[Beginning of May], 1973
A Spate of Litigations
The Watergate scandal triggered a spate of public charges and hearings. They attract so much attention that all other matters are pushed into the background. Thus, the visit of Chancellor Willy Brandt in Washington was hardly taken notice of. What an irony! Just as the talks on the Security Conference in Europe and a number of other important issues should get going, the most important partner is being paralyzed because of a break-in burglary attempt.
May 17, 1973
Watergate Senate Hearings
Today the Senate Select Committee began its public hearings on the Watergate affair. Senator Sam Ervin from North Carolina, who chairs the Committee, has made it his task to find out the truth about Watergate and to make it unsparingly known to the American public. The questioning is proceeding without excuses. As the hearings are shown on national television, the public gets an insight into how the immediate associates of the President had planned a burglary, how enormous sums of campaign contributions were diverted, and how an obvious breach of the law should have been covered up. But in the center of this sordid affair stands the question to what extent the President was involved.
[Sam(uel) J. Ervin, Jr., was born in Morganton, North Carolina, in 1896. A jurist by profession, he served for decades as a judge on the bench; U.S. Senator, Democrat from North Carolina, 1954-75. Ervin was a “country lawyer,” as he used to call himself. His folksiness made him a popular figure, and as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate affair in 1973, he became a nationally known prominent personality.]
May 24, 1973
The Human Tragedy
The Watergate scandal has consumed innumerable human lives and careers leading to personal tragedies. People who blindly followed orders were dragged innocently guilty into a power struggle. Behind all this were the temptations of political power, lies and defamations. All stages of despair and hopelessness are being passed through with no way out of this conflict of loyalty.
South Bend, [End of May], 1973
Gasoline Shortage
When an attendant at the Standard gas filling station told me: “Sorry, ten gallons only!” – I realized that the gasoline shortage in America was serious. Then, it also came to my attention that more and more small filling stations had to shut down because they had no gasoline. The shortage was critical for the first time over the Memorial Day Weekend. The fact that America does not have enough crude oil on its own has at first to be grasped with all its consequences. It hits the country to the core, for American life is being controlled by the motor. The economy as well as private life depends on motor vehicles. The energy and gasoline shortage will also have a psychological effect. America has always been used to draw on abundant resources, for raw materials have been available to a nearly unlimited extent. With 6% of the world’s population, America consumes annually 40% of the world’s energy supply. It is not easy for Americans to change to conserving energy and to use material goods more sparingly.