THE RECREATION ADVISORY COUNCIL 29 



of the American environment, of making it worthy of a country as 

 rich and as prosperous as ours, is a very big undertaking. It is one 

 that will take probably, in my judgment, closer to two decades than 

 one to accomplish and, as he indicated yesterday, many billions of 

 dollars wisely spent. 



There may be some who think that the most important thing is 

 some trick of organization. It seems to me that we are going to need 

 more importantly during that period of a decade or two a President 

 who really cares about these things, and I would hope a First Lady, 

 too. 



I think you are going to need a sense of crusade in the country. 

 I think you are going to have to have a change in priority, you are 

 going to have to have broad citizen participation and I think we 

 sitting here, who run the Federal departments, are going to have to 

 be deeply involved and care very deeply about it. I think there is 

 going to have to be coordination. I think you are going to have to 

 have ready access to the White House, to the President. I think 

 that we have this at the present time and I think that what we need 

 most of all are the programs and the policies that will implement 

 what obviously is a consensus of this conference that a whole wide 

 range of new action programs are needed. I don't think any simple 

 reorganization that I can think of is going to accomplish nearly as 

 much as the implementation of these new programs. 



Mr. WEAVER. I agree with what you have said and what Secretary 

 Udall said. I think that the machinery for operating these various 

 programs is less important than the fact that there is consultation, 

 that there is agreement. I think it is much more effective when this 

 cuts across departments and agencies, when men sit down, as we 

 have been sitting down, and make policy decisions which we all 

 agree are going to be ones that we enforce upon ourselves. 



Finally, I think by the very nature of this government, the heads 

 of the departments and agencies have to be responsible to the Con- 

 gress as well as to the Nation. I don't think that you can delegate 

 the operation of specific programs to any new advisory committee, 

 and I am sure Congress would not permit it anyway. 



Mr. WAGNER. I would agree. I would only add that the ques- 

 tion seems to imply that beauty is something which can be treated 

 in and of itself apart from ongoing programs. It seems to me that 

 we will do the job that must be done only as each of the operating 



