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Show King Asks Colleges jTo Teach Russian J Rep. David S. King (D-Utah) jthis week called upon American colleges to seriously consider making Russian one of the basic language requirements for the .D. degree in scientific fields. "The pitched contest in technology tech-nology demands that we master the Russian language, just as the Russians are mastering English. A linguistic advantage could be the factor which ultimately tips the balance of power in this great struggle." I Russian eminence in the sciences, sci-ences, "which has no global parallel now except in our own scientific prowess," makes it important im-portant that our graduates in the science know Russian above any other foreign language, he said. i Mr. King said he was spurred to make his proposal by testimony testi-mony before the House Science and Astronautics Committee that j has clearly "shown that the Russians, Rus-sians, because of superior lan- guage skills, are doing a vastly superior job of translating and communicating scientific infor-mation." infor-mation." J Mr. King is a member of the Science and Astronautics Com- mittee which has heard some 60 hours of testimony from key sci-l sci-l entists and administrators in the i nation's defense establishment in j the past three weeks. The committee Tuesday and j Wednesday heard Dr. Herbert F. York, director of Defense Re- search and Engineering, who 1 observed in response to questions from Mr. King that the Russians ; att his point hold obvious lin-; lin-; guistic advantages. Mr. York told the committee (Continued on Page 8) King Asks Colleges To Teach Russian (Continued from Page 1) that most Russian scientists read and speak English. Mr. King observed that it has been "repeatedly and painfully poinetd out that few American scientists know Russian." The Utah Congressman said that members of the Science and Astronautics Committee who participated in the committee's recent inspection of the Cape Canaveral and Redstone installations installa-tions were told that the Russians in recent years have been translating trans-lating every useful article, book and journal which American science sci-ence produces. "The Russians waste no time in the process. They have complete com-plete translations of our books within days after their publication. publica-tion. "By painful contrast, the U.S. has gone to little trouble to translate Russian scientific publications, pub-lications, despite the fact that our Library of Congress has the finest Slavic languages library outside the Soviet Union." i |
