54 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



the President and considerable acceptance on the part of the people. 

 We have to utilize that, mold it, parlay it, if you please, into some- 

 thing with muscle that will make it possible to do this job. That isn't 

 much to start with. It is not much to start with, contrasted with 

 the other things that the government and the governmental agencies 

 all down the line have to do. Their jobs are comparatively simple. 

 When I build a road I can set up somebody to do that. This is more 

 difficult. This is the first thing. It is kind of amorphous. 



The second fact of life is that we can't set up a line agency in the 

 Federal Government to go out and do this job. What actually is 

 going to happen is that virtually all departments of government must 

 be inveigled somehow into adding a homemade dimension to the 

 already complicated job they are already having trouble doing. And 

 then somehow or other we have got to infuse our consciousness of 

 natural beauty into all the confusion of functions of all the agencies 

 of 50 States and well over 100,000 localities. 



This again is a matter of influence. It is influence with muscle 

 and this is something new. The third fact of life is that this is essen- 

 tially a new role for the Government. Since the Government is going 

 to do this, it means the Federal Government. Probably some new 

 mechanism will have to be invented to make it work, if it can work. 



So what we have done here now is to try to discover where we 

 start inventing. 



The first thing we must have, quite obviously, is something or 

 somebody or some groups of somebodies in the Federal Government 

 whose chief function is to set policy, create plans, mediate the in- 

 numerable problems that are going to develop among the various 

 levels of government, among people, among business and conserva- 

 tionists. This in itself is a lifetime job to supplement State tech- 

 nicians with Federal experience and talent, to promote and encour- 

 age State action, and to expedite that action in every possible way. 

 Internally, it should promote coordination among various interested 

 departments. This suggests that the Federal organization should 

 be simple, authoritative, and direct-acting. 



It demands that the key Federal agency, which is the Recreation 

 Advisory Council, be uncluttered by departmental bias or interde- 

 partmental bureaucratic pressures, because this not only interferes 

 with internal coordination, but disturbs Federal-State relationships 

 in any comprehensive project. The Council therefore should be 

 directly responsible to the Office of the President, and it would be 



