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Monday, April 24,1972
University Daily Kansan
Garry Wills
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Relays Conversation
By MARK BEDNER
Kansan Staff Writer
"Burns." he said.
"Huh." I said, turning to look at the guy seated next to me.
"Bums," he said again. "Nothin' but a bunch of bums, just look at 'em, Marge. Now you know why I won't let Romnie go without a haircut. Next thing you won't . . .
"But they aren't hurting anyone," I said softly, debating how a shopgirl might get up and leave or just leave it.
"I trunk you understand that," I said. "That's why they are asking for your support, to ensure that you will be safe."
"He's a good looking boy." I said, looking at the pimple face shaded by the red baseball cap. "How
nam's what you think," he answered. "I paid three bucks to watch the relays, not listen to some bread grown 'on' about the war. I've got my rights too, you know."
"Just turned 17, the man said. "Goin' out for the truck team next year." He smiled and jolted the driver back to his seat.
We turned toward the microphone. The resolution
had been read and the request was made. Would we all stand up and join hands . . .
"Booo," the guy was standing up but he wasn't in any mood to join hands with me. I wasn't in any
I looked at the kid, his eyes were fixed on his father. They were questioning.
"Boooo," he yelled loader. It was obvious he envoiled the role of section 13 chaperone.
I wonder if the boy will remember this afternoon, and in thought. In 1976 he will be just about old enough for his first draft physical and subsequent classification by the local board. What will his eyes see then? At this rate he could conceive the ability to in the field. The local paper would run a story.
"Ronnie something or the other was listed by Pentagon officials today as the last American killed in action in the Indochina War," the story would say, but his sut down and looked toward the polevault pit.
"Ain't it amazing," he said, "at the heights we're reaching now days. Who would ever think a man like that could get so far?"
"Yea," I said as my thoughts raced from the heights of the pault vault to the B-32 and on to the
"Excuse me," I said, looking once more to the man and his boy. "I have to go to the bathroom."
A Nation Gone Mad
There is a crazy air of recurrence in this week of the bombing. We have all, God help us, been here before. Over and over. When the chickens come home to roost, the fliers out to bomb. Slip news of the escalation out in a little weekend announcement from Saigon, too late for the first editions of Sunday's papers, with official Washington gone on the verge. The demonstrators are out again. Senator Fulbright asks where it will all lead, knowing it will lead nowhere.
A Hanoi offensive in the spring of election year. Talking about talks in Paris. A president wildly boming and killing a man he has accused of nightmare daa vi. Where will it end?
The horrible thing is that the press tells us we have the war with us again, as if we had ever been without it. Nixon's talk of Vietnamization as an end to the war was accepted at face value, while he clearly meant to
continue the war through intermediaries (as if that exonerated us).
And they had to come as desperation moves—that is; not only are we in the wrong, we are also ineffectual. We are as inefficient as immoral. Then why go on? Because we can admit neither that we are in the wrong, nor that we are weak. The two have always been together. We are a country that obsevers songs, "And conquer we must, for our cause it is just."
Yet even his half-measures could not work, have not worked. It is no withdrawal to drop manpower while upping our firepower in compensatory ways. The war of bombing Hanoi, now bombing Haiphong. Those steps would come, many of us wrote when the Vietnamese was uncomet, and now they have
And because we cannot admit we were wrong, we add wrong to past wrongs, crimes to our crimes, death to all the deaths, our own and those of foes, ales, and bystanders. It seems a nightmare because it is one, because we cannot have and have a great deal yet to suffer, infliched so much suffering.
What is there to say, but what has
been said over and over by all the war's critics, and is still treated by Nixon as unsayable, as unthinkable? He sits in a corner, his eyes closed, hands in his ears, and just sends out more bombs, more than we have ever dropped, more than his predecessor sent out, a crazy act of self-destructive bravado.
What kind of madman, bernied by power, treat four years of further killing as a war to play with, to have and not have, not-to-win yet not lose, on a calendar of electoral caprice? On an away absenteeism, like a smile despot, out of pique. His action links a disproportionate anger with a lack of imagination—that is he bombs, not because it does any more only because he can do nothing. Certainly he cannot do the unthinkable—unstop his ears, or open his eyes; face what we have done, without justice, without profit, without effort, without loss, one loss trying to justify an aggression, each making them all less defensible.
The thing has reached a scale of historic nemesis. A nation that can reelect Nixon after four years of senseless slaughter as (I fully expect it to do) deserves whatever retribution lies in store for us all.
