnage, we can no longer merely repeat words. Without being followed up by deeds, such words would be meaningless. I wish to reiterate here what President Macron has stressed on several occasions: France will assume its full responsibility in the fight against the proliferation of chemical weapons. France's position is clear. It will uphold its commitments and keep its word.Ms. Pierce (United Kingdom): I thank the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria and Mr. Markram for their briefings. I also thank all the United Nations teams on the ground for the important and incredibly difficult work they do.As Staffan de Mistura said, this is an important Security Council meeting. My Government shares the outrage that other colleagues have eloquently described today. It is truly horrific to think of victims and families sheltered underground when the chlorine found them.This is the third time in five days that the Council has convened to discuss chemical weapons. This is dreadful in the true sense of that word. The Council should dread what we risk happening — for chemical weapons to become a routine part of fighting. As one of the five permanent members of the Council (P-5), the United Kingdom believes that we have a particular responsibility to uphold the worldwide prohibition on the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). We agree with the Netherlands Ambassador that the P-5 has specific responsibilities. I believe that four members of the P-5 do believe that, but there is one that does not. The Russian Ambassador referred to a resurgence of the Cold War. This is not the Cold War. In the Cold War there was not this flagrant disregard for the prohibitions that are universal on the use of WMDs.The Special Representative of the Secretary-General also referred to the risks of escalation, and to international peace and security more broadly. We share his fears, but it is the Syrian Government and its backers, Iran and Russia, who are prolonging the fighting and risking regional and wider instability. There are real questions about what is happening in the T-4 airbase, with its foreign fighters and its mercenaries.We have been challenged today by our Russian colleague to say why we believe the attack was carried out by Syria and why we believe, further, that chemical weapons were used. The reasons are as follows. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism found six uses of chemical weapons between 2014 and 2017. Two it ascribed to Da'esh for the use of mustard gas, three it ascribed to the regime for the use of chlorine and one further use it ascribed to the Syrian regime for the use of sarin. That is the attacks that we talked about in the Council just last week at Khan Sheykhoun, which led to the United States strike — which we support — on Al-Shayrat. In addition, as the French Ambassador has said, we had reports of Russian and Syrian warnings before the chemical-weapon attack took place and of a pattern of Mi-8 Hip helicopters flying overhead. Those reports have come from the ground.S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 14/26 18-09955 I listened carefully to the Russian Ambassador's argument. As I have just set out, we, as the United Kingdom believe that the Syrian regime is responsible for these latest attacks. But there is one way to settle this — to have an independent fact-finding mission followed by an independent investigation — as we all know that fact-finding missions are there to determine whether chemical weapons have been used and, if they have been used, what sort of chemical weapons. But only an investigation can determine who is responsible for their use, and therefore start the path to accountability.I was very interested to hear the Russian offer that an OPCW fact-finding mission could visit and would have the protection of Russian forces. I believe that this is an offer worth pursuing, but it would, of course, be necessary for the OPCW mission to have complete freedom of action and freedom of access. That still leaves us with the question of who committed these atrocities. That is why we support the United States text for a draft resolution and we believe that there is no legitimate reason not to support the call for the Council to set up an independent investigative mechanism. As I said before, we have nothing to hide, but it appears that Russia, Syria and their supporters, Iran, do have something to fear.The Russian Ambassador singled out the United Kingdom, the United States and France for criticism. I would like, if I may, to turn to that. The responsibility for the cruelty in Syria belongs to Syria and its backers — Russia and Iran. The use of chemical weapons is an escalatory and diabolical act. It strikes me that what Russia is trying to do is to turn the debate in the Council away from the discussion of the use of chemical weapons into a dispute between East and West, presenting itself as the victim. It is far too important to play games with the politics between East and West in respect of chemical weapons. Russia's crocodile tears for the people of eastern Ghouta has an easy answer. It is to join us in the non-political attempt to get in humanitarian and protection workers from the United Nations to do their job of looking after and mitigating the risk to civilians. Russia's concern about attribution for the use of chemical weapons also has an easy answer. It is to join us in allowing the United Nations to set up an international investigative mechanism to pursue the responsible parties. I repeat here the two demands of my French colleague, and I hope we will be able to make progress.I had not intended to address the Skripal case in Salisbury, but since my Russian colleague has done so, I will address it today. He asked what the similarities were between Salisbury and Syria. I think it is important that I point out that the cases are different in the following respects. First, there is a thorough investigation under way in Salisbury. As we have heard, there is no investigation under way in Syria. The British Government in Salisbury is seeking to protect its people, as is its duty. The Syrian Government, on the contrary, as we have heard today, attacks and gasses its people. I am sorry to say that what the two do have in common though, is Russia's refusal to assume P-5 responsibilities to prevent the use of WMDs and its reckless support for the use of WMDs by its agents and by its allies.It is not we who want to alienate Russia. It alienates herself by not joining in the vast majority of the Council who wish to find a non-polemical way through and to address the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria. The Russian Ambassador mentioned friends of the United States. My Government and its people are proud to be a friend of the United States. We stand with everyone on the Council who wants to find a way through the chemical weapons problem, to have a proper fact-finding mission and to have a proper investigation as the first step to bringing this dreadful conflict to a close.Mr. Wu Haitao (China) (spoke in Chinese): China would like to thank Special Envoy de Mistura and the Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Markram, for their briefings. China takes note of the reports alleging that chemical weapons were once again used in Syria and caused civilian casualties. That is of great concern to China.China's position on chemical-weapons has been consistent and clear. We are firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons by any State, organization or individual under any circumstances. Any use of chemical weapons, whenever and wherever, must not be tolerated. China supports a comprehensive, objective and impartial investigation of the incident concerned so that it can reach a conclusion based on substantiated evidence that can stand the test of history and facts so that the perpetrators and responsible parties can be brought to justice.The Syrian chemical-weapons issue is closely linked to to a political settlement of the Syrian situation. China 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 15/26 supports the ongoing important role of the Security Council and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as the main channels for dealing with the Syrian chemical-weapons issue. We hope that the parties concerned will take a constructive approach so as to seek a solution through consultations, establish the facts, prevent any further use of chemical weapons, preserve the unity of the Security Council and cooperate with the efforts by the parties concerned to advance the political process in Syria.The Syrian conflict has entered its eighth year and is inflicting tremendous suffering on the Syrian people. A political settlement is the only solution to the Syrian issue. The international community must remain committed to a political settlement of the question of Syria, while fully respecting its sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.China has always opposed the use or threat of force in international affairs. We always advocate adherence to the Charter of the United Nations. All parties should increase their support for the United Nations mediation efforts and compel the parties in Syria to seek a political settlement under the principle of Syrian leadership and ownership in accordance with resolution 2254 (2015).The fight against terrorism is an important and urgent issue in the political settlement of the Syrian question. The international community must strengthen its coordination, uphold uniform standards and combat all terrorist groups identified as such by the Security Council.At a recent Security Council meeting, China set out its principled position with regard to the Skripal incident (see S/PV.8224). China believes that the parties concerned should strictly comply with their obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and, in line with the relevant provisions of the Convention, carry out a comprehensive, impartial and objective investigation and deal with the issues concerned within the framework of the OPCW. China hopes that the parties concerned will work in accordance with the principles of mutual respect and equality, engage in consultations, cooperate, avoid politicization and measures that might further exacerbate tensions and resolve their differences properly through dialogue.Mr. Skoog (Sweden): I thank Mr. Staffan de Mistura and Mr. Thomas Markram for their briefings this afternoon. I would also like to thank you, Mr. President, for acceding to our request for an emergency meeting.We are dismayed by the general escalation of violence in Syria, as described today by Staffan de Mistura, in clear violation of the various resolutions, including resolution 2401 (2018). In that regard, I want to plea with the Syrian authorities represented in the Chamber and with the Astana guarantors to live up to the Security Council's resolutions.We asked for this meeting today because over the weekend we were yet again faced with horrifying allegations of chemical-weapons attacks in Syria, this time in Douma, just outside Damascus. There are worrying reports of a large number of civilian casualties, including women and children. The graphic material that has been shared is beyond repugnant. We are alarmed by those extremely serious allegations. There must now be an immediate, independent and thorough investigation.Let me reiterate that Sweden supports all international efforts to combat the use and proliferation of chemical weapons by State or non-State actors anywhere in the world. We unequivocally condemn in the strongest terms the use of chemical weapons, including in Syria. It is a serious violation of international law and constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The use of chemical weapons in armed conflict is always prohibited and amounts to a war crime. Those responsible must be held accountable. We cannot accept impunity.Addressing the use of chemical weapons in Syria has become a central test of the credibility of the Council. How we respond to the most recent reports from Douma is therefore decisive. Despite the odds, we must put aside our differences and come together. Now is the time to show unity. In our view, the following needs to happen.First, we must condemn in the strongest terms the continued use of chemical weapons in Syria.Secondly, our immediate priority must be to investigate the worrying reports from Douma. In that context, we welcome the announcement by the Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that the Fact-finding Mission for Syria — to which we reiterate our full support — is in the process of gathering information from all available sources. We express our hope that the Fact-finding Mission can be urgently deployed to Syria.S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 16/26 18-09955 Thirdly, all States, as well as the parties to the conflict, including the Syrian authorities, must fully cooperate with the Fact-finding Mission. What is particularly needed is safe and unhindered access to the site in Douma, as well as any information and evidence deemed relevant by the Fact-finding Mission to conduct its independent investigation.Fourthly, we need to urgently redouble our efforts in the Council to agree on a new independent and impartial attributive mechanism to identify those responsible for chemical-weapons use.Finally, if the allegations of chemical-weapons use are indeed confirmed and those responsible are eventually identified, the perpetrators must be held to account.We are ready to work actively and constructively with other members for urgent Council action. To that end, we have circulated elements as input to our discussions. We must immediately engage in consultations in order to break the current deadlock and to shoulder our responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations. We owe that to the many victims of the crimes committed in this conflict.Mr. Radomski (Poland): Allow me to thank Special Envoy Mr. Staffan de Mistura and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Mr. Thomas Markham for their important briefings.We are horrified by the news of another deadly attack in eastern Ghouta, which took place on Saturday evening. Dozens of people perished as a result of a vicious act of violence against civilians in Douma. The available information about the symptoms of the victims affirm that they are consistent with those caused by a chemical agent.Poland condemns that barbaric attack, and expects that it will be possible to hold the perpetrators accountable. No military or political goal can justify the extermination of innocent vulnerable people, especially those seeking help in medical facilities. That atrocious crime seems to be a cynical response to the debates in the Council last week, when we commemorated the first anniversary of the attack in Khan Shaykun (see S/PV.8221).We call on the actors affecting the situation in Syria, especially the Russian Federation and Iran, to take all the necessary actions to prevent any further use of weapons of mass destruction and to achieve the full cessation of hostilities in the whole territory of Syria. We insist that all parties to the conflict comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law.As has been stated many times by members of the Council, as well as United Nations officials and European Union representatives, it is highly regrettable that the renewal of the mandate of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism was vetoed, thereby allowing those responsible for the subsequent chemical attacks to remain unpunished. Today we face the results of that impunity, witnessing further attacks against civilians with the use of chemicals as weapons.We urge all our partners in the Council to engage in a serious discussion in good faith in order to re-establish an accountability mechanism for chemical attacks in Syria. That is the minimum that we owe the victims of Ghouta, Khan Shaykun, Al-Lataminah and the numerous other places where chemical weapons have been used.Mr. Alemu (Ethiopia): We would like to thank Special Envoy De Mistura and Mr. Thomas Markram for their briefings.Reports of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma on Saturday and the videos and pictures that we saw through media outlets are indeed very worrisome. It is also deeply disturbing that such reports of the use of chemical weapons have continued in the ongoing military activities in Syria. As we have repeatedly stated, we strongly condemn any use of chemical weapons by any actor under any circumstances. There is no justification whatsoever for the use of chemical weapons. Those responsible for these inhuman acts must be identified and held accountable. This is absolutely vital, not only for the sake of the victims of chemical weapons in Syria but also for maintaining international peace and security and for preserving the non-proliferation architecture.As the Secretary-General said in his 8 April statement, cited by the Special Envoy earlier, any use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, is abhorrent and requires a thorough investigation. That includes the need to establish accountability — something on which the Council has yet to achieve consensus. In the meantime, we believe the reported use of chemical weapons in Douma, and in other parts of Syria, should be investigated by the Fact-finding Mission, and all parties should extend full cooperation in that 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 17/26 regard, in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions.While we all agree that accountability is indispensable for deterring and stopping the use of chemical weapons in Syria and beyond, there is currently, as has already be said, no independent, impartial and professional investigative mechanism that could identify those individuals, entities, State or non-State actors that use chemical weapons in the country. In that regard, the Council should recover its unity and engage in a positive and constructive discussion that could address the existing institutional lacunae.We all know that the threats to international peace and security we face today are becoming increasingly more complex by the day. We are seeing that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is posing a real danger and that the international norms on the use of chemical weapons are also being undermined. Since the end of the Cold War, the trust among major Powers has never been so low as it is currently, which has enormous implications not only for global peace and security but also for the transformative agenda that we have set for ourselves in the development sphere. We cannot think of making any meaningful headway towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals without creating the necessary global security environment. At the moment, we really cannot say that this is an environment conducive to making any progress on that account.The Security Council has the primary responsibility for the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security. Unfortunately, it has not been able to effectively address the new and emerging threats and challenges to peace and security that we are facing today. It has been all the more apparent that the lack of unity and cohesion among members is undermining the credibility of the Council. Perhaps we, the elected members, have to look for ways and means to have a greater impact, with a view to contributing to increasing the Council's effectiveness. Without dialogue among the major Powers to build the necessary trust and understanding, it will be extremely difficult to address some of the most difficult and complex security challenges we have ever seen, including the situation in Syria.Things are in fact bound to get even worse unless something is done. We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand. The dangers are very palpable. That is why every opportunity should be seized. That is also why we consider the news about the upcoming summit-level meetings being planned to be encouraging. We can only hope that those meetings will help to defuse tensions and allow for serious discussions to take place with a view to finding a common approach to tackling current threats and challenges. The sooner those discussions happen, the better for preserving global peace and stability, which, as we speak, is becoming a source of extremely great concern. In fact, I am understating the magnitude of the potential danger we are facing.Mr. Tanoh-Boutchoue (Côte d'Ivoire) (spoke in French): The Ivorian delegation thanks Mr. De Mistura and Mr. Markram for their respective briefings on the latest developments in Syria, after the resumption of fighting in Douma and eastern Ghouta and the bombing of the city of Damascus, following the relative calm of recent weeks. My delegation would like to focus its statement on three main points.First, we remain deeply concerned about recent reports of chemical-weapons attacks against innocent civilian populations, which have reportedly resulted in numerous casualties who have shown symptoms of exposure to a chemical agent. While reaffirming its categorical rejection of any use or resort to chemical weapons, be it in times of peace or in times of war, Côte d'Ivoire strongly condemns such acts and calls for these events to be placed under an intense spotlight, with the contribution of all stakeholders.In the face of allegations of recurrent use of chemical weapons by the warring parties in the Syrian conflict, the Ivorian delegation stresses that it is more important than ever that the international community send a strong signal to show, beyond the usual principled condemnations, its determination to put a definitive end to this infernal cycle.The use of chemical weapons violates the most fundamental norms of international law and poses threats to our collective security. That is why we must engage in a unflagging fight against impunity in the use of chemical weapons and preserving the international chemical non-proliferation regime, which is one of the fundamental pillars of our common security.My second point concerns the need for the international community to put in place a mechanism for accountability and for the fight against impunity for those who use chemical weapons, in order to put an end to the repeated use of these weapons. In that regard, the Ivorian delegation expresses its readiness to work S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 18/26 18-09955 towards the establishment of such a mechanism and calls on the Council to return to the unity it had when it established the Joint Investigative Mechanism, whose mandate unfortunately could not be renewed despite our common efforts.Thirdly, Côte d'Ivoire notes with regret that resolution 2401 (2018), which remains the framework for our joint action, has not been implemented and that the humanitarian situation in Syria has further deteriorated. In the light of the distress of the civilian populations trapped in the fighting, the urgency for a cessation of hostilities remains more relevant than ever. In the face of the deteriorating situation, my country would like once again to call on all parties to the conflict to immediately cease hostilities and to respect international humanitarian law, including unhindered humanitarian access to persons in distress, in accordance with resolution 2401 (2018).In conclusion, Côte d'Ivoire reiterates its conviction that the solution to the crisis in Syria cannot be military. Only an inclusive political process can put a definitive end to this conflict. Such a political solution must be in accordance with resolution 2254 (2015) and imbued with the results of the Geneva negotiations. My country believes that the Geneva talks remain the right framework for achieving a lasting solution to the Syrian conflict.Mr. Ndong Mba (Equatorial Guinea) (spoke in Spanish): I thank Mr. Staffan de Mistura and Mr. Thomas Markram and their respective teams for their exhaustive briefings.The Republic of Equatorial Guinea expresses its gratitude to the French Republic and to the other members of the Council that called for the convening of this afternoon's meeting. We also thank the President of the Security Council for having decided to hold this afternoon's meeting under the agenda item "Threats to international peace and security: The situation in the Middle East". This is an appropriate topic, since recent events in the Middle East represent a genuine threat to peace and security, not only in that region but at the international level as well. From the protests in the Gaza Strip, with their loss of human lives, to the missile attacks on Syria, as well as the horrendous chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town of Douma, those are all situations of deep concern for the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.This past weekend we awoke to news that added a new low to the saddest and bloodiest episodes of the Syrian conflict. According to reports published in the international media, on 7 April, in the Syrian town of Douma in eastern Ghouta, more than 40 people, mostly women and girls, died from asphyxiation caused by inhaling a poison gas.As we heard in this Chamber on 4 April from the Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Mr. Thomas Markram (see S/PV.8221), the conclusions and recommendations of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fact-finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic are not binding and do not attribute responsibilities in the case of evidence of the use of chemical substances prohibited under the relevant international treaties. In the light of that fact, we take this opportunity to recall the obligation of all parties to take essential steps towards the full implementation of resolution 2118 (2013), and we underscore the need to establish an independent investigation mechanism of the United Nations whose task should be focused on preventing impunity, identifying those responsible and preventing future attacks to the best of its abilities.As far as the Republic of Equatorial Guinea is concerned, no use of chemical weapons should go uninvestigated or unpunished. As a result, the alarming information coming out of Syria, especially that pertaining to the use of chemical weapons targeting civilians, both the case of Douma, which we are discussing today, as well as similar events in the past, must be investigated exhaustively, fairly, objectively and independently by international bodies in accordance with OPCW standards. The results of such investigations must be made public and those responsible must answer for their crimes before the implacable face of justice.The fact that chemical substances continue to be used, especially against civilians, is cause for serious concern to the Government of Equatorial Guinea. During the general debate of the seventy-second session of the General Assembly, the President of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, His Excellency Mr. Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, condemned in the strongest terms the use, manufacture, possession and distribution of chemical weapons in armed conflicts (see A/72/PV.13). It is worth recalling that no member of the Council should be considered exempt from that obligation, which also reflects Chapter I of the Charter of the 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 19/26 United Nations, which enshrines the determination of Member States to build a world of peace and ensure the well-being of humankind.The Security Council now finds itself at a crossroads with respect to its options. It can either strengthen the presence of international forces with a view to future military intervention, as some military Powers have been suggesting, or we can pursue international negotiations, be they in Geneva, Astana, Sochi or Ankara. However, history continues to teach us that military interventionism has never resolved conflicts; rather, it exacerbates and entrenches them, sowing desolation and ruin in its wake.As far as the Republic of Equatorial Guinea is concerned, the only solution to the Syrian conflict is to be found in the words spoken yesterday by Pope Francis in the traditional Sunday mass in Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican:"There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war. Nothing, but nothing, can justify the use of such instruments of extermination on defenseless people and populations . military and political leaders choose another path, that of negotiations, which is the only one that can bring about peace and not death and destruction."In conclusion, we reiterate the appeal made by the Republic of Equatorial Guinea to the countries and actors with influence in Syria, as well as in Israel and Palestine, to wield that influence in order to force all parties involved in those conflicts to mitigate the suffering of their people and to sit down to negotiate to put an end to that chronic threat to international peace and security which persists in the Middle East.Mr. Umarov (Kazakhstan): We thank Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and Deputy High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Thomas Markram, for their briefings. We express our gratitude to Council members for initiating this emergency meeting, which we hope will lead to the launching of a timely and objective investigation of the incident in Douma.We firmly believe that the Security Council remains the main and sole body authorized to counter threats to international peace and security. Unfortunately, the situation within the Council is becoming increasingly strained. In order to achieve an appropriate solution to these critical issues, it is of utmost importance that the Council act unanimously, in a balanced and pragmatic manner. To that end, we must demonstrate greater flexibility and negotiability, rising above our national interests in order to achieve peace and stability. Any controversy that involves prejudices and mutual accusations and lacks conclusive results and irrefutable evidence will have only a destructive effect and will not lead to the results that the world community expects from us.With regard to the chemical attacks in Syria, we mourn together with the families of those killed and express our solidarity with them in the face of such atrocities, by which innocent civilians become victims of the relentless confrontation of the opposing parties. Kazakhstan has always taken a firm and resolute stand, uncompromisingly condemning any use of chemical weapons as the most heinous action and an unacceptable war crime.With regard to the situation in Douma, we call for an investigation into this alleged incident to be carried out and for all the circumstances to be clarified as soon as possible. The Council has the great responsibility to act on verifiable facts, not only before the world community, but before ourselves. Furthermore, history itself will ultimately be the judge of our decisions. Therefore, we need to verify all the details of the incident. In that regard, we would like to draw attention to the following aspects.First, are there any other reliable sources, in addition to White Helmets' claims, and who can verify the veracity of the assessments and testimonies of those sources? Some claim that the number of victims is 70, while others report that there were more than 150 victims and still others believe there were only 25 victims. Even one victim is too many. However, today, the Russian Federation denied the attack altogether. There are many allegations and assumptions regarding the very facts concerning the use of a toxic chemical substance.Secondly, we consider it important to take into account the fact that the Government of Syria has repeatedly notified us and requested that we check its reports that a number of terrorist groups on the side of the opposition were making attempts to transfer chemical weapons and prepare chemical attacks on the territory of eastern Ghouta. Actually, these allegations have not been given due attention and we have had no opportunity to verify all the facts. We are not advocating for any side in this conflict, but rather demanding a full S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 20/26 18-09955 and objective investigation on the basis of which we can make a thoughtful decision.Thirdly, we believe that it is imperative to conduct an independent investigation. We again recall the urgent need for an investigative mechanism, the establishment of which depends on the permanent members of the Council. They must make every possible effort to find common ground on the issue. We urgently need objective and verifiable information, as well as an immediate, independent, transparent and unbiased investigation before any decision or action, unilateral or otherwise, is taken.We fully support the proposal that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fact-finding Mission be sent at the earliest. We are certain that the Syrian people are very interested in an objective investigation. Therefore, Damascus and opposing parties should provide all assistance and secure access for the speedy visit of the OPCW inspectors to the incident sites to collect facts on the ground.Finally, we again call for the preservation and strengthening of the unity of the Council to reach a consensus-based decision to preserve peace and stability in the world.Mr. Alotaibi (Kuwait) (spoke in Arabic): At the outset, we thank you, Mr. President, for the prompt convening of today's meeting. We were one of the countries that requested it.We also thank Mr. Staffan de Mistura, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, and Mr. Thomas Markram, Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, for their briefings.Since the beginning of this year, the State of Kuwait has occupied the Arab seat in the Security Council. One of our most important priorities, which we made clear before we joined it, is to defend and uphold Arab issues, voice the concerns about them and work to find peaceful solutions. We deeply deplore the lack of any real and genuine progress on any of these issues, in particular that of the Syrian crisis, which regrettably continues to deteriorate. Security Council resolutions on such issues are not implemented. The Council is responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security but is unable to shoulder that responsibility. It is divided as it faces those dangers and threats. Therefore the crises continue, along with the suffering of the people in the region.The State of Kuwait condemns in the strongest terms the heinous rocket and barrel bomb attacks against residential areas under siege in eastern Ghouta, including the latest attack on Douma, on 7 April. Five days ago we marked the first anniversary of the Khan Shaykhun incident (see S/PV.8221), in which chemical weapons were used, as confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism. It also identified who used them.Two days ago, scores of civilians, including children and women, were killed or injured in attacks and air strikes against Douma. Many cases of asphyxiation were recorded. Several international reports confirmed that the crimes committed in both incidents were tantamount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, which reminds us once again of the request we all made in the Chamber for the establishment of a new mechanism to determine whether or not and by whom chemical weapons had been used, and to hold the perpetrators in Syria accountable. The mechanism must guarantee impartial, transparent and professional investigations in all chemical attacks in Syria in order to end impunity. For the past five years — specifically, since August 2013 — the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria have enjoyed impunity. They have not been punished, even when we witnessed the very first crime of the use of chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta.We do not want to mark the first anniversary of the attack in Douma without a conviction. We call for the Council to establish an accountability mechanism that would determine the perpetrators of the chemical-weapons crimes anywhere in Syria — be they a Government, entity, group or individual — so that they can be held accountable in accordance with the provisions of resolution 2118 (2013). The Council must shoulder its responsibility with regard to the maintenance of international peace and security. The use of chemical weapons in Syria is a genuine threat to the non-proliferation regime. The continued attacks against civilians in medical facilities and residential areas, through air strikes or artillery, are all flagrant violations of the international community's will and relevant Security Council resolutions, in particular resolution 2401 (2018), which demanded a 30-day ceasefire, at the very least, without delay.09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 21/26 The provisions of resolution 2118 (2013) are clear and definite. They call for accountability for the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law. However, current events are a clear violation of the provisions of the resolution. As members of the Council, we cannot accept the status quo, which is the continued use of chemical weapons in Syria. It is another disappointment for the Syrian people, whose suffering caused by the use of such weapons in different parts of Syria we have been unable to end.The Council has a collective responsibility. The suffering Syrian people are sick and tired of tuning into meetings of the Council without seeing tangible results on the ground. At several junctures throughout this bloody conflict the Council has been able to find common ground to end the crisis. However, we must overcome our political differences and establish a new accountability mechanism in Syria that is professional, credible and impartial. Such elements are available in the draft resolution under discussion, which has been put forward by the United States. It includes updates on the incident in Douma. We call on all members of the Council to build on that draft as a good basis for negotiations on a future mechanism.We continue to seek a political solution as the only means to end the crisis in all its dimensions. The political road map is clear and agreed, based on the 2012 Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex) and on resolution 2254 (2015). It seeks to maintain the unity, independence and sovereignty of Syria and meet the legitimate aspirations and ambitions of the Syrian people towards living a dignified life.Mr. Inchauste Jordán (Plurinational State of Bolivia) (spoke in Spanish): We thank Mr. Staffan de Mistura, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, and Mr. Thomas Markram, Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, for their briefings.We are deeply concerned about the reported use of chemical weapons in the city of Douma. Bolivia reiterates its condemnation of the use of chemical agents as weapons and considers it to be an unjustifiable criminal act. There can be no justification for their use, regardless of the circumstances or by whom they are used, as it constitutes a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to international peace and security.We believe that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-finding Mission, in line with its mandate, should verify in the most objective, methodological and technical manner the reported use of chemical weapons. Should their use be verified, it must be investigated in an effective and transparent manner in order to ensure that the perpetrators can be identified and tried by the appropriate bodies so as to prevent impunity. We therefore need an independent, impartial and representative entity that will conduct a comprehensive, credible and conclusive investigation. Our major challenge is to ensure that we do not politicize or exploit the Security Council for our own purposes. We regret that so far there have been obstacles to the full implementation of resolution 2401 (2018), and we call on all the parties involved to make every effort to effectively implement it throughout Syrian territory. We emphatically reject the ongoing bombardments and indiscriminate attacks, especially those on civilian infrastructure such as health facilities, and we deplore all military activity in residential areas. Such actions only cause more displacements, injuries and deaths. We call on all the parties to respect international humanitarian law and human rights law, including authorizing humanitarian access throughout Syria and to all persons in need, in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions.We reiterate that there can be no military solution to the Syrian conflict and that the only option is an inclusive, negotiated and coordinated political process, led by the Syrian people for the Syrian people, aimed at enabling sustainable peace to be achieved in the area without any foreign pressure, as provided for in resolution 2254 (2015). We also reject any attempt at fragmentation or sectarianism in Syria.Bolivia wants to once again make clear its firm rejection of the use of force or the threat of use of force. We also reject unilateral actions, which are illegal and contrary to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic, and undermine any effort to achieve a political solution.Lastly, with regard to the events in the city of Salisbury, we reiterate the importance of conducting an independent, transparent and depoliticized investigation in accordance with current rules and regulations of international law, especially as set forth by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 22/26 18-09955 We believe that cooperation among the relevant parties will be essential to making progress through the appropriate diplomatic channels in solving the crime and strengthening the non-proliferation regime.The President (spoke in Spanish): I shall now make a statement in my national capacity.We thank Mr. De Mistura and Mr. Markram for their briefings. Peru is deeply concerned about the new reports of the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, including minors, in the town of Douma. In that regard, we note the urgent need for a thorough investigation. Peru condemns any use of chemical weapons wherever it may take place. We want to point out that it is a heinous crime, a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security and a violation both of the non-proliferation regime and international humanitarian law.In the short term, we believe that the Syrian Government and all parties to the conflict, including countries with influence on the ground, should abide by and implement the humanitarian ceasefire that the Council provided for in resolution 2401 (2018), and to cooperate with the Fact-finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. To that end, we once again reiterate the importance of establishing an independent and impartial accountability mechanism. The investigations should result in the prosecution and punishment of those responsible. The members of the Council cannot permit impunity.We must also remember that any response to the conflict in Syria and the atrocities committed there must be conducted in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. Peru opposes any use or threat of use of force contrary to international law. We reiterate our deep concern about the serious consequences that the ongoing atrocities in the Syrian conflict may have for the stability of the Middle East and for an international order based on minimum standards of humanity and coexistence. In that regard, I would like to conclude by calling on the members of the Council to restore a sense of unity and the common good to our discharge of our high responsibilities. In the case of Syria, that means implementing the ceasefire and ensuring the effective protection of civilians, investigating and punishing atrocity crimes and resuming a serious process of political dialogue, based on resolution 2254 (2015) and the Geneva communiqué (S/2012/522, annex), with a view to promoting the sustainable peace that the Syrian people so badly need.I now resume my functions as President of the Council.The representative of the Russian Federation has asked for the floor to make a further statement.Mr. Nebenzia (Russian Federation) (spoke in Russian): Like my Dutch colleague and friend, I too have three points to make.I would first like to respectfully request of my colleague Mrs. Nikki Haley, Permanent Representative of the United States, that from now on she refrain from labelling any legitimate Governments as "regimes". Right now I am referring specifically to Russia. I have made that request once before, but Ambassador Haley was not present, and I asked for it to be conveyed to her by her colleagues. Now I am requesting it personally. If it happens again, I will interrupt the meeting on a point of order.Secondly, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom said that Syria is different from Salisbury in that there no investigation is being conducted in Syria, while one is under way in Salisbury. We would very much like to know more about the details of that investigation and would be grateful if she could communicate them to us. However, for the time being we know nothing other than that all of a sudden the alleged victims of a chemical warfare agent, thankfully, turn out to be alive and, apparently, almost completely well. However, nobody has seen them yet, and we fear for the condition of those important witnesses. At the moment, we have learned from newspaper reports, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has offered to shelter the Skripals in the United States under new identities. The CIA's participation in this is itself revealing. But it also means that we may never see these people, who are key witnesses to what happened, again.What else do we know? We know about the speedy euthanization of the Skripals' pets and the cremation of the cat and dead guinea pigs. We are also aware of the intention to demolish their house and the restaurant and pub they visited. We also know that Yulia Skripal's sister, Viktoria, who wanted to see her, was denied a British visa. Why? That is all we know. I repeat that we would very much like to learn more details about what is going on, and we would be grateful to our British 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 23/26 colleagues if they could keep us regularly informed during the investigation.Thirdly, and lastly, we did not meet here today to address the situation in Douma. The agenda item is entitled "Threats to international peace and security", although, needless to say, it was the situation regarding Douma and the so-called chemical attack that prompted the meeting. In today's meeting, as Mr. De Mistura mentioned and the Secretary-General has previously discussed, we are moving towards a dangerous area. Unfortunately, the people who are playing these dangerous games and spewing irresponsible threats do not understand that. Today we heard once again what we have already heard many times. None of our Western colleagues want to hear or listen to objective information. None of them has expressed any doubts about the one and only version that has been given of what transpired. So what is the point of an investigation? Why bother? They have accused Damascus of a chemical-weapon attack not just before any investigation has been carried out but before the incident was even known about.They are not convinced by the information that we have provided today. They simply do not want to listen. We have already said that there are no witnesses to the use of chemical weapons at all. There are no traces of chemicals, no bodies, no injuries, no poisoning victims. Nobody went to the hospital. The footage was all clearly staged by the White Helmets. We demand that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission immediately visit Douma and the area of the alleged chemical weapons attack, interview the residents and medical staff and and collect soil samples. My British colleague said that only an investigation can establish who is to blame. We agree, except that did not stop her from blaming the so-called Syrian regime. Those two things do not really jibe. We insist that the OPCW mission visit Douma immediately. The Syrian authorities and Russian troops are ready to provide the necessary conditions for this to take place.Lastly, we too wish there were an independent investigative mechanism. I would like to remind the Council that our draft resolution, which includes a proposal for establishing such a mechanism, is in blue, and we are ready to adopt it today, if necessary.The President (spoke in Spanish): The representative of the United Kingdom has asked for the floor to make a further statement.Ms. Pierce (United Kingdom): I apologize for taking the floor again, but I want to clarify something. The Russian Ambassador's English is far too good for him not to have understood me when I spoke on 5 April (see S/PV.8224). The investigation of the Salisbury incident that is under way is an independent police investigation, and the United Kingdom will be very pleased to update the Council as and when we have something to say.If I may, I would like to add one more thing. The other difference between Salisbury and Syria is that the United Kingdom is a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention in good standing, and the Syrian Government has not complied with its obligations as certified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.The President (spoke in Spanish): I now give the floor to the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic.Mr. Ja'afari (Syrian Arab Republic) (spoke in Arabic): The American representative said that Russia spends its resources to support what she calls the regime in Syria. My question to her is: What does the United States spend its resources on in Syria? Does it spend its resources providing milk and medicine to Syrian children, or on providing weapons and munitions to its terrorist groups, which have committed the most heinous crimes against the Syrian people? Or