Page 2
University Daily Kansan Friday, Jan. 12, 1962
A Point of Difference
It is interesting to reflect on the reasons for Khrushchev's de-Stalinization program and the quarrel between the Soviet Union and Red China on this matter.
The de-Stalinization program in Russia has many causes. Among the most important is that the tactics of Stalin are no longer necessary to consolidate and maintain a revolutionary government and carry out a forced program of development. The rising class of party and industrial leaders is a group that did not take part in the revolution. It has grown up in the society it established. The revolution is history to them.
BUT THE EVIDENCES of change are many. The secret police armies were disbanded after Stalin's death. Political opposition does not necessarily carry the death penalty now, as it did in Stalin's time. A party leader may suffer exile or demotion, but he is not likely to be killed for causing Khrushchev trouble.
The Red Chinese leaders, however, feel that they need a regime like Stalin's to carry out
their program of forced development. It should also be remembered that the revolution in China is only a little over a decade old. It is still aggressive and has not had the time to consolidate its control to the degree that would make it feel safe.
RED CHINA IS characterized by many of the things that marked Russia under Stalin. Political opposition or resistance to a government program may well mean death. Force is being employed to make the peasants accept the government's agriculture programs.
Thus the Soviet government has, in a sense, matured. It is an accepted element on the world scene. The Red Chinese government, however, is still a revolutionary one.
The Soviet Union is still strictly controlled by Khrushchev and his colleagues, but the turn from the more violent methods of the Stalinist era is a sign of change in the Soviet system. It has been a change for the better.
William H. Mullins
It Looks This Way...
(Editor's note: Several members of the International Club have raised objections in the past to the present organization of the club. Some of the members have proposed changes. Their proposals are presented here so that the members of the club may study them. The club will hold an election meeting tonight.)
We are proposing this program as a constructive alternative to the way the International Club is being run. With 400 members the club is larger than it has ever been before and it must be run dynamically to meet the challenge of the increasing international interest.
Organizational
1. Committee meetings must be held regularly every week, so that the previous club meeting can be reviewed and improvements made where necessary.
2. The committee meetings shall be held in public and shall be open to the press and to the members of the International Club; time shall be set aside so that the latter can make criticisms or suggestions.
3. The committee shall be enlarged for greater efficiency by appointment of a Program Director and Publicity Director, as regular officers.
4. The Mexico Trip organizers must report regularly to the Executive Committee on the progress of the arrangements.
Practical
5. Money should be appropriated for improving the music facilities of the club.
6. There should be communication with other International Clubs and guest programs should be encouraged.
7. The organized houses should be invited to present skits and talent shows
8. The club should encourage panel discussions on international topics with the cooperation of other campus groups.
9. The committee should always be prepared to present a good substitute program if the planned program should fall through.
10. The club should try to present a short program along with refreshments if the University Films end by 9:30 p.m. (any kind of short and light entertainment).
In summary, we would like to emphasize that the objections of the signatories who have taken an active part in the club for the last 3-4 years, are not based on personalities, but are simply concerned with issues. The Executive Committee does not have our confidence, and the program which we are presenting for the revival of the International Club is the measure of what they have failed to do, and of our discontent.
Christos Constantinides, ex-president Denis Kennedy, ex-vice president Luis Mayor, ex-vice president Petra Moore, ex-secretary Augustine G. Kyei, ex-financial sec
Augustine G. Kyei, ex-financial secretary
Daily Hansan
Telephone Viking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
University of Kansas student newspaper
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $$ a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
**Tom Turner** ... Managing Editor
Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Assistant Managing Editors; Kelly Smith, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
Unification In Europe
Q: Please hazard a guess as to the possibility of a unified Western Europe during our lifetime.
A: I...I would have thought the chances are extremely good. We are entering into this particular negotiation to enter into the Common Market which will lead to a strengthening of the unity of Western Europe, in all good faith ...
We have come to the conclusion, as I said in my remarks, that the danger that is threatening us in the world is so great that even though it may cause a certain amount of uneasiness within the United Kingdom, uneasiness among other members of the Commonwealth, we have got, all of us, to make certain sacrifices for the general good...
