mi·cro·cosm [mahy-kruh-koz-uh m]
n.
The Florida Times Union
U.S. – Indians’ Squabble
Mimics World Issues
The Florida Times-Union
Thursday
November 20, 1958
p. 8
As if the United States were not already having enough trouble with the Communist bloc in the United Nations, Florida’s Miccosukee Seminole Indians may carry a complaint to that international organization and it could be troublesome to this country.
The Miccosukees are contemplating such an approach after they failed to receive support from the British, French, and Spanish embassies in an effort to obtain use of 240, 000 acres of Everglades land from the United States and Florida. They presented their proposal to the embassies on buckskin scrolls. If the request goes through, these scrolls could nearly rival the Dead Sea Scrolls in historical significance.
The attaches at the British and Spanish posts put their finger on a live international issue when they said the matter was an international problem and therefore one that their governments were reluctant to become involved in.
The label, “internal affair,” covers a multitude of sins.
Right now France, despite the advent of De Gaulle, is still having serious troubles with the Algerians. And when other nations express a concern about the situation there, the French have told them to keep hands off, for it is purely a domestic proposition.
And then there was Russia’s brutal quelling of the Hungarian revolt. When the United Nations timidly expressed disapproval of the assault of the hapless Hungarians, the Soviet leaders said it was strictly a family fight and no concern of outsiders. If that were the case, one wonders why Russian tanks, artillery and troops were rushed to Hungary.
The United States should heed the warning in the Russian and French experiences, that domestic problems – if left long unsettled can grow and have international implications. If not this internal dispute with the Indians, it may be another.
The United States Government already has had a protracted war with the ancestors of these same Seminoles. It was prosecuted about as unsuccessfully as the French so far have conducted their fight with the Algerian Rebels.
And the dispatching of bayoneted federal troops to settle an internal flare up in Arkansas last year brought on comparisons with Soviet intervention in Hungary.
In light of all the connotations in the term, “internal matter,” one can only hope that the differences between the United States and the Miccosukee are speedily settled.