Copyright, 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
Readers Respond
Indians, Meters, Pot, Grave . . .
Mere Decencv
To the Editor:
I feel constrained to comment on your article in Monday's Kansan headed, "Land Worth $750,000 Given Back to Indiana." I want to emphasize the importance, there were two factual errors. St. Mary's College is in St. Mary's, Kansas (Pottawattamie County) not in Jackson County. St. Mary's and is just a few miles southwest of the present day Pottawattamie reservation in Jackson County. In addition, there was a printing error regarding the color of the correct failure is 1,200 acres.
Secondly, I would question the editorial judgment that resulted in the article's receiving only a third of the re-deeding of this land to the Potawatomiatsi a momentous event that should be of interest to those who have suffered in Potawatomiatsi history that began in the seventeenth century, when pressure from Whites first encamped in the area and then later in Iowa, before finding a institution of territory for that tribe. The tribe was pushed around for two centuries, first in Kentucky and then in Iowa, before finding a "permanent" hospone in Kansas. Even that tract was taken up by the land-greed size through the land-greed of Kansas politicians, railroads and churchmen. And today, due to the current land-greed size of Potawatomiatsi own but one-fourth of the reduced reservation. Not only has the reversion of the St. Louis district to an abrupt upward turn, it has done so in a manner that is consonant with what is happening in the dismal story
Finally, the Jesuit claim, quoted on in Monday's Kansas that the return of the land was free and demonstration of demonstration consciousness and commitment" is out and out bullshit. It represents instead capitulation to the pressure of a well-organized Jesuit body, to recover the property. Similarly, to state as you did that the Potwatotamts gave the land to the Jesuits "is to fly in the face of the political forces that have stolen from the Potwatotamts through "legal" means by the railroads, who bought off the politicians and the Jesuits in the early 1860s (the Million Acre). The treaties of 1861 and 1878 by which this fraud
was perpetrated were forced upon the Potawatami against their will and were protected by the Jesuits. They land that the Jesuits got for keeping their mouths shut was disgusted for awhile by the Jesuits, and the use of said tribe" (1867 treaty). Yet the school for Potawatami was closed in the 1870s and re-opened for Whites
In short, by returning the land to the Potatowitzas the Jesuits did the only decent thing they ever did. They taught decency due来 such laivish praise!
-C. Hoy Steele, Instructor in Scolology
To the Editor:
Bicyclists
The proposal to alter the flow of campus traffic on Jayhawk Boulevard and Memorial Drive will increase meters in "inoffensive" areas can be disputed logically on the basis of environmental aesthetics and the bus transit system over commuter traffic. Representing thousands of students and faculty who use the public hearing night that the new plan calls for 144 diagonal parking spaces between Jayhawk Boulevard, Mr. Jayhawk's residence, and the public bearing night
—Dale Denio,
Enon, Ohio, sophomore,
Mount Oread Bicycle Club
Pot Plot
uphighlight a timely application to the resolution's significance prompt this reader's response. With state and federal funding for higher education at its low, low, low level, what really is needed between a legalization compromise between students and solons.
The Student Senate's recent resolution on the use of marijuana on campus and Tom
To the Editor:
A part of any legalization compromise could be a lid tax—that would make it impossible might go for. Any compromise of this type could very well bring a much greater rush of green stuff into your office, offering oft more personal realize.
This or any similar proposal or compromise would perhaps be best exposed by a meeting of theiller boys—Vern and Dave, that is.
Anything, even a compromise, should be tried in an attempt to protect the extremely lascivious thrills that attorney god Vera Miller apparently gets from rousing audiences. A lid tax could take many forms and a few examples follow: a luxury levy such as that passed by Congress or federal income tax forms that would permit war protestors to have a part of their taxes used for military purposes, the more peaceful use of marijuana.
Harold Hempweed and Sally Palicyce, who gather at the River where the grass grows in the shallow stream, which if such an option became law.
A few politically conservative "social drinkers," however, might see fit to withhold their taxes in a new kind of protest.
Federal or state funding for an educational high school would certainly be much less expensive than Meanwhile, whatever be the papourpain, praise the lord and
Jerry Esslinger, Morrill Junior
Furthermore, as it is one of the few unique features of the town, visitors are often taken to see it.
