Don Noel
- 1966
Fellowship Title:
- Attitudes Toward the Cold War in Cambodia and Romania
Fellowship Year:
- 1966
CAMBODIA: Muddling on the Mekong
DON-3 Phnom Penh, Cambodia January 4, 1967 Mr. Noel is a 1965-66 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship winner on leave from the Hartford Times. Permission to publish these articles may be sought from the Managing Editor, The Hartford Times. PHNOM PENH: The United States backed out on a $10 million promise this fall. Western and UN diplomats in this neutral capital are still trying to pick up the pieces. The promise — to help build the multi-purpose Prek Thnot Dam here as part of international development of the Mekong River — could have been a useful first step in patching up America’s shattered relations with Cambodia. Instead, U.S. standing here has slipped farther back. With it has suffered the prestige of the United Nations, and the entire concept of international, non-political cooperation. Efforts are now under way to finance Prek Thnot without the U.S. The success of these efforts, in which Washington itself is helping, will be known next month (February) when the four-power Mekong Committee meets in Laos. An acceptable compromise funding solution
Cambodia: Up by the Bootstraps
DON-2 Bungalow 10 Hotel le Royal Phnom Penh, Cambodia November 29, 1966 Mr. Noel is an Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from the Hartford (Conn.) Times. Permission to publish these articles may be sought from the Managing Editor, The Hartford Times. Kompong Cham — “Have you seen the new university?” The visitor to this smallish provincial capital upriver on the Mekong could hardly miss the Université Royale. No one would let him. It is a focal point of local pride. With good reason: the people built it themselves. First publicly proposed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk three years ago, the university already has 500 enrolled as freshmen and sophomores. The campus is not, in fact, completed yet: the library shelves are half-empty; technical laboratories are still being outfitted (1); only 19 of the eventual 53 classroom and administrative buildings are up. But every one of those 19 was built with local funds. A well-organized campaign appears to have tapped successfully the rich, the poor, and the middle-class civil servants. (Two of those
Japan: Fragile Force in World Affairs
DON-1 Tokyo, Japan October 5, 1966. Mr. Noel is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from The Hartford Times. Permission to publish this article may be sought from the Managing Editor, The Hartford Times. The photograph on the screen, one of several taken to show Japanese friends the reasons for America’s urban renewal, showed a slum block in Hartford, Connecticut. Less than a month earlier, it had looked terrible. In Japan, suddenly, the tired old tenements looked spacious, solid, and attractive. One would not, of course, seriously compare Tokyo’s urban problems with those of Hartford. But it is worth remembering the vastly different scales, which are used to measure prosperity at home and abroad. Japan is, by every measure applied in Asia, a prosperous economic giant. During a decade’s absence, one kept hearing reports of the new prosperity, seeing photos of new trains, new superhighways, and Olympic stadiums. But returning to gauge personally the progress of ten years, one senses the fragility of this crowded nation’s economic boom. It