America we live in a society the roots and principles of which are laid by our ancestors. We operate within it but we don't have the sense of building it ourselves. This too will in the long run give them an edge on us I'm afraid. That evening we took a steamer ride up the Danube. Unhappily to say, the "Beautiful Blue Danube" of Strauss' day is no more. Here, between Buda and Pest, it is a sluggish, muddy river, with nothing to distinguish it except that it is one of the world's most impor- tant waterways.

THURSDAY — This morning a flight to Praha (Prague, capitol of Czechoslovakia). Its airport was larger, cleaner and more efficient than any of the others. On the way to the hotel we took the city tour covering an ancient monastery outside the city that has rooms full of ancient leather bound books from the middle ages. It is one of the main scholars libraries of the world like the collections in the British Museum. We took in Hradcany castle and St. Vitus' cathedral. This was the castle of the early kings of this area and the cathedral is a classical example of Gothic architecture. It is reminiscent of the famous cathedral in Cologne, Germany which has so many little points, spires, and projec- tions all pointing up that it looks as if the whole thing were about to take off. We had to hurry along to get down to the town squre by 5 p.m. to see the famous church clock which has an arrangement of little statues of the saints that emerge from the wall above the clock and march around at each striking of the hour.

I asked our guide what had become of Dubchek, the deposed former premier, and was told that he is now managing a garage in Bratislava, the second city of the country. It was obvious that the guide didn't want to discuss the invasion situation very much. It evidently wasn't too popular in Hungary either since our guide there had commented that “we didn't want to take part in it but the Russians made us." But look- ing at the world from an objective point of view that invasion was as predictable as the sunrise just as our early support for Ngo Din Diem against Ho Chi Min was in South Viet Nam. The powers that be in both Socialist and Capitalist centers of power are not about to let the other infiltrate, stir things up or take over and both are equally inter- ested in preventing new, uncommitted countries from falling into the others orbit. Both sides do the same things but do them differently.

Here in Prague I got the beginnings of the laryngitis that continued to plague me even up to the time of writing this. In fact, I discovered at the Drs. office only yesterday that I have a polyp on my right vocal cord and will have to go to the hospital next week to have it removed. But in

84