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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, October 19. 1957
ASC where were you?
Well, it looks like the library crisis may be past, and with any luck at all the Board of Regents will approve this afternoon the Chancellor's request for funds with which to keep the library open.
The ASC library committee, appointed Tuesday, was considering meeting tonight to discuss possible avenues it might, maybe, possibly explore in order to possibly do something, some time about the library situation. It couldn't be expected to reach any decisive conclusions in just one meeting, of course. Big decisions made by the ASC take a lot of time.
While the Council looked at the ceiling, studied the floor and generally put off acting on the library problem, (why appoint a committee this week when there will be a council meeting next week or the week after in which it might be done?), persons commonly identified with
thint segment of society known as "campus left" got the job done.
Acting Provost Francis Heller said yesterday: "The collection of the signatures was a commendable effort and is something of a milestone in the KU students' concern for a better University."
The students spoke and the Administration listened. But it is perhaps ironic that a group traditionally semi-scorned by the student body, effectively united and broadcasted the student protest, while the official channel for this voice remained mute.
The ASC has been caught with its pants down by the student left. The library crisis offered the Council a rare chance to prove it could do something besides appoint nebulous committees and rewrite constitutions, but it blew it.
Betsy Wright Editorial Editor
The 'peace people'
The "peace people" are going all out in their efforts this week to stop the Vietnam war.
"Stop the Draft Week" is bad news. It's bad news for several reasons.
The people involved seem to have an itch for publicity. They are not satisfied with the simple negotiation methods that they urge the United States to have with North Vietnam. They insist on creating doubt and dissention at home, so when American soldiers do return they find no peace, but more war.
A Boston University professor called President Johnson a hypocrite for going to church while he sends bombers over Vietnam. It seems, however, that those who are rushing to draft boards, federal officials and, even, the American people, demanding a halt to the war are hypocrites themselves.
A former U.S. representative and doctor-missionary in China, Walter Judd, who just returned from his seventh visit in South Vietnam, said that our zeal for negotiation is reducing our chances of getting it. He said that while things are getting better in Vietnam, it is worse here because of doubters and dissenters.
These antiwar efforts help the communist cause because they leave North Vietnam with the ever-flickering hope that the United States will pull out, giving North Vietnam a victory that they cannot achieve any other way. This would boost communist morale, to say the least.
A former White House adviser, Theodore C. Sorensen, has urged the halting of U.S. bombing, because it might be preventing peaceful negotiation. He wants the United States to suspend indefinitely and unconditionally the bombing of North Vietnam. He said this would test Hanio's sincerity and see how it will reciprocate.
This sounds fine, but Hanoi will do no more than it has done before—nothing. The only thing the United States "gains" by these attempts is the loss of an early victory and the eventual loss of more lives.
I am not pro any war. The loss of lives is bad in my book. I am not for the present situation. I feel that we've lost more lives than necessary because we haven't hit to win.
The other alternative proposed by "peace people," completely pulling out of Vietnam, seems fine, too, until one realizes that things would never be the same in Vietnam. The Communists would easily step right in and destroy any previous efforts by South Vietnam or the United States. This also would give them the morale and further strength to push into other areas, causing the same situation as that of Vietnam. Nor of primary importance is the loss of prestige for the United States.
But, any further attempts at peaceful negotiation or removal of troops will result only in further less for our country and other countries in the future. Peaceful negotiation or complete withdrawal are fine idealistically, but not realistically, in this case.
It seems that many of the "peace people" are going a little too far in their efforts to bring "peace" to the world. The incident in which some Americans in London handed their draft cards over to Viet Cong representatives is anti-climax to any true peace attempts demonstrators might be making. It is a vote for the communist cause, which is anything but peace-seeking.
I would, therefore, urge that each antiwar demonstrator, including those of the local SDS, look at himself and see how much of a "dove" he really it. Is he really helping to accomplish this peace, or is he helping to prolong the war and create another war in his own country? -Gal Habulzel
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
kansas
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence. Kans. board. Accomodation with service and polling place. Required to submit registration without regard to color, creed or national origin. Quotations expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
.. quotes ..
Sen. J. William Fulbright in "The Arrogance of Power"; "No student generation in recent history has faced both brighter lifetime possibilities and greater short-term uncertainties than the present one."
Kansan column
For your country
By Hamilton J. Salsich
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is proper and sweet to die for your country.
Decorum. It is proper. It is proper to maintain national rituals, and the heroic death of an American soldier is a ritual unsurpassed in grandeur and dignity. It is proper to obey your elders, and your elders have told you that war and soldiers and napalm and rifles and deaths are necessary for the preservation of democracy. It is proper to sacrifice your life to the cause at hand, for the preservation of a magnanimous cause is always more important than the preservation of a human life. It is proper, in fact, to realize that your life is not your own, but your country's, and that a country has the right—and the duty—to manipulate the lives of its citizens. And it is proper, finally, for you to be a patriot; it is proper for you to die when you are told to die.
Dulee. It is sweet. It is sweet right from the beginning, from that moment when you walk into the induction center because someone else has told you to walk into the induction center. It is sweet when you see the American flag on the wall, and you love it so much, and you ask it
quietly to protect you and to keep you safely warm. It is sweet when you sit down at command, stand up at command, move right at command, smile at command—sweet because you suddenly understand how your dog felt when he was first trained to jump for the bone. It is sweet when you swear on the Bible to be a good and loyal soldier, when you finally realize that the glory of a soldier is like the glory of Jesus. It is sweet when you begin to learn the art of soldiering—the art of obediently and efficiently killing people. And it is sweet, most of all, when you finally have the chance to practice that art on a battlefield—firing your gun at command, knocking down bodies at command, firing your gun at command, knocking down bodies at command.
And if you are lucky, it is very sweet. If you are lucky, the sweetest of all moments arrives—that split-second in the dark when the enemy knocks down your body, and you die at last for your country, sweetly with a smile on your face and a flag on your back.
You have made it.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
Letter to the Editor
AWS against proposed loans
The Associated Women Students Council is as dissatisfied as Mr. Northcutt (re: "Loan Preposal Faulty," Sept. 27) with the recommendation of the Fanel of Education innovation that an Educational Opportunities Bank be established to provide loans to college students. Any post-secondary student could borrow up to $15,000 to be repaid at a rate of one per cent of his annual income for 20 to 20 years.
To the Editor:
Mr. Northeutt mentioned that this proposal indentures the borrower for most of his post-graduate life. Moreover, such loans would allow a substantial increase in tuition at state-supported schools since tax payers would no longer be paying the bills.
But perhaps the most glaring drawback of the loan proposal is that it implies that American sc-
ciety as a whole does not benefit from higher education. A plan which allows the student to assume full financial responsibility for his education removes the incentive for government or private support of education. Acceptance of such a proposal would seem to indicate that the American public does not value the progress education makes possible enough to pay for it.
Of particular interest to the AWS Council is the problem in this type of loan program would create for women. The Panel, realizing that women average about one-third the life-time income of men, proposed that women repay their loans at three per cent instead of one per cent of their annual income. Such a plan would discourage a woman from securing a loan and thus, in many
cases, from continuing her education. It would also work a hardship on career women.
Moreover, it would seem that privately endowed institutions would benefit most from this loan proposal. The loans would not only allow more students to afford the more expensive private schools but the probable increase in state-school tuitions would allow private schools to compete financially with state-supported schools.
Like Mr. Northcutt, the AWS Council tells that this proposal has disadvantages far too great to be a practical solution to the problem of providing higher education for those who cannot afford it.
Jo Durand
Partlesville junior
end AWS Council member