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University Daily Kansan Thursday, October 26. 1961
On Campus Apathy
Apathy, as defined by Webster, is a lack of emotion or interest. Students at KU, as described by onlookers, have the qualities listed by Webster.
Last year, few people would have attempted to refute the KU student's lack of interest. This year there is a "revolt on the campus."
THE REVOLT IS NON-VIOLENT. IT IS not noisy or over-bearing. Sometimes it is so quiet we are hardly aware of its presence.
The revolt is a by-product of ideas, programs and a sudden interest in people, justice, equality, and politics. It is not a revolt for revolt's sake.
Awareness on the campus is shown in many ways, but mostly by action, by forming organizations that are beneficial for other people.
CONSIDER THESE RELATIVELY NEW organizations:
People-to-People, much publicized for it's national importance, was formed BECAUSE of apathy. P-T-P has created an understanding and a new spirit on the campus. It has created excitement among many students.
Two far-sighted students saw a need for communication between American students and foreign students. These two realized that little or nothing would be done by anyone else, so they took the steps to establish the individual system of communication. And they have been successful.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS COUNCIL CANNOT be called apathetic. It is interested in justice for a minority group. Their actions are non-violent.
although backed by emotion and personal convictions.
Young Americans for Freedom, the newest group to form, has said it is interested in creating awareness of national and international problems.
YAF says it is dedicated to what it considers basic American principles, advocating political and economic freedom and individual liberty. Their declared purpose is to inform other students of their beliefs and create in them an excitement for, a concern over and an interest in policies made by Congress that will directly or indirectly affect them as citizens.
Organizations on campus also try to acquaint the student with campus politics, their platforms, policies and purposes at KU.
Vox Populi and the University Party send representatives to organized living groups to inform the residents of issues concerning them.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
YET, WITH ALL OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS, their information and ideas, with all this revolt, what happens?
Some people are stirred, excited, interested. Other students are not.
Very little occurs that makes an onlooker change his opinion on KU apathy.
A student has an obligation to be aware of what is happening at his University, as much as a citizen does to be aware of what is happening in world events.
Those students who are aware now will be the informed, vital citizens of tomorrow. It is unfortunate their number is so few.
Israel and Russia Contrasted
Carrie Merryfield
To come to Israel with a knowledge of the Soviet Union is to sense vividly the contrast between two ways of national development, the authoritarian and the voluntary democratic. This contrast is all the more significant because of the frequently expressed theory that freedom is a luxury only an affluent society can afford, and that driving compulsion is the sole road to progress and prosperity for an economically retarded nation.
THE SOVIET method (employed even more ruthlessly by the Chinesese Communists) of achieving the twin goals of a highly industrialized society and a collectivized agriculture is characterized by an inhumanity that can only be appreciated by those who have seen it in operation. Stalin himself admitted to Churchill during a wartime conversation that the forcing of the peasants into collective farms was accompanied by brutalities on a scale matched only in a major war. Four million peasants staved to death in an avoidable political famine in 1932-33; millions more were deported to slave labor in North Russian and Siberian concentration camps.
Deportation was not limited to "kulaks"—i.e., peasants who did not want to submit to the new serifdom of the collective farm—but was applied indiscriminately to nationalist groups, dissident Communists, Poles and other inhabitants of areas overrun by the Red Army. In addition, under Stalin there were massive deportations on racial grounds; not only did innumerable individuals become "unpersons," but whole ethnic groups were simply erased from the Soviet map.
HOW DIFFERENT has been the record in Israel! Although a very small society compared with the huge Soviet Union, its enormous problems of survival and economic viability might seem to have required a strong authoritarian hand. The absorption of a million immigrants with extremely different traditions and cultural backgrounds was a tremendous task, even if one takes full account of generous aid from abroad, especially from the American Jewish community.
pioneer Zionists, choosing of their own free will to live on a communal basis.
Yet Israel has remained faithful to the principles of voluntarism and democracy. When some recent Soviet visitors saw an Israeli "kibbutz," or communal farm, they could hardly believe that no armed guards were needed to prevent the colonists from stealing grain from the common store. Here in a nutshell was the profound difference between Russian peasants, reluctantly herded into a system which they detested, and idealistic
APART FROM universal military service, which is a national necessity in a small country surrounded by avowed enemies, the Israeli citizen is left to the free exercise of his own judgment. He may live on a communal farm, he may try his hand at a more individualistic form of farming, or he may engage in some business or profession.