Now, it is my impression that if we succeed and if the other countries who are applying for membership succeed in their applications, we will have established a unified Western Europe...
And I would think that this would come about not only in our lifetime but in the next five years.
(From a question and answer period in which reporters were questioning Sir David Ormsby Gore, British ambassador to the United States)
Anti-Isolationism
One of the primary functions of the elementary school teacher is to give the students a meaningful picture of the United States. But many teachers, especially those who have attended state universities, have only academic knowledge of the character and regional differences of vast sections of the country.
An attack on this problem of provincialism has been launched by the University of Massachusetts, Florida State University and the University of New Mexico. A program started this last will enable juniors majoring in elementary education to spend an entire semester at one of the cooperating universities.
Professor Vincent Rogers of the University of Massachusetts, who has been instrumental in starting the program, noted that there has been increasing pressure on state universities to enroll "home-grown kids." Few of the students attending these institutions are from out of state.
The exchange students will not only have an opportunity to learn about contrasting areas. They will also be able to take advantage of special offerings, such as Florida State University's program of foreign language instruction for the elementary school, the University of New Mexico's program of teaching retarded children and the University of Massachusetts' program for children with speech and hearing problems.
EATON'S FRIDAY CARTOON
(From Nov. 12 New York Times)
In utopian literature, "Looking Backward" occupies a significant place, and some even argue that it was a forerunner of the science fiction of today. Of the latter view, possibly so, but it is doubtful that Edward Bellamy had a Buck Rogers bent. He was writing a message, as Howells was to do a few years later with "A Traveler from Altruria," as Huxley was to do in our time with "Brave New World" and Orwell with "1984."
"Looking Backward," in fact, should be read, along with these books, as commentaries on American civilization. Bellamy's book appeared in 1887, and it was the imaginative depiction of society in the year 2000. But it also was a strong commentary on life in the Gilded Age, for Bellamy's hero awakens in 2000 after going to sleep in a specially sealed-off room, and looks back on the world of 1887.
LOOKING BACKWARD, by Edward Bellamy. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents.
When the novel appeared, it caused a considerable sensation. Sales were rapid and widespread, and societies grew up establishing a kind of cult around the work. Its importance to its own time and to the history of American literature can hardly be understated.—Calder M. Pickett, Professor of Journalism
THE WORLD INTO WHICH HE EMERGES is an idealistic world, a socialistic world. If the world of 1961 becomes Bellamy's world of 2000 (and it scarcely seems likely) it will be a world free of commercial and pecuniary influence. There will be no advertising. There will be considerable leisure. There will be happy, contented, adjusted people, and More's "Utopia" will have come true.
*****
INVISIBLE MAN, by Ralph Ellison. Signet, 75 cents.
As far away from Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery" or the idyllic tales of Uncle Remus as a book can be is this amazing novel that appeared in 1952, won the National Book Award, and established Ralph Ellison as one of America's finest writers. The novel has held up much better than did those of Richard Wright, and it still is an enormously effective tale of a Negro in the white man's world.
Ellison's hero is simply called "Boy," or "Brother," a young man up from the South, an ousted student from a good Negro college, a boy who already has undergone disillusionment about the white world. New York he serves to open his eyes further. He is honest and idealistic and he wants to work for his people, and not as an "Uncle Tom," for he does not agree with his grandfather's idea that Negroes should "overcome 'em with yesses" and "undermine 'em with grins."
Harlem becomes the world of "Boy," and the Communist party—the "Brotherhood"—his career. Like Richard Wright, this Negro hero eventually learns that he is being used. And the book comes to a violent climax in a Harlem race riot.
Final truth comes to "Boy" when he comes to realize that to many he is a faceless individual, no "spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe," no "Hollywood-movie ectoplasm." He is invisible because people refuse to see him.
Ellison's feeling for language and his ability to probe inside the mind are amazing. His description of a Negro messiah, "Ras the Exhorter," is vivid and stirring—"A new Ras of a haughty, vulgar dignity, dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain; a fur cap upon his head, his arm bearing a shield, a cape made of the skin of some wild animal around his shoulders."—CMP