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University Daily Kansan Friday, Jan. 11, 1963
Naughty, Naughty
Frank Burge, director of the Kansas Union, is complaining about the litter in the basement of Strong Hall. The All Student Council hears of the problem and immediately appoints a committee to see what student government can do to alleviate the situation. About all this committee can do is assume the task of janitor and descend upon the basement each day and gather the trash which has accumulated in order to maintain the privileges which the students and faculty now have in this area.
The complaint about the appearance of the basement is obviously justified. It could have been issued any time this year, last year or whenever. This has always been a place where the students feel they have the right to just leave their junk.
IT IS WONDERFUL THAT the ASC should take an interest in the problem. But, let's be realistic, the ASC can do nothing to keep students from making the basement of the administration building here on Snob Hill look like a barn which should be over at ta Dairy on the Prairie.
This problem, and its solution, lies directly with the students who avail themselves of the services which are offered. Apparently those who munch goodies in the basement of Summerfield are cultured enough not to create such a mess.
Mr. Burge says there does not exist such a problem there.
It should be interesting to see what the special ASC committee does about the situation. Maybe its members will have a meeting in the basement of Strong and will swill coffee and garf doughnuts, leaving the empty cups heaped on a table and leave feeling they can come to no convenient solution.
AS MR. BURGE POINTED OUT in a Kansas article yesterday, the responsibility for keeping the area of Strong basement clean is up to both the employees who operate the concessions and the people who use the services. The ladies in the white coats are doing their best to corral the habits of the lounging students but are getting no help from them.
Now the Kansas Union has been placed in a position where it either must show a great improvement in the visible condition of the area or possibly discontinue the food services. Thus, if the student body wants to have this advantage it must show its appreciation by at least throwing their waste at the baskets provided. To insist the mess lands in the baskets might be asking too much, but an effort would help.
Wouldn't our mommies be ashamed. Bill Sheldon
Superior Defense Within Coalition Was Acheson's Foreign Policy
(Editor's note): This is the second book in a series documenting the career of Dean Acheson.
By Richard Bonett
By Richard Bonnet Over-simplified, Acheson's postwar foreign policy was based on two premises:
- The only hope of survival for the free world is in the mutual determination of the non-Communist nations to preserve their freedom—that is, a coalition.
- To endure, such a coalition would have to preserve a superiority of "defensive" power.
The New York Times once quoted Acheson as saying, "Obviously, the U.S. has to be the keystone of any such coalition, with the nations of Western Europe its principal parts."
Acheson was probably the first American official to declare publicly that Russia's policy was aggressive—a statement which, made in 1947 to a Senate committee,
brought a formal and irate protest from Moscow. The protest was ignored by Marshall.
IF ALL THIS is so, the question might be asked: How did anyone ever conceive the idea of imputing Acheson's loyalty?
Outside a small group of "Dewey-Dulles" Republicans, it cannot be said that the Republican party as a whole offered an alternative foreign policy to that being pursued by Truman and Acheson. Being violently anti-Communist was not in itself a policy; it was even too constricting as a philosophy.
To an American public jittery over Communist expansion in Eastern Europe and the Far East, however, the battle cry of a Communist "sell-out" in the State Department made a handy rallying point. A legacy of that era exists today in the camp of the Goldwater Republicans and in the John Birch Society where a somewhat watered
down slogan "soft on Communism" still has a certain magic.
ACHESON'S PROGRAM was attacked on two points: his emphasis on strong "defensive" power was translated into "appeasement," and his concept of a coalition of free nations "with the nations of Western Europe as its principal parts," was taken to mean an abandonment of all of Asia and the Middle East.
The second half of this attack was helped when, in a speech in early 1950, Acheson omitted Korea and Formosa while discussing the U.S. defense perimeter. It is important to remember, however, that when this speech was made, the American military was thinking in terms of global war and supported the opinion that Korea could not be defended against a mass attack except by a commitment of more troops than it was worth, on a global scale.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Whatever the debate over theory, the fact remains that when South Korea was attacked—in what had all the initial earmarks of a local aggression—Acheson, along with every other member of the National Security Council, urged vigorous U.S. action. More important, the secretary spurred the U.N. to back the American action.
YOU'RE ASKING ME FOR A DATE AT THAT WORST POSSIBLE
TIME — I'M FREE THAT EVENING. "
IF THE United Nations ever achieves the purposes for which it was shaped, Acheson's star will rise in history as a man who played an important role in giving the world organization a function outside of its debating chambers.
Whether Acheson ever attains the stature of an Adams or a Jefferson in the broad scheme of American history, it is certain that his influence has been a strong one since the end of World War II.
During the Eisenhower administration, a steady stream of criticism found its way into scholarly, literary, and popular journals from the pen of Dean Acheson, citizen. With the Democrats back in power, Acheson is today an influential behind-the-scene adviser of the present administration.
The "Red Dean of Washington" has survived nearly everyone of his former critics as an effective voice in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. In the intervening years since he stepped down as Secretary of State he has seen not much new as an effective means of combatting Communism, at home or abroad.
COMMENT
What Happened To Them
The schoolmarmos, the Model A Fords, the Colt 44-40. honest-to-God home-made bread. Texas longhorn cows, and the three-hole backhouse?
And what ever happened to the tonsil-splitting, gawd-awful gutbucket roar that was American politics, in its true and practiced state?
In "28, politics was a hundred "fur-bearing wild coyotes," swarming into Washington, swearing to hang, on sight, any slicker who wouldn't holler HUZZA FOR JACKSON!
In '40, politics was a processional of beer-stained mustaches, carrying torches, marching, mauling bartenders and free women, and chanting "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too."
And in '04, politics was a set of flashy teeth and a bunch of Rough Riders, shooting and raising hell to let everybody know that Teddy Roosevelt was in town . . . and all he gave them was "Bully!" and "a square deal, no more, and no less."
Then came the Blackstone Hotel, and big money, and radio, and propaganda, and a complacent America, which doesn't give a damn who's in the White House. as long as he smells good, looks right, and goes to church on Sunday.
And the last hurrah and whimper came in 1952, when millions of Americans sat, sickened, as the party conventions were aired . . . and they watched the glitter and the noise, and they heard the cheers and the applause, and the delegate from Kentucky stand and cry: "Mr. Chairman, the great state of Kain-tucky..." and a sophisticated America, too modern for such idiocy, turned over to Channel 4 to watch Howdy Doody and Clarabelle.
The drunken roar of good, old-fashioned,
hog-sloppin' country style politickin' is gone,
never to be heard of again,
dismissed with a flip of the wrist,
of that process known as progress.
Politics has been done in by the electric can opener, and the popularity poll. and the toothpaste commercials, and the dirge of human progress. Goodbye noise and coonskin caps and drums and pistol-packin' cowboys. Hello, apathy Hello, ennui
What ever happened to the tonsil-splitting,
gawd-awful roar that used to be?
Zeke Wigglesworth
BOOK REVIEWS
EXODUS REVISITED, by Leon Uris, with photographs by Dimitrios Harissiadis (Bantam, 75 cents).
In "Exodus" Leon Uris told of the rebirth of a nation. The book has sold more than 5 million copies and was made into a movie. Now, in "Exodus Revisited" Uris writes very little of a return trip to the places that first inspired the novel.
What makes "Exodus Revisited" important, however, is the photography of Dimitrios Harissiadis. The Bantam edition contains more than 250 photos from the original hardback publication. In this case the text supports the photographs, rather than the expected reverse.
Harissiadis has captured drama, beauty and simplicity with his camera. He proves that a top-notch photographer can make the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words," come true.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan 16, 1912 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 $5 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.
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