Spring Hopes Eternal

Spring has been assigned many desirable qualities. It has been variously cast as the season for love, for dreaming, for turning over a new leaf, for planning, for starting off-with a clean slate. This spring, we fear, will be a season for scrounging.

Spring is not a good in itself, but it is supposed to lead to something good. Classes and study cards lead to graduation, perhaps with honors; plans and dreams to fruition; love to all sorts of complications. Spring is a means, a road, an open door, etc., or at least used to be.

Last spring took the edge off this whole theory. The promise faded into an invasion in Korea which appeared just three days after spring had been packed away. The false promise of last year--and we cannot help but consider last spring guilty of a deception--has infected the coming season with a pessimism and cynicism that will permit of little planning, dreaming, clean slates, or new leaves.

This spring will be a period of exemption, a breathing spell, something to hang on to, enjoy, and take advantage of. Depending on what some of the large-scale domestic planners and dreamers in Washington finally decide, it may or may not bring possibilities for constructive fruitions, commissions, or what have you. Depending on what the even largerscale planners and dreamers in several national capitals decide, it may or may not see a way out of the pessimism and cynicism. But whatever decisions are made, the springs of the future are going to need a good deal of resuscitation to recover from last year's breach of faith.