No authority comes to the newly arrived immigrant in Israel and tells him what he must do. Some financial inducements are offered by the World Jewish Agency to those who are willing to go to the "development areas," where living conditions are still somewhat harder and more primitive than in the settled communities. But if the immigrant chooses to try his luck in Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem, no one will stop him, nor will anyone prevent his leaving the country altogether, if he so wishes.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
AS IS USUALLY the case, political democracy goes hand in hand with a free and mixed economy. About 50 per cent of Israeli industry is in private hands; about 35 per cent belong to the Histadrut, the powerful trade-union federation; about 15 per cent is Government-owned. Israel's economy is dynamic and free of stagnation or unemployment. Local authorities are convinced that they could easily absorb another million or two immigrants within the present boundaries.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
Ron Gallagher Editorial Editor Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield, Assistant Editorial Editors.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
These facts seem to support the theory that individual freedom is entirely compatible with economic growth and progress. As such, they should carry special weight in the underdeveloped African and Asian countries where Israeli technical aid missions are now active.
Tom Brown Business Manager Don Gergick, Advertising Manager; Bonnie McCullough, Circulation Manager: David Weins, National Advertising Manager; Charles Martinache, Classified Advertising Manager; Hal Smith, Promotion Manager.
(From "Two Roads to National Development" by William Henry Chamberlin in the Oct. 16, 1961 New Leader)
Editor's note: We strive to print all letters that are in good taste and deal with public issues, as distinguished from attacks on personalities. Due to the limitations of space, the printing of letters of more than 250 words may be delayed.
Editor's Note
"YAGOT A PACKAGE FROM YER MA MARKED 'PERISHABLE'—IT WAS "
From the Magazine Rack
The Control of War
By Charles J. Hitch and Roland M. McKean
We might establish a way for either nation to clear up ambiguity "if it wishes to do so." Suppose there is an accidental nuclear explosion in one country or, during a local war, a large group of bombers is sent out to deliver small nuclear or conventional bombs. Each side will be fearful of a pre-emptive strike by the other and for that reason may itself consider a pre-emptive strike. Anxiety will mount rapidly. A quick decision will have to be made. In this situation each side may desperately want to convey to the other that it had, or has, no intention of attacking.
We need some means for the nation initiating the provocative incident to prove quickly that it is not planning a surprise attack. Or a way for both nations to prove simultaneously that they are not launching attacks. Mere assertions will not be enough, but parading corroborative evidence before inspectors or radar or television cameras may be reassuring. To be sure, proof will become increasingly difficult when striking forces consist largely of missiles, but this is all the more reason for hard thinking about a "modus operandi" for situations of this sort."
By Harrison Brown and James Real
Tens of thousands of scientists and technicians have devoted all of their professional lives to the invention and construction of weapons. A majority of those who went to work "after" World War II are convinced that weaponry is a way of life for themselves and expect the U.S.-Soviet contest to continue forever. Many of them are articulate and highly valued consultants in every walk of American life, from the Congressional Committee to the P.T.A.
The military leaders themselves are quite naturally not enthusiastic for disarmament or for any steps that might curtail the freedom of action of the armed services. There is rather clearly a military elite emerging in the United States which is dedicated to a position of perpetual hostility towards the Soviet Union and which wields enormous political as well as military power.
Although these men are not generally openly political, they are in every sense the paramilitary-civilian soldiers. They have spent most of their adult lives in the direct or secondary employment of one or another of the services, and their sympathy for and concurrence with their uniformed colleagues are often marked and open. Should a showdown between the military and the civilian sectors occur, this group could be relied upon to staunchly back the handlers of the weapons they have so devotedly evolved.
The certainty of this wholly passive operation has in it a genuine deterrent effect. For an enemy attack is decided upon only after calculation of the damage it will inflict. The damage includes lives. If a proper Civil Defense is believed able to save half the lives in an impact area, the immediate damage in that respect would be reduced one-half, and the enemy calculations would be adjusted accordingly.
By Mark S. Watson
By Thomas K. Finletter
A Deterrent Force cannot surely guarantee the peace, and I make two conclusions from that. One is that we must try with all the determination of which we are capable for a world disarmament agreement, for that may save us from nuclear war. The second is that we must build up our military strength greatly and thereby put off nuclear war for as long as we can, and thus buy time within which we can try to persuade ourselves and the world to give up this obsolete and horrible business of war.
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