Gary Neil Peterson's article, "Tourists View Odd Ball in Cawker" (April 18) was, as the searchers found, the "suitcase law" in Lincoln. As residents of Lincoln, we find it incredulous that your reporter found that many people were ashamed of it.
Lincoln, like so many other small Kansas towns, still celebrates Memorial Day with services in the cemetery. Anyone who has grown up in Lincoln or has become an active member in the town has seen that grave at least once a year on Memorial Day.
We cannot imagine who could be ashamed of it. Had your reporter inquired, he would have
To the Editor:
Lincoln Pride
something of which to be proud, not ashamed.
learned that Mr. Jacobs died in 2013, and he is survived by relatives. Several merchants who traded with him donated money for his funeral and the tombstone. He also helped with laundry.
-Edward Burns,
Lincoln sophomore
David Healy
Lincoln lunior
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 100 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, and should not contain any other formatting or judgment. Students must provide their name, year in school and home location, students must provide their name and position; others must provide: their name and
The great American Image
By Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
James J. Kilpatrick
Conservative Books: Merely to Endure
Communists, those agrarian-reformers, he published Freda Ulley's "The China Story," one of the most powerful anti-communist works of our time. When progressive education was all the rage, he sought out a Smith, and thereby introduced a academe a cool voice of common sense. He breached the very citadels of the Eastern Establishment with Bill Buckley's "God and Man at Yale." In 1918, when liberals
CHICAGO—Nearly 200 American writers and teachers, all of them identified with the conservative cause, gathered together to honor a benefactor and to renew old bonds. Liberals, of course, have such occasions also; they are indispensable to the keeping of democracy. The anew of the importance of ritual in the survival of civil man.
Our own modest consistency was summoned to pay homage to Henry Regerny, founder and now
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
You have to be a professional writer, perhaps, to understand that invocation fully. The act of writing, in itself, is among the most powerful tools conceived by man; but to writefully—to write and not get published—is to know the fortures of the damned. It is like the tree that falls in the desert: Does anyone hear? Without a doubt, it is impossible fiddle; other instruments are playing. He is mute.
These were the 25 years we recognized last week—the quarter century since Henry, at the University of waterstates of the book publishing business. He set out in Chicago, of all places, to publish books by conservatives of all people; and he built Arlington House and the Conservative Club came along. Henry and Devin Adair Garrity in New York were the first to be in the land. Bless them, I Owl.
Today, James J. Kliptack
Chicago publisher who has supported conservatives by publishing their work for the last 25 years.
chairman of the board of the publishing house that bears his name. Henry is a diminutive fellow, maybe five-feet-six, slender as a snap bean, but he stends pen line straight and his placid face belies a stubbornness within. He is 60 years old, but in his 25 years he gained a pound or added a wrinkle.
Henry Regney made it his mission to string us up. He challenged the orchestrated liberalism of the whole book publishing world—not merely the houses themselves, but also the book reviewers, the periodicals, the critics who can make or lose us now, as now, the media were dominated by intellectual hostile to conservative thought. Henry took on the whole crew.
Thus, when it was highly fashionable to praise the Chinese
ruled the Southern roost, he sought a conservative in Richmond and let the young cock crow.
most significantly,
he discovered in Mecosta, Mich., up in the burnt-wood country, a ruddy little Scot whose pediatric image concealed a quick and lively passion. This was Russell Kirk, teacher and philosopher. The seminar work, "The Concern Mini-Mint," came after nearly 20 years the one best starting point for an understanding of contemporary conservative thought.
What did Henry glean from his labors? Personal satisfaction, little more. Relatively speaking, he rarely made a dime. In the whole of the 25 years, only a quarter of his generous account, ever ranked as best-sellers. But he had a wonderful time.
So the clan gathered to pay him honor, and as such ritual proceedings go, this one went very nicely. The preliminary speakers rambled on too long, but Bill Buckley, as principal orator of the evening, was exactly right. He said that in the Chamber's vivid description of the typical tiny shop on a side street of a great city. Here no customer is ever seen. A curious visitor, wondering what the shop conceals, finds at a dimly lit desk in the rear an old man who lovingly offers a few bottles of alcohol meant to sell, but merely to endure. So, too, with Henry, keeper of the conservative store.
Every faith must have its Henry. The liberals have theirs, and the conservatives have theirs. Also someone has to keep the tablets, if only to preserve the possibility of enduring truth the cause and destruction of the passing hour.
Copyright, 1972, Washington Star Syndicate. Inc.
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