is it spending resources on the its alliance's aircraft, which have wreaked destruction in many places in Syria, particularly in the city of Raqqa? What about the continuous threats that are made against my country at nearly every meeting of the Security Council on this issue? Does she acknowledge that her Administration has no respect for the Security Council, this international Organization or the principles of international law?Let us test the credibility of what my colleague the United States Ambassador said. I ask members to note that I do not refer to the American Administration as the "American regime" because that would be legally shameful in this Chamber. Let us test the credibility of what my colleague the American Ambassador said when she asked the Security Council to act in order to achieve justice in Syria. Well, my test is to request that her Administration and her country allow the disclosure of the results of the United Nations Special Commission that investigated the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for 18 years. The Commission was headed for some time by a Swede, Mr. Hans Blix.S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 24/26 18-09955 As Council members know, after 18 years of investigation the Commission found no chemical weapons in Iraq. Nor did they find Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola. Nevertheless, in a semi-confidential meeting towards the end of 2008, the Security Council decided to end the Commission's work and bury its archives in iron boxes. I repeat — it decided to bury its archives in iron boxes. Only the Secretary-General knows the code that opens those boxes. There was one condition, which was that the boxes could not be opened for 60 years. What is so shameful in those archives? Why did they have to be buried in boxes that cannot be opened for 60 years? That question is directed to the American Ambassador.The Government of my country condemns in the strongest terms the ruthless Israeli aggression that took place this morning on the T-4 airbase in Homs governorate, in which a number of civilians were killed and injured. It was a flagrant violation of Security Council resolution 350 (1974) and of various Security Council resolutions on counter-terrorism, and would not have occurred were it not for the American Administration's unlimited and consistent support for Israel. The American Administration guarantees Israel immunity so that it will not be held accountable in the Council. That allows Israel to continue to practice State terrorism and to threaten peace and security in the region and beyond. Of course, Western countries did not even mention the Israeli aggression in their statements today, which shows that the Governments of their countries are complicit in it and are covering for it. Unfortunately, my dear friend Mr. De Mistura did not hear Netanyahu say this morning that it was Israel that launched the attack. That is why I was surprised when he said that the United Nations has not been able to verify the identity of its perpetrators. If Netanyahu himself says that he launched this aggression, why does Mr. De Mistura not refer to Israel as the aggressor?This Israeli aggression is an indirect response to the successes of the Syrian Arab Army in expelling armed terrorist groups from the suburbs of Damascus, its rural area and other Syrian territory. Those groups have been killing the Syrian people, kidnapping civilians, detaining them and using them as human shields. They targeted Damascus alone with 3,000 missiles over the course of three months, killing 155 martyrs and injuring 865 civilians, most of them women and children. The Syrian Government underscores that the repeated Israeli aggression did not and will not protect Israeli agents operating within terrorist groups, nor will it divert the attention of the Syrian Army from its decisive military achievements in combating terrorism.The American anti-racism activist Martin Luther King Jr. said that "a lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it the bigger it becomes". It would seem that this wise saying holds true at any time and at any place. The Governments of some countries lie incessantly. Fortunately, though, they have not quite perfected the details of their web of lies, much like the famous Baron Munchausen of German literature. How many roosters truly believe that sunrise is the result of crowing?Some permanent members have become professional liars, and that in itself is a weapon of mass destruction. Through their lies, Palestine was stolen. The lies of these countries fuelled the war in the Korean peninsula. Through their lies, they invaded Viet Nam. Through their lies, they invaded Grenada. Through their lies, they destroyed Yugoslavia. Through their lies, they occupied Iraq. Through their lies, they destroyed Libya. Through their lies, they created takfiri terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaida, the Taliban, Da'esh, Al-Nusra Front, Jaysh Al-Islam — and the list goes on and on. Through their lies, the same countries are trying to defeat Syria and prepare the ground for an assault today.It is worth noting that the today's negative statement of the United States representative is in absolute contradiction with a statement made by United States Secretary of Defence General Mattis in an interview with Newsweek two days ago with journalist Ian Wilkie. Mr. Wilkie used the following title for the interview: "Now Mattis Admits There Was No Evidence Assad Used Poison Gas on His People." That was said by the American Defence Secretary, not the Syrian Defence Minister. What a harmonious Administration!On 10 December 2012, some six years ago, we submitted a formal letter to the Council (S/2012/917), before the operators of terrorist groups claimed, for the first time, that sarin gas was used in Khan Al-Assal on 19 March 2013. We informed the Council that the United States, the United Kingdom and France had launched a campaign of allegations claiming that the Syrian Government may have used chemical weapons. Back then, we warned that such allegations would encourage Governments that sponsor terrorists to provide chemical weapons to armed terrorist groups and then claim that the Syrian Government had used such weapons. What happened in the past few years 09/04/2018 Threats to international peace and security S/PV.8225 18-09955 25/26 in Khan Al-Assal, Ghouta, Kafr Zita, Lataminah, Tal Minis, Khan Shaykhun and many other villages and towns in Syria confirms unequivocally what we had warned of five to six years ago, and during all these six years.The United States, the United Kingdom and France have been extremely eager to hold one meeting after another based on fabricated information. That is part of the deep crisis that we are witnessing. They want to involve other Council members in that crisis. Since 2013, those three countries have created a big elephant of lies and deceit in the Security Council. That elephant is living in the Chamber today and is stomping on the credibility of the Council with its huge feet. It seems that these countries called for the holding of today's meeting to support terrorists and to obstruct the agreement reached about Douma.However, those countries were a bit late because the terrorists had hoped this meeting would be held before they were forced to reach an agreement with the Syrian State to leave their strongholds and hand over their weapons. These countries were late in fulfilling their promises to the terrorists. It would have been better not to repeat their nasty story and not to rely on false reports from mercenaries — so-called White Helmets, founded by British intelligence officer James Le Mesurier. He is British, but his name is French. What proves that these countries were lying is that the residents of Douma left the city safely — 170,000 civilians left the city safely. Those terrorists chose to reach an agreement with the Syrian State as a last resort for them and their families. Many buses are transferring them and their families to the city of Jarabulus, after they refused to settle their affairs and chose to go there. However, the vast majority of residents chose to stay in their houses and resort to the Syrian State.It has been proven that the allegations of certain States, including some States members of the Council, on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in eastern Ghouta were lies, just as we saw in Aleppo and other places. As it turned out, terrorist group warehouses were full of medication and food, monopolized by their elements who sold some of those items to civilians at exorbitant prices. At this point, I must ask: Did the three countries call for this meeting in order to legitimize the Israeli aggression that occurred this morning or to impede the implementation of the agreement reached with their terrorist tools?In this context, I must thank the delegation of the Russian Federation for recognizing the true nature of what these countries were preparing for, and aptly called for the meeting to be held under the agenda item "Threats to international peace and security". That is the correct agenda item.We have conveyed to the Security Council, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and what used to be called the Joint Investigative Mechanism 145 letters, the latest on 1 April 2018. I thank the Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan for pointing out that the Council members do not read and that the Council does not respond to those letters. The letters contain accurate information. They indicate that armed terrorist groups possess toxic chemical substances, notably chlorine and sarin. We have warned time and again that those groups were preparing to commit crimes involving chemical weapons against innocent Syrians, and were working with the White Helmets to fabricate evidence, photograph locations and film Hollywood-like scenes with everything staged in order to blame the Syrian Government and influence public opinion against Syria and its allies. Those countries call for the holding of meetings such as this in order to create a pretext that would justify any military aggression against Syria.It seems that the directors of that terrorist scene failed to perfect their web of lies. We note that in each of those theatrical scenes on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Government, the substances never seem to affect the armed elements, but only women and children. These chemical weapons seem to discriminate against women and children and do not affect armed men. It suffices to wash away these chemicals with water in front of the camera. Water appears to heal everything. Rescue workers never need to wear protective masks. The Syrian Arab Army does not use these substances because it does not possess them to begin with. The Americans destroyed them on the vessel MV Cape Ray in the Mediterranean. So, the Syrian Arab Army uses these substances, which it does not possess, only when it is making military progress. How strange that is!This vehement campaign lacks the minimum standards of credibility. It relies on fabricated information on social media by elements of armed terrorist groups and their operators. I announce from this table that the Syrian Government is fully prepared to facilitate an OPCW fact-finding mission to Douma, S/PV.8225 Threats to international peace and security 09/04/2018 26/26 18-09955 where the incident is alleged to have occurred, as soon as possible to investigate and verify these allegations. We endorse the Russian proposal to hear a briefing on the fact-finding mission's report after its visit to Al-Raqqa. We welcome this visit as soon as possible.I hope that this offer does not suffer the same fate as the first offer we made to former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after the Khan Al-Assal incident of chemical substance use in March 2013. At that time, we asked the Secretary-General to provide assistance to the Syrian Government in immediately investigating what happened in the town of Khan Al-Assal. It took the United Nations four months and 11 days to send Mr. Sellström, as Council members recall. Yes, it took the United Nations four months and 11 days. That is how the United Nations interpreted the term "immediately" — four months and 11 days. When Mr. Sellström arrived in Damascus to investigate what had happened in Khan Al-Assal, terrorists in Ghouta were instructed to use chemical substances again. Mr. Sellström therefore left Khan Al-Assal and moved to Ghouta. Council members should be aware that since March 2013, investigations into what happened in Khan Al-Assal have not taken place.Today, we directly accuse Washington, D.C., Paris, London, Riyadh, Doha and Ankara of providing Da'esh, Al-Nusra Front, Jaysh Al-Islam, Faylaq Al-Rahman and scores of other affiliated terrorist groups with toxic chemical substances to be used against Syrian civilians. We accuse them of inciting those massacres and of fabricating evidence to falsely blame the Syrian Government for the use of toxic chemical substances in order to prepare the ground for an aggression against my country, just as the United States and the United Kingdom did in Iraq in 2003.Yes, we say to the United States, the United Kingdom and France that, in Syria and Iraq, we eliminated the vast majority of Da'esh elements within three years — not within 30 years, as President Obama has said. Those States have plans to justify undermining the stability of the region. Yes, we say to Saudi Arabia today that we cut off its terrorist tentacles — the gangs of Jaysh Al-Islam — in eastern Ghouta. Yes, we say to Qatar and Turkey that we cut off their terrorist tentacles — the gangs of the Al-Nusra Front and Faylaq al-Rahman — in eastern Ghouta. I say to all those who sent moderate, armed, genetically modified opposition fighters to our land that we eliminated these toxic exports. We call on those exporters to bear the consequences of their actions, as some surviving elements will return to their original countries.The issue is very simple. Let me just say that on our borders with Turkey and in the separation zone in the Golan with Israel, there are tens of thousands of good, moderate terrorists with their light weapons, long beards, black banners and white helmets. Whoever wants to adopt them should submit an application to their operators. They are ready to go to Europe and the West as refugees.In conclusion, the Syrian Arab Republic stresses once again that it does not possess chemical weapons of any type, including chlorine. We condemn anew the use of chemical weapons at anytime, anywhere and in any circumstances. My country, Syria, reaffirms its readiness to cooperate fully with the OPCW in fulfilling its commitments under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.The Russian Centre for Reconciliation in Syria announced today that Russian military experts have carried out investigations in Douma and confirmed that they have found no sign of the use of chemical weapons there. While treating the sick in the hospitals of Douma, Russian doctors have proven that these patients have not been subjected to any chemical substance. What we were seeing there was nothing but Hollywood-style scenes.The President (spoke in Spanish): There are no more names inscribed on the list of speakers. I now invite Council members to informal consultations to continue our discussion on the subject.The meeting rose at 5.45 p.m.
Part five of an interview with Robert and Joanne Frigoletto. Topics include: His father's dental practice. How dentistry changed between Robert and his father's time. Dentistry and insurance. How Robert got into pediatric dentistry. What it means to Robert and Joanne to be Italian. What it was like when Robert and Joanne moved to Leominster, MA. Finding a church to join. Italian cooking. Discrimination and derogatory ethnic terms. ; 1 ROBERT: How is it different? I guess, I don't know. LINDA: Oh, I guess I'll just give a hint. I remember last time… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna -- not saying anything different. LINDA: I guess remember last time you had mentioned… ROBERT: Two generations? LINDA: Well, more, more that they established more of a relationship you had thought, your father and his, his customer. Or the patients or whatever. ROBERT: The patients, yeah. LINDA: And by the time you came along it was more a business relationship. SPEAKER 1: Yes, that's what I was gonna say. ROBERT: Yeah, I think the culture changed then, the insurance changed then. SPEAKER 1: Exactly. ROBERT: You know, they weren't paying the bill all the time anymore, I guess. But then I get… SPEAKER 1: It was on a professional level more than… ROBERT: Yeah, it was more of a professional level. LINDA: But can you give me some examples of your father… again, last time you had mentioned that some, some of these people just couldn't afford the bill. ROBERT: Sometimes they bring in the eggs and the, from the chickens, and they'll bring in the chickens. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: Then they couldn't bring in the eggs. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: Really, my life, we had eggs for the rest of our lives here, really. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: But right. My, my dad used to do a lot of work for these -- 50 cents and some dollars. And I remember coming from dental school in '63, when I got out, and I thought I had a hard time 2 learning the fees, they were the same as we were charging in the clinic in Chicago, and that was like three and four dollars a filling. My father had the same fees then. SPEAKER 1: He had clinic fees instead of Boston [buttons]. ROBERT: Instead of Boston places. Yeah, certainly now Boston places and places around here about the same. SPEAKER 1: They're the same because it's all covered by insurance. ROBERT: Yeah, well, different class. So I guess he had a lot of people who are paying him on time, and those people really appreciated the doctor and patient relationship. And a lot of them are friends, and my father used to use a lot of his patients to do work, and… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, I think that was more prevalent then… ROBERT: It was more prevalent in those days where people used to use… SPEAKER 1: And you kind of… ROBERT: … their own group back and forth. But my father used to say -- there's a great quote, "If you keep spending money in town it'll eventually get back to you." That was probably a good -- he always used to tell me that. Keep using the local people in town, and it'll eventually get back to you. LINDA: That sounds good. ROBERT: Yeah, I think that's -- that's a quote that's gonna make the CD. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] LINDA: Well, if you don't pay extra, I don't know. ROBERT: … out of all the quotes. LINDA: I don't even know about… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, right. We… LINDA: You know, we don't know. ROBERT: Right. We don't know what that means. LINDA: We don't know. ROBERT: Hidden information or whatever, that's the one or two phrase out of all of this.3 LINDA: Oh, but don't be discouraged because, again, I think… ROBERT: Oh, I'm not discouraged. LINDA: … there are more… ROBERT: I'm just talking about it, you know. SPEAKER 1: I think it's just wonderful that it's written down, and especially, and I think I mentioned this last time, in the book that we've done called City in the River, that was one of Fitchburg, the section on the Italian, the Italian section in the book, left out his father. They mentioned the other brothers, the other brother and sisters, but his father was left out. So it's nice that he's gonna be in some archives. ROBERT: I think that was a political… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, there was a … ROBERT: … it was -- for my father being involved in politics a little bit, there was some stuff. But what was… SPEAKER 1: But the Jewish section they mentioned him. There's two doctors… ROBERT: Well, that's because of my mother… SPEAKER 1: … that's Dr. Van and Dr. Phil, they mentioned Dr. Frigoletto in the Jewish part of the book. ROBERT: My mother was such a social being. SPEAKER 1: Well, they mentioned that, that's why she came here. Now… ROBERT: Everybody loved her. She was just huggy. SPEAKER 1: No, but they mentioned her because of your father's instrument on the incumbency, so it was mentioned in that part of the book. ROBERT: [Brilliant] thing. SPEAKER 1: But it's nice to have this in history. Like I say, who knows, great, great, great grandchildren, someday, may wanna find out. ROBERT: Yeah. LINDA: Oh, but it's not -- certainly that, but it's the people that wanna learn about, let's say, the history of Italians or the history of Leominster and Fitchburg. It's really for our reviewing.4 SPEAKER 1: Absolutely. And that's important, I mean, I think the more of us ought to be a little more connected with history somehow. This generation sometimes is not too interested; they're only interested in here and now. ROBERT: And the only -- the other thing that may be interesting was he had a brother and sister that came here from Grandpa, lived here for a while, Lee Marie. SPEAKER 1: Louise… Louise Frigoletto. Grandpa Frigoletto came here from Italy. ROBERT: Grandpa Frigoletto had a brother and sister from Italy who came to Fitchburg for a year or two. SPEAKER 1: A year. Didn't… ROBERT: … and that both of them ended up in California. The last time I was still there, we got to meet them about 15 years ago for the first time. They came out to my daughter's wedding, and we still talk and write letters, and [unintelligible - 00:05:11] see each other probably 'til we die. We found them too late. Wonderful Italian family. SPEAKER 1: Yes. They -- now, his parents have gone off to visit them. I never… ROBERT: The never talked much about it. I knew they went, but, you know, they came home with some pictures and by the end of the week that was it, and I never remember them calling or doing -- and yet we, you know, we went up there and struck up a nice relationship, and to this day we're constantly in touch. But somehow they didn't like they didn't like the area, and what's interestingly, culturally, I think, is that the brother, so I understand, didn't like it here and saw an ad in the Boston Paper from California saying come out and work in our produce farm, and if you spend a year with us and you work hard, we'll give you an acre of land. For five years or three years or some time, and that's what this brother 5 did, and kept getting acres of land, and now -- out in [Los Baños] you'd look like this, as far as you can see, hundreds of acres of produce that he produces… SPEAKER 1: Yeah. LINDA: Mm-hmm. SPEAKER 1: Well, now, do they have Frigoletto, or are they… ROBERT: No, they're Frigolettis… SPEAKER 1: They kept the old… ROBERT: They're the Frigolettis. SPEAKER 1: Frigoletti, right. ROBERT: Hmm. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. LINDA: Oh, yeah, but they would be, right…? SPEAKER 1: Right. LINDA: …. because… ROBERT: Because they left a year or two after Grandpa. My father might've been, you know, five years old or born recently or something like that when they left. And the… SPEAKER 1: But there's a family resemblance. LINDA: Is that…? ROBERT: Oh, I wish. I walked… SPEAKER 1: Watch. He walked like him. ROBERT: I walked into the room in California, and one of the daughters turned around and said, "You look just like Uncle…" SPEAKER 1: Tony. ROBERT: Uncle Tony, who used to be her -- Uncle Tony had died recently just before we got there, right? Showed me pictures of Tony… SPEAKER 1: They're your father's first cousin. ROBERT: My father's first cousin. I looked at the pictures and go, "Wow!" SPEAKER 1: Yeah.6 ROBERT: And I guess one of us, one of the daughters, one of the daughters' daughters who came to the wedding, yeah, and met me for the first time. This Tony used to send her money when she was going to college, was her favorite uncle, you know, always slipping the -- never met me. When she met me she took a breath because she thought Tony came back to her. And she told me that after, just for a second, because you turn around they introduced you, she says, "I took a deep breath because that was my favorite uncle. And he -- and for a second there he was again." So we knew we were the right relatives. