Poet, author, fanner United States Senator from Minnesota and

Poet, author, fanner United States Senator from Minnesota and candidate for the presidency, Eugene McCarthy now lives in Hawlin Hollow, Woodville.

I am beginning to have serious doubts about the general good accomplished through the Girl Scout Cookie sales. My doubts are in no way related to the good things that are accomplished through the scout organization. It is the side effects, the collateral damage, as nuclear bomb experts would say, that have begun to worry me. The cookie sales, I am informed, were initiated as a way of raising money for the Girl Scouts long ago, when colesterol levels and over-weight had not yet been identified as national problems.

We may have a classical example of how things good in every respect, or in nearly every respect, when introduced and even on through years after their introduction, have unforeseen, sometimes harmful, consequences in later years. One can dte examples from the historical record, religions and religious orders, political organizations, even parties, reform groups of various kinds, who having accomplished the reform for which they were organized go looking for new reform projects and in their zeal either for reform ' or for continued existence • undertake to reform things | that are better left alone.

Among current organizations Common Cause is possibly the best example of goodness gone awry, demonstrating in its current operations what Gilbert Chesterton said was the historical and recurring achievement of Puritans, namely, “killing St. George, but keeping the dragon.”

The corrupting force of the Girl Scout Cookie sales is not one of substance, comparable in any ways to that of the Puritans or of Common Cause. It is more procedural and accessory. I have observed at least four such bad side effects.

The first is a general anxiety in the community