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FREEDOMWAYS                            THIRD QUARTER 1972

Civic Education, thereby gaining a platform for considerable public exposure, while his opponents had to work clandestinely.
The Westminster democratic ideals that the military/police junta attempted to institute in Ghana were built on sand. They made no efforts to set up the necessary infrastructure with which to realize their democratic principles. The military/police junta may have obtained their objective of dethroning Nkrumah, but from hindsight, they left very little to be remembered by in the area of infrastructure for development. They re-equipped the army to justify its existence. They increased their salaries out of proportion and went through unprecedented promotion exercises. They reduced any threats of cutting the army's unusually large share of the national cake. They left the economy worse off than it was when they inherited it; corruption did not abate; worse yet, they demolished an ideology and substituted nothing in its place. The overthrow of the Busia Government by another military/police junta, on nearly identical justifications as those they themselves had used earlier, is testimony to the shallowness of their achievements. Meanwhile, it is the Ghanaian public that suffers from these claims and disclaims. Pinkney could have been a little more objective about Ghana under its first military rule, 1966-1969.
                                         Kofi Ankomah



                         ROLE OF U.S. IN VIETNAM INDICTED

JUST BEFORE THE DAWN. By Fenton A. Williams, M.D. Exposition Press, New York. 127 pages. Illustrated. $5.00.

THE INTENSIFICATION of the Vietnamese conflict causes Just Before the Dawn by Fenton A. Williams, M.D., to now have stronger significance in the effort to halt the war. The higher the escalation proceeds, the more dangerous the "power games" between nations become. There is little argument about the role of the United States in this present war. The question is how far will Mr. Nixon take us on this destructive course. 
Dr. Fention A. Williams, the author, spent one year in Vietnam, from October 1969, with a Medical Battalion of the 9th Infantry Division at Dong Tam in the Mekong Delta.
Dr. Williams, a physician of extreme sensitivity for his fellow man, writes of his experiences and observations as a medical officer wit-

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BOOK REVIEW                                    HAYLING

nessing the atrocities to Vietnamese people, their cities, towns and hamlets. He observed, besides the killing and wounding, the suffering of thousands who have little to do with their destiny. He saw the exploitation of Vietnamese people, black market profiteering and the segregation and discrimination which still exist in more subtle form in the U.S. Armt. Before leaving for Vietnam, Dr. Williams was denied an Army residency training program because he was Black. This reviewer is reminded of many similar experiences that he observed as a Battalion Surgeon in Korea in 1952. 
Just Before the Dawn magnifies the human tragedy of the Vietnamese war. The scorched earth that is left from the bombing sorties along the Mekong Delta cannot reflect the human misery and loss. 
Dr. Williams gives a brief descriptive history of the Vietnamese people and their struggle over the centuries. This book is well illustrated and is a graphic indictment of U.S. foreign policy. Just Before the Dawn brings to its readers a sharp reality that should cause clearer inspection and increased antiwar reaction.

                           William H. Hayling, M.D.

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