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] LINDA: [Laughter] ROBERT: So that's -- I don't know if that's be of interest to anybody at all. But I think the produce going and being -- and now, doing very well. He says most of the lettuce you get back East comes from us. SPEAKER 1: They made… ROBERT: … big bucks. SPEAKER 1: Big money. LINDA: Wow. SPEAKER 1: They really value the land. ROBERT: Yeah, they'd really lorded it then. LINDA: So getting back to dentistry, how did insurance change the practice? ROBERT: He didn't have that 50 cents and a dollar a week, come and get in do free work as much because all of these poor—and there are poor people who are now on welfare, which is some kind of insurance, right? And insurance paid now some of the things that were deductibles and back pays, but it separated the trust factor, and now we weren't doing so many things for free or discounts or 15 kinds of people, because we don't have to, we would get it from the insurance. But you'd always get less with the insurance with 7 all these complaints about the things you would choose to do and put doubt in people's minds. So now the relationship with the doctor who could do no wrong, which sometimes I guess he did, and insurance company always looking for their stockholders, and they have different goals, so you've got -- poor consumer was in the middle, and the relationships are more business than personal, aren't they now? So that's what happened to medicine. When I heard that medicine sometimes -- a lot of times the insurance companies would figure out the price of an appendectomy, say, and they get this from the auto insurance business. I heard this, and I think it's true that most doctors can do an appendix in 33 minutes, and it'll cost the hospital X amount of dollars, and they figure it out. And that's what you do when you got a big car fix. They say it takes 34 minutes to do this and this is the price you get for it. It doesn't matter if it's complicated or not. Because a car is not a person and doesn't have the history of diabetes or cardiac or whatnot, you know, you replace a windshield in a car, it usually goes pretty much the same way every time, not true with people. So this insurance really got kind of crazy. Now they've come up -- well, this is not even cultural -- well, this is cultural. They've come up with a new thing now, evidence-based medicine that will be coming through -- it's starting to trickle in. If you don't perform, if you don't -- say you come to me with a certain disease, certain problem, and I don't solve it in one of the three or maybe one of the only ways that most people would solve that, the insurance won't pay for it because it's not evidence-based. It has to be proven that that particular way of solving the problem is the way that most people solve it. So that's gonna take all of the 8 entrepreneur out of this. And just what they've done with the drug companies, they stifle some of the research because the people, the drug companies can't get back their dollars. So all the medicines that didn't work out and all the lawsuits they got, so they'd stopped doing a lot of extra research and the progression, and the speed of new things coming out is slower. And the same thing is gonna happen in medicine, I would guess, with evidence-based medicine there's gonna be a stifling. On the other hand the protection of crazy medicine, so you get both sides, don't you? LINDA: You hear much of that…? ROBERT: You get a protection… LINDA: Crazy medicine? ROBERT: I don't know. LINDA: Let's keep it at dentistry. ROBERT: Yeah, at dentistry? Yeah, this is people of all levels, but less and less now. Most dentists are pretty proficient. Yeah, I think in my father's day there was some bad ones around, less skilled ones around. But I don't know of any now, everybody's pretty good. LINDA: So did your father determine procedures as much in the same way you did, or was it, was insurance even determining that for you? ROBERT: Ah, no. I would not let insurance determine that. I would tell the patient the best thing, give them their choices, tell them what the insurance would pay, and if they didn't pick the worst one I'd kinda go along and do it. If they picked the worst procedure I'd tell them go someplace else. I think in my father's day, my father would pick the procedure that he thought the person could afford. That's what you're looking for, remember we said that. LINDA: Mm-hmm. ROBERT: And then give them that procedure rather than letting the patient make up their mind, because I have found that some of the poor 9 people want the best medicine, and some of the richer people don't always want the best medicine. LINDA: How did the instruments change between your father's day…? ROBERT: Surprisingly a lot of the same stuff, but two things that changed the most were the high-speed drill. Let's see, just about in the early '60s when I was getting out of school, they had this air rotor, you know, air-driven turbine rather than the old mechanical thing you saw the string going around turning the pulley. Krrrr-krrrr. SPEAKER 1: Grinding away. [Laughter] ROBERT: Right, and now it's like painting, little brush. I mean, it's really air… air-quick-caning. As you can remember now, going to the dentist, you don't feel the pressure anymore. You just hear the sound. If you forget the sound that'll be all set. The other thing is the plastics, all of the adhesives and the kinds of plastics and fiberglass materials. That was always a boring subject, dental materials, is now the hot subject, because every six months they're improving all of these white fillings, so to speak, which they haven't got yet perfected but they're getting closer every year. LINDA: Oh, wow. SPEAKER 1: And the other thing besides the material, I mean, the procedures they do, the procedures that you do that your father didn't do with children? ROBERT: Ah, yeah, the specialties of -- but that's true in medicine in general, the specialties have become more important and accepted, except you can't get this under the specialist now if you're in an HMO. [Laughter] LINDA: True. True. ROBERT: You might be going back to the generalist because it's less costly. But now we -- my brother and I would say the same thing, we 10 would get referrals from general doctors for problem cases that, to us, were not really problems because we dealt with them every day. And he used to say the same thing, he used to get problem cases that were routine. But we had extra training, and that's what specialists are for. I mean some percentage sometime of his work. LINDA: Did your father deal mostly with problems or maintenance? ROBERT: Father dealt mostly with problems, because a lot of people would come only when they had a problem. Although he was -- he would deal with a lot of six-monthers that were on maintenance. SPEAKER 1: I think it was pretty evenly divided. ROBERT: Yeah. But certainly, for a time in my dental career, maintenance and prevention became really most of my practice. As a pediatric dentist that was -- prevention was really strong, stronger than most practices. And then, now the insurance companies are in now trying to dilute a lot of the preventive things that we're doing in medicine. And the -- what do you call it? SPEAKER 1: Pendulum. ROBERT: The pendulum will swung back because they're gonna get caught ten years down the line with more expensive diseases because they didn't wanna pay for the prevention. SPEAKER 1: I think there wasn't much education when your father was practicing, so people wouldn't… ROBERT: People -- yeah, less television, less news, less -- now you can't do anything because it's out in the news, they tell you every week something new. SPEAKER 1: So a lot of his patients were problems. ROBERT: Yeah, now the drug companies are advertising directly to the consumer. The hospitals are advertising directly to the consumer – never had that 25 years ago. Looked like the doctor make the choice, which hospital to go to, which medicine to use. Now, 11 people go into doctor and say, "I wanna go to hospital A, and I want you to use pill B." SPEAKER 1: I just thought of something that might be important. Your father, Scott, is the… first of all… ROBERT: The dental staff at the Burbank Hospital. SPEAKER 1: Burbank Hospital. That's what you… ROBERT: That's right, yeah. He and Dr. Beckman were… SPEAKER 1: There were no oral surgeon in town… ROBERT: Well, no. SPEAKER 1: … they used to do the oral surgery. ROBERT: My father was -- yeah. My father was [unintelligible - 00:18:01] surgery. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. I think in his other life he would come back as an… ROBERT: Back as an oral surgeon. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. ROBERT: Yeah, I learned a lot of oral surgery from my dad. SPEAKER 1: Uh-huh. ROBERT: And I think he learned by the gut of his -- how do you say that? SPEAKER 1: Pleat of his pants. ROBERT: Pleat of his pants. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. ROBERT: Right. You read about it and then you practice it, huh? LINDA: Then you can just… SPEAKER 1: Confident. ROBERT: Yeah, they were no -- oh, very good. Very good at tooth extractions, and a lot of people would come in. They didn't have root canals in those days, right, so you'd end up taking out the tooth. SPEAKER 1: He wasn't doing major facial surgery. We're talking of… ROBERT: No. Doing internal, oral… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, root canals…12 ROBERT: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: … extractions, yeah. LINDA: Well, I was going to ask you about pulling teeth. It seems as though people back then would just have their tooth pulled… ROBERT: Tooth pulled out and not saved, and nowadays, people are saving their teeth. Maybe years -- in his early practice, how that 70 percent of the people had full dentures, huh. Population maybe over 50 percent certainly… SPEAKER 1: Really? ROBERT: … had full dentures, and now it's down to like 25 percent. And I can remember teenagers coming into his practice when I was there the first few years and saying, "I want all my teeth out," 16, 17 years old, and my father would refuse to do it. And two months later he would tell me he would see them with dentures. LINDA: Now, why would they do that? ROBERT: Because they were here to have it made, they had money to fix them, and someone told them just get them all out of teeth and get dentures, and what a terrible thing. And my father wouldn't do it, and a number of people wouldn't do it, but I guess there were two or three dentists around who would do it. My father says he'd always see those people six months later with dentures. He used to kick them out, "Hang on to these." They'd come in and ask that [unintelligible - 00:19:51]. SPEAKER 1: Again, it's… ROBERT: But I know I used to see a lot of 16-year old kids taking out one tooth at a time, and 8 months later taking out the other one, and a year later another one would go. And I know a couple of people today that are running like that. [Laughter] LINDA: Right. SPEAKER 1: Well, as long as it's a couple that…13 ROBERT: Yeah. Well, see, I'm seeing it now in Florida when I volunteered at an indigent clinic, in Florida, during the winter. Seeing the same thing now with all of the immigrants that have come in over the past 10 years and the minorities. They're really back to the '50s dental education-wise, because these minorities they go and have a toothache and have it taken out, and I see the same thing happening as what's happening back in my early days. LINDA: Now, is that because they don't have the money or the education or both? ROBERT: Both. Both. They come from third world countries, and… you know, we had a couple of dentists in town, they go every year, over to -- where do they go, Bangladesh or something? SPEAKER 1: No, no, no. They go to El Salvador. ROBERT: El Salvador? SPEAKER 1: I think. ROBERT: And he'd see people standing in the line. They walk all night for six, eight hours to be at the clinic early in the morning at the tent to have teeth taken out because they had been suffering with toothaches for months. And there's -- every morning there's a line of people, he would say. SPEAKER 1: Or Colton tells a… ROBERT: He says over there that's all we can do. And I think I mentioned to you last time, you know, people in Colombia who said, "Let's get… let's pool some dollars and get some old equipment and get it over there to the clinic in Colombia, and the Colombian doctor who was working with us in Miami said, "Don't bother, they'll get stolen within 24 hours." LINDA: Hmm. I don't remember you mentioning that. ROBERT: Oh, didn't I? LINDA: I do remember you mentioning Florida. ROBERT: Oh. So you never know.14 LINDA: See? So it's coming back to you. ROBERT: Yeah. We're trying to get a grant passed now. I sent her the stuff, a lady has the clinic, and see if we can get Rotary and Kiwanis and all of those groups involved in helping out some of the poor people in Florida. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. No one wants to do it down there. LINDA: No one wants to… SPEAKER 1: The other day, the dentist don't want to… ROBERT: No, no difference in this, with the county. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. ROBERT: You know, the welfare system is so screwed up, and the fees are so low and the people don't show for appointments. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. ROBERT: And the only way you can do it is if you had a clinic. In fact, tomorrow night there's gonna be a meeting locally in town, and the local dentist society is gonna talk about that with some of the politicians. And I think the only answer is to develop a clinic every so often and have us guys in private practice go volunteer half a day, a week, and have some kind of tax incentive. LINDA: Trying to get people to volunteer is a problem. ROBERT: Well, you gotta give them -- you gotta give them a tax incentive… LINDA: Yeah. ROBERT: … a couple of hundred bucks of a day or something like that, you know. And then -- see, years ago, my father was -- and I just finished the rest of it, I'm doing it all, the school examiner… SPEAKER 1: He asked you. Yeah. You and your father both were school dentists. ROBERT: Right. Yeah. My father was the -- well, they didn't have school dentists anymore; he would just examine teeth. But the program started with a guy named [Bumgardner] who's a living legend. The patient that used to come into my office shaking like this 15 because they were afraid of the dentist. I used to go to Dr. Bumgardner. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] I actually hear some people say that to this day. ROBERT: To this day. "My parents used to go to Bumgardner." Oh, he must have been… SPEAKER 1: He must have been horrible. [Laughter] ROBERT: So he'd say -- he was the school dentist. He used to take out teeth without Novocainee and did things like that, you know, and just -- I mean, a kid could come in with a sore tooth and just yank it out. LINDA: I can remember you telling me -- I think you told me that you were known as to be more gentle than your father? SPEAKER 1: Yes. ROBERT: Oh, that story, too, yeah. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: He was pretty rough. [Laughter] But people loved him. SPEAKER 1: Well, he was quick. ROBERT: Yes. If you said ouch he'd say, "Oh, shut up." SPEAKER 1: Well, yeah. Your father worked on me once. And when I said ow, he said, "That doesn't hurt." LINDA: [Laughter] ROBERT: [Laughter] That doesn't hurt. LINDA: You [unintelligible - 00:24:04] went to him once? SPEAKER 1: Once? [Laughter] ROBERT: Well, I told you a story about the first toothache ago was the nearest from the hospital, I guess. SPEAKER 1: That was a story. ROBERT: That was a story, yeah. And I gave him a Novocainee and she said, "Ouch," and I said, "I'm sorry." She said, "Your father would've told me to shut up." I said, "Well, shut up." She says, "Good! I feel more at home now." [Laughter] 16 Then the other guy was Bill Botta, who used to be the head of United Fund here and played tennis with him. He says, "I never found out there was Novocaine until I left your father." Went to another dentist, he said, "Do you want Novocaine?" He says, "What's that?" [Laughter] He says, "Your father, decided -- " he was a big, overweight, burly guy, and I'm sure my dad decided he was strong enough not to take, that he could take the pain, why give him a Novocaine. [Laughter] He says he grew up without Novocaine, and he's well with that, you know. I don't know if it was terrible, but -- actually I don't take Novocaine now. I grew up the same way. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: And I don't understand that. I cannot imagine not having Novocaine. ROBERT: Well, I used to study how it felt. It would help me practice, really, because I kinda knew what happens. Dang it. SPEAKER 1: I just hope… [laughter] yeah, well, before the war. ROBERT: It wasn't part of my education, but it really is not bad. LINDA: [Laughter] So tell me about… ROBERT: All right. LINDA: Tell me more about your father's connection to Burbank Hospital. ROBERT: He and Dr. Beckman, this other dentist, had decided -- I guess because my father liked these surgeries so much. He's taken out a lot of teeth, people would demand that. Started the dental department, really, the dental staff at Burbank Hospital, and which became… SPEAKER 1: So they had… ROBERT: And to mingle with the medical staff eventually as we, dentists, became accepted as doctors as the years went on. SPEAKER 1: So then they had hospital privileges in the OR. ROBERT: And we had hospital privileges in the OR, right? And I remember when I first got out of school going up with him and he was so 17 good at taking out teeth and so fast. He used to just toss them, and the girls would be running around trying to catch them with a can. [Laughter] And he caught [unintelligible - 00:26:20] mouth extractions on elderly people and senior citizens and then put the dentures right in immediately, and they'd walk out with a full set of teeth. SPEAKER 1: There was a time when both father and son were on the staff together. ROBERT: Together. Right. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, well… ROBERT: We did cases together. And it was part of my training, really, going into pediatric dentistry because I ended up dealing with retarded adults. Probably one of the few pediatric dentists that had six years of general dentistry experience, and then took a lot of retarded people to the hospital, and did fillings and their special equipment to make sure you did rehab in the hospital, at least special, and some medically compromised people. SPEAKER 1: That's what you did. ROBERT: And some apprehensively compromised people, that were adults that we took into the -- or young kids under three or four. In fact, well they're starting to change, to pass the bill in town now, in the state, been at it for three years, I think they'll get it through this year, 23 States out of… SPEAKER 1: Fifty. ROBERT: The 50 that passed it to force the insurance companies to pay for hospital costs for serious dental problems for kids under five years old. LINDA: Oh, good. SPEAKER 1: About time. ROBERT: Which we used to have years ago, and in fact, that's one of the few things Medicaid still covers. But then the insurance companies 18 dropped it. As we hear they dropped circumcision, because that's not treating a disease but preventing. SPEAKER 1: Really. ROBERT: Pennsylvania they had started it and a few states picked it up. The insurance companies are so under the wire now they think of everything they can think of to not, not to pay. Because the dollars are so tight. SPEAKER 1: Don't get sick. Stay healthy. LINDA: [Unintelligible - 00:28:25]. ROBERT: Yeah. Well, they've… they've prepared, they're doing this evidence-based medicine, and some of the insurance companies now want to allow only one clean and fluoride a year for children instead of two, every six months. LINDA: And how long does it take them to make a change like that? Typically speaking. ROBERT: I don't know. I mean, when the change comes out and there's some noise about it, because when they come out with a change they won't pay for it. SPEAKER 1: No, but does it take years, months? ROBERT: I don't know. I started reading about it a year and a half ago, and I hear some insurance companies now are just trickling in. SPEAKER 1: So probably about a year… ROBERT: A couple of years. Yeah, a year or two. LINDA: So there's really no public discourse; it's just immediate, but it comes down… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, they just do it and tell you about it. ROBERT: The public comes when they get hurt later and they wanna make a noise about it. SPEAKER 1: When they found out they're not covered. ROBERT: Like what happened with the HMOs. Many years nothing happened until a few people died. Actually, a few senators' 19 daughters, kids got involved and said, "Dad, you know, this isn't government." Dad said, "Gee, my insurance is still okay, [laughter] I got the big stuff up here in Washington." You know, and then word started to trickle through, and then they started to get after the HMOs. And here's the big thing now about passing a law whether you could sue an HMO or not. What is negligence, what isn't? LINDA: What's going on with the doctors and all of those insurance changes? ROBERT: To clarify with the patient, the pros and cons of both sides and letting the patient know what they want to do, what's available for them and how much money they will get from it, pros and cons of each kind of treatment, what will happen if they don't get treated. And some people say, "Hey, I ain't got any money. Do the treatment that they will pay for, even if it's second class." And the doctor then has to decide -- and a lot of second class, second steps are okay, as long as it's average, good. You don't have to buy a Cadillac every day, right? You can buy a Ford, still get there, but you don't wanna buy last year's junk. LINDA: Well, what if, let's say, the Dentists Association or whatever you call the professional organization, what if they felt very strongly that children should have their teeth cleaned twice a year? And the insurance companies says… ROBERT: We're not strong enough. That would take a decade to change, and we'd need a lot of public support behind it. Unfortunately, the children don't vote, so that's not gonna happen. Now, if it has something to do with adults, like if they took away, maybe root canals, maybe the adults would get it done faster. But things to do with kids don't change too quickly. SPEAKER 1: Not just quick.20 ROBERT: It's the kids they're taking advantage of, what can I say? When you wanna get cheers, who gets -- used to be the kids and the senior citizens got it. Now, the senior citizens, there's so many of us that vote, we're now getting listened to. Especially now with the next group of baby boomers that come along. SPEAKER 1: Very vocal. ROBERT: Very vocal. Runs and goes, gonna vote… SPEAKER 1: My feeling is that somehow in this society we children like they're commodities, aren't people, they're just things, are just -- they have it real tough, children. ROBERT: Yeah, it's terrible. There's a story of a little girl I tried to tickle once, dirty clothes and dirty… and when Medicaid is out, "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" How many sisters or whatever I asked her, and her answer, in two words, told me, the answer was, "Too many." And I couldn't get her to laugh, tickling her, that's how -- she could've been four and a half years old, pretty face, you know, worn out clothes. You could see. And those kinds of kids you just wanna give them a hug and help them out as much as you can. Every week in our office we would, I would say, "We should do something for nothing and we should tell the girls," and it gets me to the end of the week. And we then find someone, you know, we wanna do something for and remind me, and so Fridays we can do it, because they would know a lot about the people sometimes more than I did, in busy days. SPEAKER 1: That sounds more. We just don't like the insurance company… ROBERT: We don't like someone telling me what we can do for nothing. That's one we choose ourselves. But that was always a good exercise. Or if we charge someone some money, they'd come back, they'd say, "Wait a minute," and they'd come back and say, "These people really can't afford it." That's okay. [Unintelligible - 00:33:14] work out something.21 LINDA: Mm-hmm. ROBERT: I always had that nice relationship with my best friend so that we could, so that we could really be helpful to people when we could, on those who needed it. And on the other side of the story where someone comes in, you know, a little kid who came with us with an interpreter, Spanish kid with a toothache, and I said, "How did she get on Medicaid so quickly? She's only been here two weeks, you tell me?" and the interpreter told me, "Oh, we got her on Medicaid before she even left Puerto Rico. She had a toothache in Puerto Rico. And we paid for the flight over." SPEAKER 1: That annoys me. And we don't… ROBERT: So there's, you know, there's two sides to every story. And being a doctor or politician or anybody, a judge, lawyer, boy, you're in the middle of some of this ethical stuff. It's tough to make a decision sometimes. Gotta go with your heart. And sometimes you get in trouble though, with your heart. So sometimes you just pull back and don't do anything; that's not good. SPEAKER 1: It's not good for people. ROBERT: Because what's happening to a lot of medicine now; they're pulling back and not doing it because they're afraid to make the right suggestion. They have a poor doctor in Boston with a basketball player, with Madge… SPEAKER 1: Dr. Madge. ROBERT: Dr. Madge, it's my cardiologist. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] LINDA: Wow. SPEAKER 1: So I said to him when I… ROBERT: I asked Dr. Madge, "If I had a little irregular heartbeat when I'm playing tennis, what should I do?" He said, "Just play through it." [Laughter] I said, "Thanks a lot, that's pretty…" SPEAKER 1: … before we asked her.22 ROBERT: No, even now. LINDA: Even now? ROBERT: Why are you telling me that? But I'm not sure. He said, "You have to make your decision." LINDA: Uh-huh. ROBERT: It's tough. SPEAKER 1: He lost that case to… ROBERT: No, no, he won it, but two years later. Two years of misery. LINDA: I thought that we're now… SPEAKER 1: … but they took him again. ROBERT: But it's civil. SPEAKER 1: Oh, civil. ROBERT: He still made it. He won the case. I don't know what happened with the civil case. SPEAKER 1: No, I don't know what happened. ROBERT: She wanted the big bucks. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. ROBERT: You know, he said, if she were alive now he would have earned four trillion dollars… LINDA: You know what, I think… ROBERT: … so I don't want part of that. Because you said that if he played basketball he wouldn't die. It's like bringing the [unintelligible - 00:35:40] in and saying if you could change the distributor the car will work. Probably. If you changed the guy's heart, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Look at the guy who just got in trouble and he had an artificial heart, and stroke, blood clots. SPEAKER 1: I printed that, Reggie Lewis, I think she was gonna start a third suit, but I haven't heard anything about that. ROBERT: Is that right? LINDA: Haven't heard anything.23 ROBERT: Well, her lawyer keeps going, going and going. He wants to get -- he probably started the case and said, "I won't take anything until we're winning." He's just gonna keep coming up with stuff until they win. LINDA: They had a big negative backlash last time, which I'm sure they weren't prepared for. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. LINDA: So I can imagine they'd keep going now. ROBERT: Me neither. I thought he was finally done. For 12 months he had at least -- remember the first year? He had to take off two months because he had plenty of phone calls from his family, and his life and everything from people, and he just left the city, upside down. SPEAKER 1: You know you can see… I mean, you can see people thinking, "Oh, it's his fault," because you don't get all the information on TV, so… ROBERT: No, you got just what the media wants you to get. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ROBERT: So we wonder how much of this stuff we're hearing about the war is true. We hear only about all our successes, we don't hear about the failures. LINDA: It seems that anytime we do hear about a failure, it's always a mechanical… ROBERT: Brought it down, mechanical, right. Oh yeah, they were there on a training mission. SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. ROBERT: Anyways. Boom. Well, here we are spending two hours again. We gotta… LINDA: I know, I'm sorry. ROBERT: This is terrible. SPEAKER 1: No. ROBERT: Look. What other questions you got?24 LINDA: Oh, I want just to cover with the information about your starting your practice, and I seem to remember that you went into the pediatrics floor in [unintelligible - 00:37:26]. SPEAKER 1: He practiced with his dad first. ROBERT: I practiced general dentistry with my dad for six years and found myself doing more and more of the younger population of the practice, and enjoying it, and being successful at it. Probably enjoying it is the main word. Oh, I just enjoy the kids. SPEAKER 1: IE, he is the kid here. ROBERT: IE, I am a kid still. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: Well, they are the next leaders of the world, and it feels [unintelligible - 00:37:58] time thinking about what they're thinking about, it keeps you young. The body doesn't like that, but the mind that's -- you know the story, "I just got my mind together and now my body is falling apart." And it took 60, 65 years to get to here. [Laughter] LINDA: [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: Anyway, that's when he… ROBERT: So all the parents used to say, you know, I guess -- well, last time the parents used to tell my father, "I don't want go over to your son. He just got out of dental school. But I don't mind if my kids go to your son." So I guess that's why I got the younger population and enjoyed it and did well with them. Because I have magic, it's a hobby, and sleight of hands, so I was always -- to this day, I think, would keep thimbles and cards next to my chair. LINDA: How did you learn that? ROBERT: This 91-year old Sylvia here that we're talking about started me in as a hobby as a kid, and puppets and all that stuff. I think I broke my leg at one point, and that's when I got introduced because I was in a cast for some weeks and nothing to do, and she brought the 25 stuff and happened to like it. But the… you know, one of the many stories of kids is the kid had been to three dentists and with a toothache, four-year old, and screaming and yelling at me and kicking, and me, the dentist, could handle him and finally made their way to pediatric dentist office, my office. And so I looked in the mouth as the kid was screaming and produced a red thimble from his mouth, and the kid stopped crying right away, put his hand to his head, scratched his head and said, "No wonder why that damn thing was hurting." [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: And I had him then, right? [Laughter] Yeah, I said, "Lemme look around some more. You got any more of those in there? Ah, over here," and goes, "Why not. Well, go get rid of that," you know. "I can do that magically, you know. Boom, I got that." [Laughter] LINDA: He's a cute… ROBERT: So probably he said, "No wonder why that damn thing was hurting." [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: They really do… ROBERT: Oh, I've got some great stories, yeah. [Laughter] And sometimes, also, when I used to lecture, I used to tell that story, and nobody would laugh. And I'd look and I'd say, "Come on, guys, wake up. Get a life. Do any of you have any kids, anybody, I mean, kids at all? That's a funny story." LINDA: Even if you don't have kids I think that was… SPEAKER 1: Right. ROBERT: That's a funny story. Because you guys are too serious. I used to tell adults that and get nothing out of it. I tell you, these guys are really too serious. It's like golfers rather than tennis players with dentists. We have a good time. In golf everybody's, "Don't make a sound. Be serious." And I'm throwing clubs around [unintelligible - 00:40:40] I can't understand.26 SPEAKER 1: He used to talk… ROBERT: I can't understand why they take this game so serious. LINDA: So can both of you talk a little bit about being Italian, what it means to you? ROBERT: Other than being proud I'm Italian -- I grew up not knowing there was much difference 'til recently. I got interested in the history of all of this, and yet I think my wife has a different story. SPEAKER 1: That's very recent to him. He just thought of himself as American [laughter] more recently, I think… ROBERT: Yeah, I mean I didn't know there was any difference to… many years SPEAKER 1: We were always -- our family was very into the history of being an Italian, very proud, you know, really proud of everything connected with being Italian, whether it was, you know, where you came from, or the country… ROBERT: Oh, yeah, I was smart enough to marry an Italian. LINDA: … the history. Thank you. The history, the architecture, I mean, we were all -- our family was always -- there were some parts of it. Some were more into the food, some were more into the history, but there was always, you know, you're an Italian American, you know, it's great to be an Italian. So it was just -- although, living where I lived, where we were, talk about a minority, we were really a minority. In the school I went to we were also a minority. And I do remember -- but just in that neighborhood, I don't remember while I was in anywhere else, but there were people who -- now, we were… ROBERT: Who thought you were second-class citizens, right? SPEAKER 1: … we were third generation, and we had some people who were first generation but spoke English thinking that we were second-class citizens because we had those funny-sounding names. ROBERT: First generation of another group, another ethnic group.27 SPEAKER 1: Yeah, of another -- yeah, they're not Italian. Right. And I thought, "Excuse me?" you know, I was born here, my parents were born here… ROBERT: So she experienced some prejudices that I don't remember. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, and in school, too. LINDA: Now, where was this? SPEAKER 1: Boston. The suburb of Boston but it was a very, very predominant Irish, Catholic neighborhood. I went to an Irish Catholic school, so while the nuns were Irish… ROBERT: Irish Catholics… SPEAKER 1: … so the nuns couldn't quite… ROBERT: Well they were Catholics, that's the… SPEAKER 1: You know, they couldn't quite understand, you know, anything. And then we had, maybe, like, two Polish kids, maybe three Italian kids. So we did feel different, but only in that, you know, instance then we were in the rest of the, you know, with my relatives who lived in all over suburban Boston, [unintelligible - 00:43:23], whatever, you know, lived with the -- it wasn't a problem… ROBERT: Which brings up my story, which you're probably waiting for, again, because I must've… SPEAKER 1: That was when I was -- then we moved to another neighborhood in Newton, I don't live there now. ROBERT: When I was in this progressive school and my parents were -- we were family members of a local country club that was limited in the acceptance of people, of members, and I took home a black friend of mine from school for the weekend, grabbed my neighbor, who was Jewish and took him up to play golf and get kicked off of golf course with a black and a Jewish guy. That was in the early '50s. LINDA: And where was this? SPEAKER 1: At the local…28 ROBERT: At a local country club. SPEAKER 1: He was too dumb to even know… ROBERT: I was too dumb to even know that they had restrictions. Right. SPEAKER 1: Sorry, I didn't mean dumb. LINDA: What kind of -- what did they tell you? Was this before you got on the course, or did somebody…? ROBERT: No, no, we were right just -- took him out on the course. Apparently we were coming back close to the clubhouse again on the third hole… SPEAKER 1: Someone saw him. ROBERT: … and the manager came out and told me I had to get off the course. LINDA: Did you ask why? SPEAKER 1: He didn't tell you? ROBERT: I don't remember. Yeah, we left… LINDA: And then? ROBERT: He was the boss, he said, "Get off," I got off. LINDA: But was it clear that he was doing because it was…? ROBERT: Yeah, I guess I knew that -- I figured it out once I was in the car and got home, I guess. I didn't figure it out right on the spot, but I think once I got in the car I figured it out. I didn't even think of checking on it when it went up, because I did the same thing recently, I took a lady on men's day who had Levi's, and you never have to have Levi's up there, same club. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: Well, they were happy [laughter]. If you knew who was Wednesday… ROBERT: [Laughter] I forgot. I thought Wednesday morning was men's day and then Wednesday afternoon was okay. SPEAKER 1: They don't want pants with Levi's anywhere. LINDA: So it was key to double win.29 ROBERT: There was a double, so-- I got permission… I did get permission to go out on men's day in the afternoon. They said, "If nobody complains, just go out." When I get back in, head of the pro comes up to me and says, "And I heard you want Levi's, too." SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] ROBERT: I said, "I didn't even think to look at that so much." [Laughter] LINDA: All right. What's our next question? How did you feel coming here? I know we talked a lot more about this last time, but how did you feel coming to Leominster after living in -- was it Newton? SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I thought this was the end of the earth, [laughter] I thought this was… ROBERT: She said this was the on the other side of orange. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: No. I thought it was real country. ROBERT: Out there an echo. SPEAKER 1: And I thought when I first came here, well it was late fall, so it was winter by the time we moved in our house and no one welcomed us, and I thought what an unfriendly place. And the ward of the dentist who welcomed us, the one nearest our age was 15 years older than we were, so I thought, "Oh, Lord, there was no one my age." I don't even know if there are any neighbors here. I never saw a face, and it didn't dawn on me that, well number one, it was winter, so people were kind of [unintelligible - 00:47:09] down. Number two was this is a real family community, generations are born and married and stayed here, so they have all extended families living right here. It's not that you're all spread out though… ROBERT: But the lights kept going on in the houses around us. You didn't see any people, but the lights kept going on at night. SPEAKER 1: And there was -- not Leominster, and I told him I thought the city had these houses wired up and they just flipped the switch at night [laughter].30 ROBERT: And the lights used to go because there were no people around us. SPEAKER 1: I thought there were no people. LINDA: And what year was this? SPEAKER 1: I thought it was '63. And then I realized after that, well, number one, it was winter and people weren't so ready, you know, to welcome you. Number two, his name was known in town, so they assumed, I guess that he had tons of friends and family, whereas, he really didn't because he was all the way to school, and his family -- well, because his parents were in Florida, so we had the one aunt and uncle who lived here in town. So I think people just assumed, "Well, we have our huge extended family. They must have theirs," so it was mainly lonely and I thought unfriendly. So it took -- it took a while, then when the thaw came, the neighbors… ROBERT: Spring came and we started raking leaves and we see people around. SPEAKER 1: … come. And then I found out it was a nice neighborhood, and the neighbors were nice, because the snow melted and out they came. But it took a while. I was really thinking, "Oh, boy. What a -- this is awful." ROBERT: There was like about -- we moved up here, right? We were like -- there were three houses up here in this hill, three of four houses, right here the top of the hill, and these people built houses and moved in, I always bring a bottle of wine and welcome them, maybe from the experience that we had. And it was all fine, that's great, whatnot, and then we decided after -- well, never, never heard from them after that. SPEAKER 1: Hmmm. No. People aren't as friendly as they are in the Midwest. Well, I worked… ROBERT: Then we finally said -- oh, great people, Midwest. SPEAKER 1: … people are different.31 ROBERT: Different. Then we decided we're gonna throw a street party. So we opened up our house and we sent a letter out to everybody with the old farm road address, 95 percent of the people showed, right? SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. ROBERT: Never heard from them since. That was 15 years ago. Other than the, other than the people who are touching us [unintelligible - 00:49:31] land here. LINDA: Mm-hmm. SPEAKER 1: Well, people are busy. It is different. People -- it's not like when we were kids. I think people are just so busy. ROBERT: When I grew up in the street where we had everybody, had each other's keys and everything when I was in grammar school, high school and whatnot. That street was close. SPEAKER 1: Well, those were your high school, what, home high school friends. ROBERT: Those were my home high school friends, right. But I mean, geez, you know. SPEAKER 1: But I have… ROBERT: We were in each other's houses all the time. Streets were… SPEAKER 1: I don't think… I learned to like the area, but it took a while. It really did. Took quite a while. Probably it was better when my children learns… ROBERT: When we saw the kids enjoying it, then we got to like it better. SPEAKER 1: … yeah, I probably -- great place for children because there was so much available that was close by, where on the city you really had to travel, you know. Here they could do everything within the, you know… ROBERT: Yeah, five-minute ride. Then it wasn't -- it was easy to go to wherever you want to go. Now, if you ever decide to go from Leominster to Fitchburg or across our city. LINDA: I just did.32 ROBERT: 3:30 to 5:30, it'd take you an hour and a half to get from one city to the other. If you're going north, then the south isn't too bad. But we come off the highway, we – every… well Route 13, Route 12, every one of those going north is loaded. SPEAKER 1: Well, I laughed. He told me 30 years ago, "Oh, you just wait," because I complain, I still miss the city. I didn't miss living there, but I wanna be a little bit closer so that I could just run in and take advantage of everything, I missed that. And he kept saying to me thirty years ago, "Oh, just wait. This Leominster is just gonna be a bedroom community to Boston," and I would just laugh hysterically and said, "Oh, my God, no one is coming past Concorde." And… ROBERT: And here we are. SPEAKER 1: Here we are. Yeah. ROBERT: Build the highway and they will come. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. LINDA: So which church did you join? SPEAKER 1: Ah, that's something… ROBERT: She remember one of the… SPEAKER 1: I wasn't used to that. We were in North Leominster and there was a knock at door, and there was this priest standing there and I went, "Well, I've never seen this in my life." No one -- no priest ever knocked on my door before. And it was the pastor from the Italian church in Fitchburg trying to convince me to join his church. My [unintelligible - 00:51:54], "Oh, that's fine, that's…" ROBERT: And we were living in… SPEAKER 1: North Leominster. ROBERT: Leominster. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, and, of course, I came from Boston where you went to church, and whatever neighborhood you lived there and whatever, 33 you know. He wasn't surprised when he came home. He said, "Oh, yeah," you know, but I didn't join that church… ROBERT: No, I said, "But you don't have to feel you have to join." SPEAKER 1: The one that was dear in my life, Lady of the Lake, we lived in North Leominster, that was there, so that was the church I joined. But then when we moved here, my daughter was in public school in first grade, we just moved, and I thought, "Well, yeah, I have to sign her up to CCD classes." So this house had been St. Leo's Parish, which was the Irish church. Well, I thought, well, that's obviously where I have to send her to… ROBERT: Closest church. SPEAKER 1: Well, again, didn't dawn on me that's where, you know, but if I had known, I mean, Saint Ana's was just hop, skip and a jump down the road, I could've signed her up there. But it -- still, it was the '70s now, and I still wasn't thinking, "Oh, well, this is different." And I called the secretary of the church who answered it and asked who it was, and she signed up my daughter, and I thought, "Well, don't you want -- aren't you gonna ask me my name? I haven't been -- don't you want us to join the church?" I never heard of a church that would take a child to CCD if the parents didn't belong to it. And she said, "Well…" in her accent, "… um, well, I thought you might… you might wanna join Saint Ana's church." ROBERT: -Which is the Italian church down the road. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: I didn't know, this is 1970 whatever, and I said… ROBERT: "What?" SPEAKER 1: Yeah. I said, "What?" ROBERT: Why? SPEAKER 1: I was so befuddled. And I said to him, "I wish I had thought fast enough," I probably would've said, "Well, I'm Protestant anyway, so I don't wanna join any church." [Laughter] My sister was so 34 overwhelmed by that. So I thought, well change comes very slowly out here. [Laughter] ROBERT: Did you know we have the largest Finnish population in the world. LINDA: In the world? SPEAKER 1: No, no. In the United States. ROBERT: In the United States that's -- yeah, that's a Finnish group and we have a sister city in Finland. LINDA: Hmm. I didn't know that there were so many Finns around here. ROBERT: A lot of Finns. They're great people. LINDA: Just like my grandfather is Finnish. ROBERT: Is that right? SPEAKER 1: Oh, really? ROBERT: Oh, I remember in my dad's practice, and then I was… SPEAKER 1: Well, still. ROBERT: Great Finnish people. Wonderful people. SPEAKER 1: They have this pact, signed a pact in Fitchburg, and they still have big gatherings, Finnish gatherings and so forth. Yeah. LINDA: So would you like to speak about anything else? ROBERT: No, I need to have lunch. LINDA: Lunch? SPEAKER 1: Oh, poor dear. LINDA: It's dinner. I don't know… ROBERT: Put something in my tummy before I go play tennis at dinnertime. SPEAKER 1: Every Friday he has to play tennis. Yeah, still have fun. ROBERT: Fun time. SPEAKER 1: What else? What else? I guess just my Italian experiences are a little bit different from his. I think… ROBERT: Yeah, well you grew up in a different place. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Well, and our family might have been different. We had more traditional meals and we did the traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We did the traditional…35 ROBERT: This reminds me, my mother made homemade raviolis every Thanksgiving and Christmas. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. That wasn't Christmas Eve in an Italian household; you have all fish Christmas Eve… ROBERT: Yeah, if you're like -- there aren't any fish out here. SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] No, that's true. ROBERT: Years ago, but I said the fish was four days old… SPEAKER 1: … when I found that out… found that out… ROBERT: … by the time it swam up the national river. ROBERT: That was true. The first time I bought a fish here I threw it out. I couldn't even eat it. I thought, no wonder he doesn't likes fish. ROBERT: It was after the… SPEAKER 1: He was used to getting it live from the… ROBERT: Oh, that's when I got the live fishes, this meeting with her relatives. They had fresh fish and wow, what a difference. SPEAKER 1: We did have… ROBERT: But we didn't have fish houses around here until, maybe, like three, four or five years after we're married. It moved… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, at least. Yeah. ROBERT: It took the… late '60s. SPEAKER 1: I know your mother. I don't remember your mother ever doing -- she did -- I mean, she baked great pies but never did Italian cookies, Italian version. We did all that Italian stuff at the holidays so we were more… ROBERT: The lady next door did, Vermonti. SPEAKER 1: Oh, wow. You were lucky. ROBERT: She used to bring them over. SPEAKER 1: Oh, wow. The stuff you do with this… ROBERT: With all the onion on them and stuff like that, there were ribbon things? Yeah. Yeah?36 SPEAKER 1: I think they have someone I'm looking for a recipe for that because only our -- a distant relative on the other side made those, and we only had it when we went to her house, not… LINDA: Often you don't… SPEAKER 1: Oh, I would love that. That's the one I'm trying to… ROBERT: Yeah, you've been looking for fill-ins. SPEAKER 1: My children are so into this. ROBERT: We make [unintelligible - 00:56:38], we're the intersect. We have her grandmother's, her mother's… SPEAKER 1: [Unintelligible - 00:56:45]. Yeah. ROBERT: [Unintelligible - 00:56:45]. And we get her up all nights and mix us the stuff and… SPEAKER 1: My father's family were great cooks, and my mother actually cooked like my father's side of the family. There were two different sides, and you could tell the difference. My mother's side cooked one way and my father's side cooked the other way… LINDA: Why? They're from different regions? SPEAKER 1: No. ROBERT: No? SPEAKER 1: From the exact same place, but it seems like the Fridocelli cooked with a little bit more… LINDA: Cooked cuisine. SPEAKER 1: You know, a little more fancy. And then my mother's side, they were a little more peasant, plain… ROBERT: You mean there was merit having both grandma and grandpa from the same city. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: Well, my four grandparents came from the same… ROBERT: Oh, is that right? SPEAKER 1: Same province. ROBERT: Same province. Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. But still the cooking was a little different.37 LINDA: Wow. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. And that was it. It was important, and I'm glad my kids still think it's important. It's very important for them to -- and often the Italian are important to them. Even though… LINDA: Now, they didn't marry Italians? SPEAKER 1: My daughter married someone who's half Italian. LINDA: What is her last name? SPEAKER 1: Well, she goes by Frigoletto. Yeah, she kept her name. LINDA: But who did she marry? SPEAKER 1: Peter De Feo. D-E capital F-E-O. And then my son, really, broke with tradition. He married Tamara Taylor. [Laughter] ROBERT: Oh, yeah, but he was going with an Italian. SPEAKER 1: He was going with an Italian… ROBERT: Italian, but she turned out to be too strong for us… SPEAKER 1: [Laughter] LINDA: Oh. SPEAKER 1: So Tamara Taylor… ROBERT: Direct battleship. SPEAKER 1: Actually now… she's a redhead, but delightful. She's Norwegian and Scottish. I thought Taylor was English, but she said Scottish was her blood. And her family, they have traced her family back to the first two boats that came over the Mayflower and the next one. What was the other one? Two names, I forget what it is. ROBERT: I don't know. SPEAKER 1: So they're into the history, too. So now the two of them… ROBERT: Has it anything to do with the Minnon, the Tintin, the Sta. Maria? [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: No. But she's had -- but she's very much into Italian… ROBERT: Wrong group, right? SPEAKER 1: … go back. She was trying to learn the language. LINDA: Mm-hmm.38 SPEAKER 1: She was trying to learn to speak it. LINDA: Oh. ROBERT: She's in [unintelligible - 00:58:57]? That daughter-in law? SPEAKER 1: Boy, no. I forget. Yeah, we were trying to learn all this… ROBERT: New Ireland, I think… I forget. No memory anymore. Kinda learn all these Italian words… SPEAKER 1: The word for parent is genatori. ROBERT: Genatori which is… should be -- parenti's relatives. SPEAKER 1: Right. Yeah, that's… ROBERT: Parents genatoris. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, I can't figure that one out. Right. ROBERT: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Now you are part Italian? LINDA: My grandmother was Italian, my maternal grandmother. Then she married a Finn. SPEAKER 1: Oh. LINDA: And then my mother married a Yankee, then I married a Swede. SPEAKER 1: So you're all that? ROBERT: Did you watch the Hall of Fame last night? LINDA: No. SPEAKER 1: Oh. ROBERT: There was a cute love story in the war, early '40s… SPEAKER 1: Based on a true story. LINDA: Oh, my goodness… ROBERT: In Italy. LINDA: … need to tell me but… ROBERT: Yeah. And a lot of Italians. They spoke too fast, though. SPEAKER 1: You know, I'm not -- and that was the first time I said that's… ROBERT: But a lot of sceneries were filmed entirely in Italy, and it was about this guy that… SPEAKER 1: But you can buy the tape. It's a Hallmark story, though.39 ROBERT: Yeah. LINDA: It was Love and War. Thank you. SPEAKER 1: Love and War, yeah. ROBERT: Love and War But it was an interest of -- the thing I thought was cute, that I hadn't learn or forgotten, I guess, is that a British soldier, it might be British saying, when he falls in love with this Italian girl that they took him in and saved his life, he says, "We, growing up, we used to call you macaroni heads," from British, from the -- derogatory thing, you know, those Italians, they're macaroni head. He says, "Now I found out how wonderful you people are." [Laughter] He says, "I feel guilty." That was kind of a cute part of the story. LINDA: I think that's sort of true. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. LINDA: In any culture, if you just open yourself up and… ROBERT: Sure. SPEAKER 1: But I -- actually, you must've -- I can remember, in Boston… ROBERT: I don't remember. SPEAKER 1: … he had a lot of this derogatory terms. ROBERT: Well, dego, I remember but I didn't hear -- macaroni I thought was just English, that was an English that was the… SPEAKER 1: Yeah, that was it. What I'm saying is that you did hear -- but then, again, you would hear it for the Irish, you would hear it for the Jewish, you always would hear about derogatory terms for -- at least in the city we get through all the ethnic… LINDA: So tell me what some of them are, you know, what's so politically correct now that you don't really…? At least my children don't know any of the… SPEAKER 1: You know, I don't really… LINDA: … Italian being derogatory… SPEAKER 1: No. Dego, wop…40 ROBERT: Dego, wop. And when in Chicago we used to -- we used to walk back East to look at the watch and, "Watch the dego by," [laughter] and used the word "dego." LINDA: Oh, dego. Where did that come from? SPEAKER 1: I don't know either. ROBERT: I don't know. SPEAKER 1: I don't know either. LINDA: I've never heard dego. SPEAKER 1: I don't either. ROBERT: Like, what? Pollack is Polish? SPEAKER 1: Pollack would be for… ROBERT: Be Polish and… SPEAKER 1: Mic are half… ROBERT: Mic were half for Irish. Right. And we were dego and the wops. So I would be French… SPEAKER 1: No. I don't know where they… ROBERT: Don't know the origins of all of those things… be interesting, which my uncle would've mind. He was such a [unintelligible - 01:01:51]. He was doing the history of words. SPEAKER 1: He was so… ROBERT: After he retired that was his… LINDA: Did he keep his information? ROBERT: Yeah, he's kept it going, and when he died I tried to get it from my aunt. SPEAKER 1: And when he couldn't… ROBERT: I guess she gave it to one his younger teachers. I don't know where it is now. SPEAKER 1: He gave it to another elderly person… ROBERT: Another elderly person and got lost or something. SPEAKER 1: Right, it's gotta be… ROBERT: We even offered to pay her for it.41 SPEAKER 1: Yeah. ROBERT: It was -- yeah, it was just so interesting. SPEAKER 1: He was the professor of Roman languages, so he's doing the… ROBERT: He knew the different languages. SPEAKER 1: … words, whether it came from France… ROBERT: France or Italian or whatnot. SPEAKER 1: We desperately want… ROBERT: I wanted to get a hold of that. SPEAKER 1: We couldn't, we tried. ROBERT: Every time we'd see him, which is like twice a year, that it's, "Oh, I got, you know, twenty… twenty more words…" LINDA: What's his name? ROBERT: Merlino. My mother's name, Merlino. SPEAKER 1: Camillo Merlino. ROBERT: Camillo Merlino. How's that? SPEAKER 1: Yeah. He was the… ROBERT: Protestant Italian. SPEAKER 1: … head of the department at BU… ROBERT: Head of the Roman's languages at BU. And still I didn't get the language. SPEAKER 1: No, he did not inherit that. No, my kids took after my part of the family. We have an air for languages, he struggles so with it. Doing better than I ever… ROBERT: I got so frustrated last night watching that… SPEAKER 1: That was tough, I had… ROBERT: But you said you had a tough time, too. Two years trying to learn words, just to recognize [unintelligible - 01:03:12]. SPEAKER 1: I mean, I think you're doing well… ROBERT: It's got nothing. SPEAKER 1: … trying for all these years. LINDA: I think you have to be immersed in it.42 SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. That's true. ROBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good idea, let's go. [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: That's my mother. ROBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for a month, that's her way of saying we gotta go. SPEAKER 1: But that is no close. ROBERT: [Laughter] SPEAKER 1: Well, before we let you on, could you take another picture of us? LINDA: Oh, yes. I have central… SPEAKER 1: I'd love that. LINDA: … because I almost forgot the camera, too. SPEAKER 1: Oh. LINDA: This was supposed to go over real low. SPEAKER 1: No, we wouldn't hold you to it. I just thought -- I didn't like my plaid shirt, I looked like the… the fire hand. LINDA: He said you'd say amazing things. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Well, I may -- well, I was that day. Well, I was today, too, but… ROBERT: Guess what? It's four o'clock. SPEAKER 1: It's now four o'clock in the middle of a family interview./AT/jf/jc/es
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You will find a full line of Pure Drugs and Fine Stationery at the People's Drug Stoie Prescriptions a specialty. * f THE GETTYSBURG JIERGDRY The Literary Journal of Gettysburg College Vol. XII. GETTYSBURG, PA., FEBRUARY, 1904 No. 8 CONTENTS THE BEACON, 232 CHAS. W. WEISER, '01. THE PRESENT MOVEMENT TOWARD PROTECTION IN ENGLAND, 233 FRANK LAYMAN, '04 TALES OF A BACHELORS' CLUB—NO. 1, 238 JAMES GARFIELD DILLER, '04. THE NEED OF RENEWED INTEREST IN THELITER-ARY SOCIETIES OF OUR COLLEGE^ . . . 249 CONVERSATION AS AN ART 254 HARRIET A. MCGILL, '06. EDITORIALS, 256 EXCHANGES, ' . . 260 232 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY THE BEACON. CHARI,ES \V. WEISER, 'OI. *AR across trie wooded valley, Miles and miles across the plain, On a distant hill top gleaming Thro' the mist and drizzling rain, A beacon light is glaring, Dancing, leaping, spluttering, flaring As it catches at new fagots, Licks and laps the heap of pine Built far out upon the coast line, Where the land meets foamy brine, Warning signal to the vessels, Rocked upon the stormy sea, Of the rocks and shoals that threaten As they're drifting to'_the lea. And the night comes down upon it, Folding close her sable wings ; Darkness reigns, save for the flaring Of the beacon as it flings Its ruddy light in warning Thro' the stormy night till morning. Heaped up by silent figures Silhouetted on the flame, As they wander round the beacon Heaping up the burning flame. And the night rolls on terrific, Loudly still the tempests roar, Wierd and mystic sounds and sights Flit along the storm-beat shore. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 233 THE PRESENT MOVEMENT TOWARD PROTEC-TION IN ENGLAND. FRANK LAYMAN, '04. THE one live question in English politics today is that of tariff. For many years, while the United States and the nations of continental Europe have been hedging them-selves about with high protective tariffs, free trade has been the guiding principle in England's tariff legislation. This unique position of England is easily explained. For some reasons, and among them her great natural advantages in the immense deposits of coal and iron, England has become a great manu-facturing nation, and so it has been to her advantage* to get foodstuffs and raw materials free of duty, while no prohibitory tariff was needed on articles which she herself manufactures be-cause of her own advantages in their manufacture. In the world's division of labor, manufacturing has become her work and she has thought it unwise to increase, by import duties, the price of the food required while doing that work. There have not been lacking, however, efforts to establish a protective tariff, especially on grain. Of this nature were the so-called Corn Laws, passed in 1815 and repealed after long and bitter discussion in 1846. Then free trade held the field with-out interruption until the time of the Registration Act, passed in 1902 and repealed in 1903. The present movement for pro-tection, started by Mr. Chamberlain, is like the others in that a tax on grain is proposed, but it differs from them very ma-terially in the means proposed and the ends aimed at. What is Mr. Chamberlain's plan ? For the most part he has discussed it in rather vague and general terms, but on one oc-casion at least, speaking more specifically, he said that he does not advocate a tax on raw materials such as wool and cotton, but that his scheme included a tax of six cents a bushel on wheat and a five per cent duty on meat coming from the United States and other foreign countries, while the same arti-cles from the British colonies would be admitted free; also a 234 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. tax of ten per cent on manufactured articles and a reduction of the present duty on tea, coffee, sugar and cocoa. For this favored treatment of colonial goods a similar differential for the products of the English factories is expected in the colonial markets. According to Mr. Chamberlain, three good results will follow the adoption of this scheme. They are: (i) the encourage-ment of the agricultural and meat-producing industries of the colonies ; (2) the advancement of the manufacturing interests of England due particularly to favorable markets in the colon-ies; (3) the consolidation of the Empire by binding the colon-ies to the mother country by ties of self-interest. Let us ex-amine each of these separately and try to determine whether these results may reasonably be expected. The agricultural and meat-producing interests of the colonies will be encouraged without a doubt. The case of American and Canadian wheat will illustrate. The English people will pay just the same for their bread, whether it is made of wheat coming from the United States or from Canada, but the importer of wheat can and will offer just six cents more for Canadian than American wheat because of the six-cent tax that he must pay on the latter. This difference in price will encourage Ca-nadian farmers to the same extent to which it will discourage American farmers, and, as ordinarily happens in such cases, the higher price will greatly stimulate the production of Canadian wheat. The cost of transportation from the two countries is about equal, but the result will be the same wherever the cost of transportation from a colony does not exceed that of trans-portation from the United States or from other foreign countries by as much as six cents. This would include all or nearly all the colonies. On the second point, the advancement of England's manu-facturing interests, the scheme will fail for several reasons. In the first place, the cost of food for the English laborer will be increased almost in the same proportion in which colonial agri-culture is benefited. If,- as seems likely, the importer of wheat will offer six cents less for wheat from the United States and THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 335 other foreign countries, then, until agriculture in the colonies is further developed, the supply of wheat in the English market will be considerably reduced. The supply being lower, the price will necessarily be higher. It may be argued, however, that within a few years the stimulated production of the colonies will fur-nish such a supply that the price will be greatly lowered. This seems plausible upon the face of it, but certainly it is not reason-able to suppose that the price will thus become as low as it would if this colonial wheat had to compete in a free market with the wheat of the rest of the world. The same will be true of other food products affected by the tariff. That the price of bread and meat would thus be raised by the tariff is one of the disputed points in the debate now going on in England, but it was virtually admitted by Mr. Chamberlain himself, when, in answer to the cry that he would raise the cost of food for the people, he proposed a reduction of the duties on tea, coffee, sugar and cocoa as a compromise measure. It is hard to see, however, how a reduction of duties on these few luxuries can lower the total cost of living as much as a high tariffon the chief necessaries of life would tend to raise it. If the cost of food for the English laborer is thus increased, then, as Prof. Maxey, of the University of W. Va., points out, one of two results will follow—an increase of wages or a lower standard of living. As wages are determined by the demand for labor/and as no greater demand would necessarily be created, there is no reason to suppose that wages would be raised. A lower standard of living would injure the manufacturer in two ways— it would decrease the efficiency of his workmen and lessen the demand for manufactured goods. Now, the English manufac-turer is not prepared to sustain either of these injuries, especi-ally not the first. An impairment of the efficiency of the laborer would mean increased cost of production, and England is already meeting with such keen competition that this might suffice to shut her out of the market altogether. But further than this, the colonial markets would not offer the advantages to English goods that are hoped for. The pro-tectionist sentiment is growing in the great colonies, like Can- 236 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. ada and Australia. They are anxious for the" development of their agricultural interests, but they are not willing to have their manufactures ruined. They would be perfectly willing to-grant a differential in favor of England provided that the mini-mum tariff still be high enough to protect their own industries. But of what advantage would such a differential tariff be to England ? How would it benefit her, if, while the products of other countries are shut out of the colonial market, her own are shut out, though by a somewhat lower tariff? That this would be the case has already been proven by the working of a differ-ential in Canada for a number of years. This gave an advan-tage of thirty-three and one-third per cent to English products,, and yet during the time it was in operation, British exports, be-ing mostly manufactured articles, increased less than thirty per cent, while American and French exports in the same markets increased one hundred per cent. It must be granted, however, that if the smaller colonies,, which now have free trade, would change their policy and tax all imports except those coming from England, and if the smaller protectionist colonies would allow the articles now on the free list to come in free only when coming from England, English goods would acquire considerable advantages in these markets. But these are rather unimportant when compared with the great markets where no advantages would be gained. This slight advantage, however, would be more than off-set by a loss in another direction. Only a small fraction of England's exports now go, and for many years will go, to the colonies. The great bulk goes to foreign countries, where, as a free trade nation, she enjoys minimum tariff rates. When once she adopts a protective tariff this favored treatment can no longer be given her and a large part of her manufactures will be threatened with ruin. All in all, then, this tariff scheme would not only not benefit, but more likely would greatly injure, English manufactures. As to the third result aimed at, the consolidation of the Em-pire, many think that the scheme would work the contrary effect. To carry it out would be a tremendous problem. To THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 237 arrange a system of tariff duties that would be satisfactory to the United Kingdom and all the colonies would be too much for the intellect of any statesman of this generation. Exports to the various colonies differ both in quantity and kind; like-wise the imports from the colonies. Then, too, both imports and exports vary in these respects from year to year. For these reasons it would be impossible to hit upon a scheme satisfactory to all. There would be a constant fear and distrust lest one colony should be accorded more favorable treatment than another. Instead of harmony, discord would result; instead of consolidation, a tendency to disintegration. THE PI.AN OF SALVATION. O how unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's eazy, artless, unencumbered plan ! No meretricious graces to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile ; From ostentation, as from weakness, free, It stands like the cerulean arch we see, Majestic in its own simplicity. Inscribed above the portal, from afar Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give Stand the soul-quickening words—Believe, and live. Too many, shock'd at what should charm them most, Despise the plain direction and are lost. WlLUAM COWPER. 2j8 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. TALES OF A BACHELORS' CLUB—NO. i. JAMES GARFIBI.D DIIAER, '04. THE great metropolis was struggling in the grasp of a mid-winter storm. Up and down the broad avenues and narrower thoroughfares the icy winds howled and blustered, the intermittent gusts catching up the harsh, granular snow and depositing it again in miniature drifts in the area-ways ot the larger buildings ; or, by its great velocity, creating a vacuum between the tall structures which sucked up the snow in swirl-ing cloud-masses and enveloped the chimneys in mantles of glistening white. The storm king was abroad in state, attended by a numberless array of his spotlessly livened retinue. A clock, in the tower of a building on one of the most fashionable thoroughfares of the city, was just announcing the hour of midnight, the strokes of the bell sounding alternately clear and distinct, and again muffled and far away, varying with the fluctuations of the storm. The street was almost deserted —only an occasional, belated pedestrian hurrying homeward, or some habitual night prowler stealing to an appointment at an uncertain rendezvous. As the night wore on, the storm abated and the subsiding wind left the air clear of snow. The electric lamps along the avenue shone forth again with an enhanced brilliancy, illumina-ting the dark corners with their ghostly glare, and revealing fan-tastic shapes of snow where the wind, cavorting with a too pretentious drift, had left evidence of his passage in the most erratic grotesquerie. Athwart the silence which succeeded the tumult of the ele-ments, the neighboring clock-tower chimed the hour of two and the last reverberation had scarcely died away when a little gust of wind, which seemed to have lost its way in the wake of the storm, hurried round the corner of an intersecting street and seemed to carry with it, in the midst of a flurry of snow, the muffled figure of a man. It was evidently no uncommon thing for this lone pedestrian THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 239 to be abroad at this hour, for he seemed to pursue his way-somewhat leisurely, as if well acquainted with the locality. He floundered along through the snow which now covered the side-walks to the depth of some inches, and seemed to main-tain his equilibrium fairly well, albeit he collided with a post or tree now and then, and once, when his silk hat blew off and wheeled its way to the middle of the street, he recovered it with an unsteady grasp which betrayed an evening spent in convivial enjoyment. When about halfway down the square he began to look up-ward as he passed along, scanning the handsome buildings for some distinctive architectural feature by which to recognize the one which was evidently his destination. Suddenly he paused, walked to the curb, and hesitated a moment, standing in the patch of rose-colored light which a large electric chandelier of stained glass and Venetian iron-work, hanging in the vestibule of the building, threw upon the side-walk. As he stands there undecided in his inebriated condition, whether or not he has found the right place, let us survey with him the exterior of the structure. It was the most impos-ing edifice on the whole avenue and was constructed almost entirely ot elaborately carved brownstone. The windows were of the triple style—a broad, square pane of heavy plate, with a narrower one on either side, surrounded by irregular, yet artistic, patches of vari-colored and heavily leaded glass, with miniature pilasters of carved brownstone intervening, the whole surmounted by a capping of heads of satyrs among twining vines in the form of those long, flat curves which in modern architecture give such a graceful and substantial effect. In the spaces between the windows, niches were let into the walls to accommodate statues—graceful figures, whose well defined out-lines and elegant curves caused one to forget that they were produced by the magic chisel, from the same hard, cold material as the rest of the building. At either end of the cornice a Cerberus head scowled, as if just emerging from its lofty lair, while just below a frieze of dancing nymphs completed the ex-terior of the modern palace, at which both the artist and the 240 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. craftsman might well gaze with self-satisfied pleasure, and each shake the other's hand in mutual congratulation. However, lest a too lengthy description of the building should become tedious to the reader, we will leave the interior of the structure to the imagination of those who can appreciate what prodigal extremes may be attained in the desire for modern convenience and luxurious ease. Such was the home of the Bachelors' Club, and the center of action for the stirring adventures which shall be recounted in this series of storiettes—of'which the following is the first, in their chronological order. Mr. Robert Carson, Esq., prominent in the legal profession and member of the Bachelors' Club, was—his bibulous tenden-cies notwithstanding—a most methodical man. In matters of dress and general decorum he was usually beyond reproach, while he never forgot an engagement, and was always courteous and friendly. With this estimate of his character in mind, one can well appreciate the astonishment of Rudolph, the colored attendant, who admitted him to the club in the small hours of the night. Rudolph was a sort of despot among the large corps of servants, asserting his position by right of long service in the employ of the club, and acquaintance with a majority of its membership. He had just dispatched a few of his subordinates and was making his nightly round of the building when a sharp summons of the bell brought him hurrying down the main hall-way to the front door. Having admitted Mr. Carson, the obsequious attendant pro-ceeded to relieve him of his hat and coat. Then, his practised eye noting that this late comer was inclined to stagger, Rudolph took the lawyer gently by the arm and escorted him into the spacious lounging-room, saw that he was comfortably ensconced in an easy chair, placed the latest newspaper on the table at his elbow and noiselessly withdrew. Not a word had passed be-tween them—the usually amiable and gentlemanly Carson and the faithful menial who was always eager to please and quick to detect any sign of gruff indifference. "He's surely got THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 241 somethin' on his mind," soliloquised Rudolph, as he re-ascended the broad staircase. Left to himself, the half-stupefied Carson fumbled in his breast pocket and produced a crumbled piece of note paper. Smoothing it on his knee he read aloud : "Meet me at the club tonight, after the Bench and Bar Banquet. Have some friends from the South visiting me. Will bring them around and we will make a night of it to-gether. "Sincerely, "NELSON BRENT." He refolded the paper without comment, replaced it in his pocket, and sat for some minutes lost in a reminiscent train of thought. Presently he began a mumbling, half coherent soliloquy: "Make a night of it, eh ?•—well; not the first time. Queer fellow, that Brent. Used to be one of my best friends at col-lege, until—oh ! Deuce take it. If the girl preferred me it wasn't my fault. And then, after all, her father forced her to break off the engage—, pshaw! Can I never forget it ? Strange, though, the way he seemed to forgive all when he voted me into the club,—looked a little suspicious for him to—there, there! I am getting nonsensical. Feel so dull and drowsy. That digestive tablet the young lawyer from Savannah passed me across the table musn't have worked right. Banquet was quite an enjoyable affair, though, made several new acquaint— friends—no; not yet—acquaintances." His talk became a mere jumble of words, spoken in a sort of petulant monotone. Slowly his head nodded back and forth. Then his chin rested upon his breast, his hands relaxed their grip on the arms of the chair, his eyelids dropped and he sank into a deep unnatural slumber. Half an hour passed, and again the musical whirr of the electric bell brought Rudolph to the door, this time to admit two men who entered quickly and with a certain wariness of manner, as if something of importance was about to be done surreptitiously. 242 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. "I say, Brent," blustered he who had entered first, "you cer-tainly get some beastly weather up here in the north states." And he rubbed his hands briskly. The other lifted a cautious finger and turned to Rudolph. "Has Carson come yet ?" "Yessir. He's in there now fast asleep," and Rudolph ges-tured toward the door of the smoking-room. Brent gave his companion a glance of mingled surprise and gratification, and the Southerner replied with a shy wink and a sinister smile. "You may go, Rudolph," said Brent, lifting his hand with a wave of dismissal, and the two passed into the apartment where Carson's regular breathing could be heard from the depths of a big easy chair. "There he is," whispered Brent, as he paused suddenly and laid a hand upon the Southerner's arm. That gentleman there-upon leaned over to get a better view of Carson's face, and nodded to the other. "The same fellow," he said. "One would not think, to look at him, that it would have been so easy to 'dope' him with a morphine tablet under the pretense that it was for his stomach's sake." "You did work it cleverly, though," observed Brent, with a ■complimentary accent. "How long do you think it will last?" "Oh !" was the careless rejoinder, he's good for a couple of hours anyway. And now, Brent, since I just got into the city this evening and went right to the hotel, so that we had no chance to talk, would you mind telling me what your idea was in getting me to assist you in what looks to me like the begin-ning of a dirty piece of work ?" "Steady, now, old man," said Brent, reassuringly. "I'll explain the whole affair if you give me time, and you'll agree that I am only exacting a just vengeance for a wrong which this man Carson did me years ago, and but for which I should now be a wealthy man, instead of being compelled to follow a meagre law practice, and scarcely able to keep up my membership in this club." THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 245 "Yes, I understand," interrupted his auditor, impatiently, "But what are you going to do with him now ?" "I'm coming to it," Brent replied hastily. "In order to understand the why and wherefore of what is going to happen tonight you must first know something of this man Carson's past, and, incidentally, a little of my own." He glanced at the sleeping figure in the easy chair, assured himself once more that the victim of his contemplated treachery was yet in the land of dreams, nonchalantly lighted a cigar, and settled himself to begin the narration of his tale. The little Southerner seated himself also, but with a reluc-tance which indicated that he was beginning to regret having taken a hand in this business, and was anxious to have it over with. "We were good friends at college," Brent began, "until—well,, it was the same old story. Two men and one woman. Her father was one of the wealthiest cotton planters of the South. By judicious manceuvering I succeeded in creating such a favor-able impression on the old man that he once told me himself that he thought I would make a good son-in-law. "But here steps in this fellow, Carson, and wins the affections of the heiress so completely that, from the time of his advent upon the field, I was gradually compelled to recede into the back-ground. In order to circumvent him I was obliged to concoct several false reports, which, by cleverly concealed methods, I managed to convey to the old gentleman's knowledge. The result was that her father forbade Carson the house. But the daughter, after several passionate scenes, declared her inten-tion to marry him, if she had to elope to do it. Finally, her father put her under the rigid surveillance of a strict spinster governess, and so the matter seemed to rest. Carson accepted his dismissal with an apparent good grace, and I gave the case up as hopeless. Thus the affair ended, neither of us gaining anything by it, and our former close friendship was replaced by a bitter enmity, which years seemed only to accentuate." "But how," ventured the other, "do you come to be members of the same club ?" 244 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. "I was coming to that," hurriedly asserted Brent, "and when I have told it you must give me credit, or rather discredit, for a piece of the most diabolical cunning. After we had gradu-ated from college I did not hear of Carson for some years. Meanwhile, I came here, built up a small law practice, and joined the Bachelors' Club. What was my surprise, one even-ing at our meeting, on learning that a certain Robert Carson was a candidate for membership. When I discovered that this prospective member and my old enemy were one and the same person, I hesitated. But it occurred to me that here was a splendid opportunity for revenge. I would vote him into the club, pretend to forgive and forget all that had formerly passed between us, and await my chance to strike the blow." "Yes, yes," said the Southerner impatiently, "that brings us up to the present time. I understand the circumstances now completely. But what do you intend to do with him ?" For answer a long, low whistle sounded from the street and Brent started in his chair and sat bolt upright. After some seconds the signal was repeated and he rose and went to one of the large windows. The Southerner heard the clicks of a latch, felt a draught of cold, outside air, and then the window was lowered and he turned to see a figure, muffled in a large storm coat and wearing fur driving gloves. The newcomer was talk-ing to Brent in an undertone and the listener could just catch the words: "Come near fergittin', Guv'nor, was just goin' ter ring th' bell when I minded as how you was t' let me in by th' winder, so as not t' rouse th' nigger." "Yes, yes," Brent whispered hurriedly. "But we must be quick, now. It's getting on toward morning and the thing must be done in time for me to catch the early train." He motioned his confederate toward the sleeping figure in the easy chair and, to the Southerner's astonishment, the burly fellow picked up the unconscious Carson as if he had been a child and carried him to the window. The perfidious Brent again raised the sash, revealing a cab in waiting at the curb-stone. The cabby lowered his burden to the sidewalk, slid THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 245 through the window and dropped below then again lifted the helpless form, carried it over and deposited it in a dark corner of the conveyance. Brent and his companion resumed their hats and coats and made their exit by the window, closing it after them. Crossing the sidewalk, with stealthy glances up and down the street, they entered the cab, the driver mounted his box and gave a sharp "cluck" to the horses. Only the faint crunching of the wheels in the snow was heard, as the vehicle rolled away into the darkness. Five minutes later the front door of the Bachelors' Club opened, a figure in dark blue livery stepped forth and a dusky face peered out into the gloom with an anxious and excited look. Rudolph had come into the smoking room, found Mr. Carson missing, his hat and coat left behind, the window-catch unfastened and many foot prints in the snow on the sidewalk just beneath. Hastening down to the curb, he observed, with a gleam of satisfaction, the tracks of wheels in the snow. In another moment he was hurrying back into the house, and up stairs to the servants' quarters, a grim determination written on his swarthy features. In a small, upper room of a low tenement house, on an obscure street of the slum district, an old man was sitting at a rough table, reading a week-old German newspaper by the light of a tallow dip. He was the common type of naturalized im-migrant of the lower classes. Teutonic features, snub-nose, double chin and ample girth were all present as the recognized signs of his nationality. He was clad in coarse, threadbare garments of antiquated pattern, the waistcoat unbuttoned for greater ease, and his feet slipped into loose goloshes with which he shuffled across the floor when, at frequent intervals, he arose and went to the window to peer with expectant gaze up the dark, narrow street. The room was scantily and poorly furnished, and gave evi-dence of those straitened circumstances which oftentimes force 246 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. honest and well-meaning folk to participate in deeds of rascality for the sake of the bare means of subsistence. And such was the case here. The old German had hesitat-ed, upon being approached by a refined-looking stranger with the offer of a handsome remuneration, if he should do just as the person dictated, for the space of a few days; but, when the al-luring proposition was reinforced by the guarantee of absolute safety from detection or punishment on the part of the German, the old man had consulted with his wife and, after sundry ar-guments pro and con, had accepted the offer. And now he was awaiting the arrival of the man to whom he had pledged himself to act as a tool. For the twentieth time, it seemed, he had gone to the window to watch for any sign of life up the de-serted thoroughfare. The fussy little clock in the corner pointed to five minutes of four, and the old man, weary of his vigil, re-sumed his chair and began to go over in his mind the plans which he and his unknown employer were about to carry into execution. It was three days, he mused, since he had been accosted on the street by a well-dressed gentleman, who, after some preliminary talk, conducted him to an obscure restaurant and, in the seclusion of a curtained booth, had made him the proposal which he had so reluctantly accepted. A wealthy young lawyer was to be kidnapped, smuggled into his humble quarters in the tenement, kept there against his will and forced to sign certain papers which the German's employer would turn into money and make good his escape before the victim of the plot could be located and rescued. It was all very neatly arranged, the old man thought, but was he not a fool to let the other fellow get away while he would have to remain and per-haps feel the strong arm of the law? He was just beginning to-regret his bargain and to wonder whether the pay justified the risk, when his attention was attracted by a noise in the street outside. Starting up, he snatched the candle from the table and rushed to the door. In the strong, upward draught from the steep stairway the feeble taper winked and spluttered and finally went out, leaving him in utter darkness. He groped his way down the dingy flight, in a tension of nervous" dread, THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 247 I . tore open the door and stepped out upon the front stoop. A cab was standing in the middle of the street, a short distance away. The horses were stamping the snow impatiently, the driver's box was vacant, the fur robe dangling from the seat and trailing upon the ground, and the door of the vehicle stood wide open. In the gloom about him the old gentleman heard the sounds of a scuffle, and could just make out the figures of half a dozen men who seemed to be engaged in a free-for-all fight. A familiar voice shouted dreadful oaths above the bab-ble of the melee, and a lithe, active little figure mingled in the struggle with furious vigor, hissing fierce invectives with a Southern accent. The battle royal lasted for some moments. Now and then one of the combatants would lose his footing and flounder about in the drifted snow, then regain his feet and plunge again into the conflict with redoubled fury. Finally, just as the terrorized witness was about to turn back and flee terror-stricken up the stairs, one of the factions in the contest seemed to gain the mastery. Three of the struggling forms broke away. Two of them sprang into the carriage and banged the door after them. The other clambered to his perch on the box, snatched up the reins, belabored the horses with vicious lashes of his whip, and, smarting with baffled rage, turned his head and hurled back a parting shot that was a veritable bomb-shell of besmirching epithets, as the cab rolled away. Some of those who remained on the sidewalk attempted to overtake the retreating vehicle, but, giving up the pursuit as fruitless, return-ed to join the little group which was now holding a hurried consultation. After a moment or two they picked up a limp figure and started away down the street, bearing the uncon-scious form as the trophy of their victory. ****** At a special meeting of the Bachelors' Club the next even-ing, a full account of the affair was given by one of the mem-bers, who gathered his information from those who had been most directly concerned in the disgraceful episode. From his disclosures it appeared that Rudolph, after noting the suspic-ious circumstances of Mr. Carson's disappearance and fearing 248 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. foul play, had aroused a half dozen of the servants and begun a search. The rescuing party tracked the cab to the street in the slum district by following the wheel marks in the snow. After overcoming the resistence of Mr. Carson's would-be ab-ductors, they had brought that gentleman back to the club-house, sent for a physician to resuscitate him from the effects of the drug and the rough handling he had received, and reported the affair to the police. When Brent's shameless duplicity became generally known, the assembly room of the Bachelors' Club was in a turmoil of indignation. A bitter, crushing letter of dismissal was drawn up and despatched to his law office, in case he should have the audacity to return and attempt to explain by some elaborate falsehood, as many of the members believed he would do. But the letter remained unopened upon the desk of Brent's deserted office and the shrewdest detectives of the city failed to obtain a single clew as to his whereabouts. Nelson Brent and his ac-complice, the little Southerner, had completely disappeared. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 249 THE NEED OF RENEWED INTEREST IN THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF OUR COLLEGE. THE subject of the advantages of membership in a literary society andof general literary discipline is an aggravatingly old one, and one which has been preached from the college ros-trum ever since the literary society found place as an appendage to an institution of learning. Notwithstanding, it is, with all its ponderous burden of repetition, a most vital and important phase of collegiate training, and its importance needs all the more to be emphasized in lieu of the widespread lack of ap-prehension among students in general of the highly beneficent results which it confers. At'Gettysburg the existing state of affairs needs considera-tion. The reason as to why our literary societies are so lethar-' gic demands investigation. As to the why and wherefore of this depression in the field of literary effort let us briefly in-quire, and try to recognize the necessity for improvement. It is quite in harmony with a reasonable supposition to in-fer that the chief cause of this apathy is to be discovered in a failure to realize just what the literary society means to the student. To start with, it offers a chance for development in composition. Writing, in an intelligent way and with the use of good diction, is an accomplishment every college man should own. To be able to write what one thinks and offer it to be read by others is as much a demand on the college man as to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation. If a man has a reasoning intellect, descriptive ability, poetic sentiment, or thought-power and observant faculties along any particular line—which we all have in greater or less degree—he should surely appreciate his endowment to an extent great enough to insure its permanency and highest efficiency by a proper amount of use. This state of affairs would be conclusively guaranteed by an occasional essay, poem, or story, which a keen interest in his society and college monthly should unhesitatingly lead him to construct with a gratifying result to both writer and reader or listener. 250 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. The aptitude to compose one's thoughts, which ability is also a thought-training process, is an accomplishment which no stu-dent of Gettysburg College will ever disdain.' Secondly, and somewhat interwoven with what we have just said, is to be recognized the happy knack of being able to stand before an audience and do clear thinking. This is a something that is of incalculable importance. Not one man in one hun-dred can do it. Every college graduate, to be worthy of the name, ought to be that one man. To face with self-poise a congregated mass of people and address them with a calm dig-nity and a smooth-working brain is a modern requirement of the college man, and justly so. The world insists upon and demands this qualification. He who possesses this proficiency will always cherish it, and he who lacks it will ever be sensible of a lost opportunity. With this showing, as manifested in two main ways, of what the student of our college, in many cases, is foregoing in his educational career, let us give heed to one or two phases of our literary society work which are sore in need of a rectifying remedy forthwith, and the existence of which implies another cause for general unprogressiveness. The literary contests between the Phrenakosmian and Philo-mathean societies should be the means by which a great and lasting enthusiasm would be aroused in and a powerful impetus given to general literary work in the college. The approach of these competitive performances should instigate a rival zest between the members of the respective societies which would be satisfied only after having placed him, whom it has ani-mated, on the program, or upon the accession thereto of some more competent person, whose position was gained only by dili-gent and effective work. Such conditions would conduce to a mighty good. They would establish a propensity for literary practice certain to be wholesome for both societies. But how different? This year there is scarcely a little bit of interest manifest. Neither society seems to consider the issue worth more than a meagre amount of preparation. As the time for the contests draws nigh a sort of stringent necessity does impel a preparation which has the appearance of a greater or less THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 251 amount of haphazardness. The training for these programs, instead of having been systematic, steady and critical, has par-taken too much of an abrupt, spasmodic and thoroughless course, which is bound to assert itself, we are afraid, in their rendition. Before this paper has appeared the literary contests shall have taken place. By them let our society members judge their tactics henceforth. To be sure, these programs are going to support some kind of success, but how much better might they not have been had they been subject to a more ap-propriate preparation by harder individual work, more enthusi-astic collective energizing? Who dares set the limit? Within the precincts of each society the indifference of in-. dividuul members to the success of a program of the usual routine order is most exasperating. Every society member is entitled to a performance at certain intervals. Each society member anticipates that privilege when he joins his society. Deny it him and he resists. Henceforth it becomes his duty as well. But at present the inclination to slight this duty and privilege is quite ad extremiun. If a member be posted for an appearance on any particular program, the liability of the actual reality of his presence for the purpose of doing his duty and enjoying his privilege is, in so many cases, quite remote. Nowadays the president of Philo, the president of Phrena never knows, with any degree of certainty, what his program is going to be until rt is over. Indeed sometimes doesn't know if it is going to be at all or not. A member if unable to be present, whether on account of unavoidable circumstances, or on account of an acute indisposition to move aggravated by an attack of voluntary brain inactivity, instead of procuring a substitute, which is certainly the only proper course, simply lets the affair drift until it produces its ruinous effect on some program, whose purpose to please gives way to a decided reactionary effect. When will you realize your duty to yourself and your society, my inactive friend? How will you retrieve your loss? And now, fellow-student, having been made conversant with the facts, will you avail yourself of this offer; this lasting and essential advantage extended to you ? You who are going to 252 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. become ministers and lawyers—will it pay you to wait until you are in the pulpit or before the bar to learn how to handle your faculties, to control your thoughts and temper your actions ? And you, doctor and man of science, can you afford to descry the work because it is beyond your immediate province ? The truth is that whatsoever we be—professional men, business men, or scientific men—we are going to be called upon to per-form certain functions in life because of the significant fact that we are college men. The college man stands in such vast pro-portion to his fellow-men that, with his superior ability, he will be compelled to assume certain obligations within the field of .his active life. Suppose, for instance, you should be asked to make an address, you who are so negligent in society work, at a certain place, after your college days have passed and you are in the great fight of the world whose finish is victory or defeat, or that you are prevailed upon to preside at some meeting, in both of which cases you could positively not escape, unless on the plea of inability, would it not be your sincere desire that your success, in either instance, should be somewhat commen-surate with what would be expected of you, and would it not be of vast humiliation, and even perhaps a check on your ma-terial advancement, to confess inability, or to fail in the under-taking? Such cases as this are not improbable ; on the other hand they are both very probable and almost certain. Prepare now, fellow-student, and escape the penalty of the future. With such conditions at Gettysburg we should try and im-prove. At the same time we may find relief, over against this depicted "depression, in the fact that ours is not the only insti-tution wherein there is a lack of concern for literary discipline. In looking over the magazines of many of our contemporary schools we find, apparently, just as deplorable a situation. In brief, the American college might conveniently stand a "renais-sance." But the fact that an analagous disinterest is prevalent in other colleges should lead us to recognize more fully the greater necessity for a revival. The necessity is becoming a stern one and our duty it is to set in operation causes that will be productive of more satisfying results. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 253 Lastly, the welfare of Gettysburg demands that we get to work. Gettysburg College, we have reason to believe, is on the eve of a new departure. Nothing can long remain inactive. It must either advance or retrograde. For some time our col-lege has been in a state of comparative inactivity, but the spell is bound to be broken, and, judging from recent movements, we may judiciously conclude that the election of a president will soon be assured, and that such a step will be attended with success for Alma Mater. Anticipating such progressiveness, in no place can the student body initiate its expanding interest more appropriately than in literary society work. If we can make our two societies flourish, the influence will be far-reach-ing and the end worth the beginning. A few days ago the writer casually chanced upon the follow-ing : "Without good literary societies a college is certainly not worthy of patronage." This passage clearly defines the merit of the literary society. It is a necessary adjunct to the equip-ment of any institution of learning. Some of our neighboring colleges have valued this importance so highly as to make a certain amount of literary society membership compulsory. Our own school even has provision in its regulations for such membership with an alternative of certain extra work to be provided by the faculty. This rule, however, has not of recent years been subject to a rigorous enforcement, nor do we advo-cate its active operation after years of dormancy. Literary work should be voluntary. The student should find pleasure in it. The reward it offers should be its stimulus. No stu-dent is going to gain much from that into which he is forced. Now, if this work is so superlatively requisite, it certainly is worthy of support. It deserves a proportionate share of our labor. Recognizing the significence of our literary societies, let us upbuild them again, improve them by active work and by performing when called upon to do so. L. A. G. 254 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. CONVERSATION AS AN ART. HARRIET A. MCGILI;, '06. AGROUP of girls were talking about the expected visit of some college students to their town. The first and chief topic of their conversation was that pertinent to dress, and on all sides might be heard the statement, "I must have a new gown made for the occasion." The second, and by no means unim-portant consideration, was, "How shall we feed them; what shall we give them to eat?" This phase of the anticipated event was discussed in many ways, and with a due considera-tion of the fact that the appetite of the average college student is not easily satiated, but craves an abundant variety. After more or less of time had been indulged in this manner, it was suddenly discovered that by far the most attractive and intelli-gent girl in the company had been strangely quiet. She also happened to be of wealthy parentage and it was well known that she could easily afford many new gowns and tender many elaborate parties. " What are you thinking about?" asked her friends, almost in concert. "Why girls," was the reply, "to tell you the truth, I was just pondering as to how to formulate some scheme to put an intellectual edge on my ideas, in order to be able to entertain the boys when they are here with something interesting to talk about." Now, all girls like fine and beautiful dresses, and the elim-ination of hunger from the nature of the guest friend is, by no kind of argument, a meagre consideration, yet, despite these two pending necessities, the quiet girl, who had been thinking of interesting topics for conversation, had, without doubt, the proper conception about entertaining guests. We do not care about addressing statues, no matter how beautiful they may be; we gaze upon them for a while with admiring interest, and then pass on into contact with our liv-ing, breathing fellow-beings, less beautiful, it may be, but cer-tainty more attractive to us. The analogy finds its comple-ment in those persons who exist apparently for the sake of ap- THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 255 pcarance; to see and be seen; to attract attention by every device and to pass on their face value. They have no in-dividuality. They may be admired, but never loved, or even scarcely liked by those with whom they come to be associated. Such is the person, for the most part, who is unable to employ the conversational art. The cultivation of conversational abil-ity has suffered by an undivided attention to the superficial. But let such individual recognize the relative importance of conversational power and seek to attain it, and his or her per-sonality will assert itself; vanity will subside. Education is a great factor in advancing conversation as an art. However, it is only a factor; it cannot do all. One must, first of all, be unselfish and amiable, must have a real desire to please, and not have feelings tending to provoke the state-ment: "Well, I have been put here to.talk with this person, and I presume I must make the best of it." Conversation to be worth the time and effort must be a pleasure. To be in-structive it must be conducted with mutual interest. The re-moval of the selfish element is always advantageous. Some people are naturally somewhat bashful or reserved. Such an one the considerate talker will address with careful thought- He will use tact in endeavoring to draw him out, and in having him speak of himself, to a certain extent, his work and aims, friends, and those things which seem to savor of interest for him. Under such circumstances time will pass rapidly for all ■coucerned, and the intellectual intercourse will be thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated. Among the educated conversation certainly flows with great-er ease than among those who have had fewer advantages. It is a fact that, no matter where one lives, who has been well ed-ucated, the world's interests are his interests and, as a result, he is acquainted with those interests. He is more at ease, broad-er- minded than his less fortunate brother, since he has studied about the great deeds of men and has seen " Footprints on the sands of time." All these superiorities assert his greater abil-ity in conversational art. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter Vol. XII GETTYSBURG, PA., FEBRUARY, 1904 No. 8 Editor-in-ch ief LYMAN A. GUSS, '04 Exchange Editor M. ROY HAMSHER, '04 Business Manager F. GARMAN MASTERS, '04 Asst. Business Manager A. L. DlELENBECK, '05 Associate Editors JOHN B. BOYER, '04 BRUCE P. COBAUGH, '05 C. EDWIN BUTLER, '05 Advisory Board PROF. J. A. HIMES, LITT. D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M.D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D.D. Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance; single copies 15 cents. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Busi-ness Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORIALS. SOME PARTING Upon the appearance of this issue of the WORDS. MERCURY the duties of the present editorial staff and management cease. We have performed the tasks incident to the publication of one volume of this paper and herewith surrender all obligation, together with the good will of the journal, to our successors. During our supervision we have tried to labor with a due sense of the responsibility rest-ing upon us, not only for the continuance of the heretofore es-tablished literary plane of the MERCURY, but for the constant exaltation of its general tone. We have felt strongly the neces-sity of unremitting, vigorous effort in the interest of the charge entrusted to us, and we have made it our particular concern to employ appropriate methods in our work. In short, our aim THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 257 INDIFFERENCE. has been not mediocrity but perfection. To be sure, we have fallen short of this aim, and our ideal has been but imperfectly-realized, yet we feel we have done all possible in our desire to evolve improvement in our college monthly. That our exer-tions have been productive of good results at times we modestly admit, but that they have likewise borne barren fruit is beyond doubt. This lack of what might have been gain under different cir-cumstances is happily explainable, and a brief indulgence in the facts pertaining thereto may avail to remove the exigency henceforth. The first great drawback during the past year has been a manifestation of indifference, or lack of co-operation. This is one reason why the MERCURY has not been as creditable to the college as we conceive it should have been. There has been a general disinterestedness in its pages. Some one may say that there hasn't been such a great deal contained within its covers tending to inspire inter-est. This, we grant, is, in part, true. But, criticising friend, if you would remedy the situation you must set to work on the cause, not the effect. As every subscriber knows, this paper is published by the literary societies of the institution, and in them as publishers it expects to find hearty supporters and loyal contributors. In-stead it has found apparently hearty non-supporters and dis-loyal contributors. True it is that the articles appearing on the MERCURY'S pages from time to time have been mostly written by society men, yet there has been no united effort or obvious interest displayed by either society on behalf of this paper's general improvement. If it succeeds, good; if not, good again. Concern in and for it is dormant, dead. The very fact that it is the organ of the societies should cause every man interested in his society to subscribe for it; should make it the duty of each and every member so to do, but, to the contrary notwithstanding, a great many members of both Philo and Phrena do not take it. They are unaware, one would think, that financial support is absolutely a requisite to the ex- 258 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. istence of a college journal, even if they are deaf to the fact that a large subscription list gives editorial encouragement, and will later stand for merit. But if society men themselves, by general disregard, show no disposition to aid the paper, how can we expect a new initiate to voluntarily sink a dollar in something, which from a fellow" member's action is, according to indications, a losing game; so much of money wasted ? We are not given entirely to pessimism, but inflated optimism cannot long be floated on a stream of adverse conditions. These may seem to be strong statements. So we intend them, and we believe the means justifies the end, and if we hope to continue a monthly strictly creditable to Gettysburg something will have to happen. Therefore, let us take things as they are, and try to adminis-ter an antidote. Show more interest in this paper, member of Philo, member 'of Phrena, then we will seek other means of heightening its influence. It will pay an effort so expended, both in good to the college and individual development. DEARTH OF A second salient cause for non-progressiveness MATERIAL. lies in a deficiency of material, both in quan-tity and in variety. At the present time we are generously thankful to get almost any kind of a contribution. "Anything prints just now" is a sorry statement for the editor of a college magazine. By no means do we propose to disparage the pro-ductions of those who have aided us during the past year with their compositions. To them is due our grateful thanks. The point we wish to make is simply that the staff of such a paper as this purports to be, instead of being compelled to go a-beg-ging, should have some right to choice; instead of being forced to take what it can get, it should have the privilege, to a cer-tain extent at least, of selecting what it wants. When will you give us a chance, fellow student ? And further, we should not only have more than just enough to print in each issue, but some variety. Point out the student and general reader who doesn't tire of the forced essay—that which is produced as so much task work. "Dry as punk," he THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 259' says and flings away the paper containing it, and thereby all that is good therein goes unnoticed and unread. Indeed, some such essays are good and commendable, but they so often lack in spirit and enthusiasm, both of which are necessary traits of a good essay. No student can write anything worth reading on a subject in which he feels no concern. He may draw out a few facts and truths for argument's sake, but that is not the substance of a good literary production. What we need is good, solid, substantial essays to start with, full of life and con-viction, enthused with the personality of the writer. Again, give us something of fiction. This is, indeed, a form of variation of which we feel the sorest need. The short story is a powerful factor in adding to the charm ot a college maga-zine's pages. The creation of a healthy bit of romance is in-vigorating to the reader and beneficial to the author. It relieves the stern ruggedness of a journal otherwise filled, perchance,, with bleak prosaic composition. Fact and fancy will mix to advantage on the pages of the college paper if intermingled in the proper proportion. And, yet more, let us have an occasional poem. Poetry lightens the soul and stirs the reader to better things. We do not reckon upon an outpouring of full-toned poetry akin to that of the masters, but we do find justification in asking for poetic sentiment in verse such as many students are, without doubt, capable of contributing. Our exchanges contain it. Are we so much farther down the scale as to preclude all possibility of anything similar? Surely not. We can have poetry, fiction, and good essays, if you will, fellow-student. FOOD FOR Our monthly can be made better and must be THOUGHT. made better. Remember that to our Alumni and to other colleges this paper is the chief measure by which they judge our literary standard. That standard must always be kept high. A college displaying but meagre literary ability in its representative magazine is certain to feel the disadvan-tageous effects. And, last of all, remember that a paper can always be improved externally as well as internally by making it more attractive and elaborate, and that a full treasury, through 26o THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY the agency of a large subscription list, is the only way to gain this end. The foregoing has been written—a large proportion of its substance not for the first time—we believe, under the impulse of the right motive. Although, as said previously, we are about to relinquish active relations with the MERCURY, we are, under no circumstances, going to cast aside all interest in it. In fact, the contrary shall be the case. Its advancement will be our pleasure, and its prosperity our lasting desire. If you will but co-operate with us, student-friend, and if we let our good inten-tions take the form of material aid, all will be well. The pres-ent stringency will slacken. The MERCURY will improve and we shall indulge a just pride in our college monthly. ^^-^-^ EXCHANGES. THE Touchstone came out in January, clothed in a pretty gray and silver cover. We noticed at the foot of the cover-page—it may have been because of its attractive appear-ance— this sentence: "Published in the interest of Literary Lafayette." A sermon would be forthcoming on a theme which that sentence suggests, were it not for certain suggestions we have previously made concerning "much speaking." We would make that theme—"The Literary College." However, all honor to Lafayette if she is as thoroughly imbued with the literary spirit as she seems to be. There is one note to which most of our exchanges seem to be keyed : the warning of literary en-thusiasm. One comes out with an editorial declaring that at that particular institution literary spirit is dead. Another is continually appealing to the student body for poems and stories and essays. Were the productions of such a magazine as The Georgetown College Jo7irnal less worthy of praise, we might notice that the same group of men are the contributors month after month, and might draw our own conclusions. But we will not preach. Let us pray the oracle to send a great revival of literary spirit (f\ THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 26l upon our colleges, to make them centers of American literature. May the dead come io life again ! From the unassorted heap on our desk, we pick up the Mani-ton Messenger. We are made glad, as we read an announce-ment for the February number. It does not bewail a lack of material, but it announces such interesting subject material for the coming month that one becomes anxious to see next month's issue. We are not quite so pessimistic now. The article in the January number which warrants us in our expectations is a study of the leading character in "The Mer-chant of Venice." The author's interpretation of Shylock, as actuated by love for his persecuted race, places him in a some-what new light. "Side by side with the epithets, the Avarici-ous, and the Avenger, let us place the epithet, the Martyr." In a well-written article on "Panama," a rather partisan view is taken. The story of Herbert Spencer's life, with a statement of his theory, is very clearly shown. There is, however, a lack of the short story, and the poet does not venture to show him-self. Some of the ex-men have been quoting specimens of the college man's poetry. With apologies to the ex-man of the University of Va. Magazine, we quote: "The twilight palls The shadow falls And round me like a massive shawl The night descends." Author unknown. It may be better to lack poetry than to give the poet's Pegassus a chance to roam in such a way. But the magazine which carries something of this nature has at least the credit of having variety. We wish to acknowledge a new exchange, the Brown and White. It is a sprightly paper from Brown Preparatory School, Philadelphia. We wonder what the Dickinsonian might mean in her ex^ change notes, referring to the seven articles in the December number of The Gettysburgian, which is characterized as " a mediocre college weekly." No doubt the printer is at fault. 262 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Last night I held a little hand, So dainty and so neat, Methought my heart would burst with joy So wildly did it beat. No other hand into my heart Could greater solace bring, Than that I held last night, which was Four aces and a king. —Tlie Courant. The author of the following effort is nameless. Perhaps sometime he may come to college, and we can only hope that that time will be soon (for his own good). " The mouth is the front door to the face. It is patriotism's fountain and a tool-chest for pie. Without the mouth the pol-itician would go down to an unhonored grave. It is the gro-cer's friend and the dentist's hope. It has put some men on the rostrum and some in jail. It is temptation's lunch counter when attached to a maiden; tobacco's friend when attached to a man." The Review, edited by the students of Washington College,, has just arrived at our desk for the first time. " Why Brer Rabbit Has No Tail" seems to be an elaborate attempt at dia-lect. There is a tendency with some of the exchanges to arrive at least a month late. The St. Johns Collegian for January is at hand for the first time in several months. The issue, how-ever, is worthy of perusal, and the short story, although not particularly interesting as offered in this issue, unites with the essay to form a well-balanced college paper. The article on " The St. John's Spirit" should stir one's blood for his alma mater. "Spirit of Old-Fashioned Roses," Breathing the air of the spring, Spirit of far-away roses, Sweet as a song you sing. Now in the dusk of the twilight, As evening softly falls, Kiss the farewell of forever, Ere the thought of forever appalls ; Touch his lips gently and sweetly As leaves touch a castle's walls. —The Haverfordian. ma® PATRONIZE Ol'R ADVERTISERS. EAGLE HOTEL Rates $2.00, $2.50 and $3.00 per day. HAS A CAPACITY OF 400 GUESTS —=. FRANK EBERHART, PROP'R. Dealer in F Picture Frames of All Sorts. Repair work done promptly. Wl will also buy or exchange any second-hand furniture 40hanibersburgSt., - GETTYSBURG, PA. Buy Your^^^^s SUMMER SUIT -_A_T-IT FITS. IS STYLISH, LOOKS WELL, WEARS WELL. CLOTHING We mean Hand~TailoPed Ready-to-uuear Nobby Dress Hats, Swell Neckwear, Fancy Shirts, Men's Underwear. YORK, PENN'A. LWatch for his Representative when he visits the College j PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. Geo. E. Spacer, PIANOS, ORGANS, MUSIC/LL MERCHANDISE Music Rooms, - York St. Telephone 181 GETTYSBURG TEACHERS! TEACHERS! Teachers wishing to prepare for Examination should write im-mediately for our Teachers' Interstate Examination Course, as taught by mail. This course is endorsed by many leading educators, and every progressive teacher who wishes to advance in their profession should begin work immediately. Address nearest office, with stamp, for reply. AMERICAN TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, 174 Randolph Building, 1423 Arch Street, Memphis, Tenn. Philadelphia. k M. ALLrEMAN, Manufacturer's Agent and Jobber of Hardware, Oils, Faints and Qieqiwar Gettysburg, Pa. THE ONLY JOBBING HOUSE IN ADAMS COUNTY W. F. Odori, -DEALER IN^ Beef, fork. Lamb, Veal, and Sausage, SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS. York Street, Gettysburg:, Pa. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. ECKENEOBE & BEGKER CHAMBERSBUBG ST., Dealers in Beef, Veal, Lamb, Pork, Sausage, Pudding, Bologna, Hams, Sides, Shoulders, Lard, Prime Corned Beef. 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We need at once a few more Teachers, both experienced and in-experienced. More calls this year than ever before. Schools supplied with competent teachers free of cost. Address, with stamp, AMERICAN TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, 174 Randolph Building 1423 Arch Street, Memphis, Tenn. Philadelphia. HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. t Tie IntereoIIeglafe Bnrean of Academic Costume. Chartered igo2. Cotrsll S^ Leonard* jPs.lba.rxv, 3NC. IT. ffiakefs of the Caps, Gouuns and Hoods To the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Min-nesota, Leland Stanford, Tulape, University of the South, Wel-esley, Bryn Mawr, Wells, Mt. lolyoke and the others. Illustrated Bulletin, Samples, Etc., upon request. A. B. BLACK, Gettysburg College Representative. E. A. Wright's Engraving House, 1108 Chestnut St. PHILADELPHIA We have our own photograph gallery for half-tone and photo engraving. Fashionable Engraving and Stationery. Leading house for College, School and Wedding Invitations, Dance Programs, Menus. Fine engraving of all kinds. Before ordering elsewhere com-pare samples and prices. GET THE BEST The TEACHERS' AMD PUPILS' CYCLOPAEDIA. ANEW, RELIABLE and BEAUTIFUL WORK OF KhFEKENCE in three volumes, edited by B. P. Holtz, A.M., for the homes, schools and colleges of America. It has over 2,200 pages, quarto size, is absolutely new, and treats thousands of selected topics. Many prominent educators have already recommended it for gener-al use. Sample pages furnished on ap-plication. AGENTS WANTED. The Hoist Publishing Co., Boone, lo-wa,- PATRONIZE OUR ADVEKTIZERS. FURNITURE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames, Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. # Telephone No. 97. IE3:_ IB. ZBen.d.ex 73 Baltimore St., Gettysburg, Pa. THE STEWART & STEEN CO. College JEngrcuners and (Printers 1024 Arch. St., Philadelphia, Pa. MAKERS AND PUBLISHERS OF Commencement, Class Day Invitations and Programs, " Class Pins and Buttons in Gold and Other Metals, Wedding Invitations and Announcements, At Home Cards, Reception Cards and Visiting Cards, Visiting Cards—Plate and 50 cards, 75 cents. Special Discount to Students. d. §. ipalding & (Bros., * * OFFICIAL J» * FOOT BALL SUPPLIES Are Made in Accordance With Official Stiles. Spalding's handsomely illustrated cata-logue of Fall and Winter Sports contain-ing all the new things in foot ball will be sent free to any address. Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide, containing the new rules. Per copy, 10 cents. How to Play Foot Ball. By Walter Camp. New edition. Per copy, 10cents. A. G. Spalding & Bros. New York Chicago Philadelphia San Francisco Host011 Luttalo Kansas City St. Louis Minneapolis Denver London, England. Baltimore MontrealjCan. I