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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Nov. 13, 1962
Thank You, Mrs. R.
They buried Eleanor Roosevelt Saturday.
She died Wednesday. She died of exhaustion not of old age; she was ageless. She simply exhausted herself in more than 70 years of crushing labor.
When she left the White House in 1945 she went on a 140-hour-a-week schedule—20 hours a day.
SHE TRAVELED. She wrote.She fought for controversial causes.
There was the tractors-Cuban prisoner of war exchange deal which fell apart.
There was the invitation to the Soviet Premier for another United States tour.
There was the syndicated column.
There was the chairmanship of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
There were the honorary chairmanships of the A.D.A.
Many praised her actions.
AND, LIKE HER dead husband, she was hated and ridiculed by many. They called her silly, senile, doddering—that ugly old fool.
But, by God, they respected her.
Stevenson and Ike, Truman and Barry. Khrushchev and Vishinski—they all respected her and praised her.
But there is another group of men who cannot forget her. They are middle-aged now. No one knows how many there are.
But 21 years ago she lifted their hearts.
They were kids then—17, 18, 19 and 20; kids thousands of miles from home. They were racked with pain. They shook in agony and tried to keep from calling "Mother."
Just scared, torn up kids—sailors and Marines.
A TART OLD admiral—now dead—told the story in his memoirs, "Admiral Halsey's Story."
Bull Halsey, then Commander, South Pacific, describes her visit to his headquarters on a Godforsaken island called Noumea. Mrs. Roosevelt inspected the hospitals.
"When I say she inspected those hospitals," he wrote, "I don't mean that she shook hands with the chief medical officer, glanced into the sun parlor, and left.
"I mean that she went into every ward, stopped at every bed, and spoke to every patient: What was his name? How did he feel? Was there anything he needed? Could she take a message home for him?"
"SHE WALKED for miles, and she saw patients who were greviously and gruesomely wounded. But I marveled most at their expression as she leaned over them. It was a sight I will never forget.
"She accomplished more good than any other person or groups of civilians who had passed through my area."
Eleanor Roosevelt was a do-gooder. She was not a silly do-gooder—there really is no such thing.
Scott Payne
From My Pigeonhole
Editor;
Regression in university community planning and architecture was proudly displayed on the front page of a local newspaper prior to the 1962 Homecoming. The monotonous horizontal skyline pictured, created by Templin, Lewis, Hashinger and Ellsworth halls, reminds the observer of the ancient civilization of prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
THESE MONSTROSITIES reveal further regression, for no such opportunities for communal behavior and interchange as existed at Mesa Verde or other past American Indian civilizations are provided in the KU dormitories. Their unbroken horizontal lines compel the student to identify with a layer, rather than with the living group. The lack of adequate stair space and elevators is surpassed only in Summerfield Hail, where intercommunication is further bottlenecked by stair doors that open into the traffic flow.
... Letters ...
THE CAFETERIA, the single focus of communion and intermingling, protrudes from the rectangle proper as a hasty architectural afterthought. An immense lounge with a few slippery, imitation leather chairs hugging the walls discourages conversation and social interaction. An occasional TV room provides for the monomania of hypnotic worship of the idiot's lantern.
MASS EDUCATION reduces the student to a digit on an IBM card. He or she is pigeonholed into a cubicle on one of the several layers of the dormitory. The student becomes but one more click of the cheeker's counter in the growing cafeteria line.
During the golden age of democratic Greece it was believed that education flourished when developing minds met and intercommunicated. The KU dormitories, by discouraging social dialogue, belie this thesis. They stand in classic testimony to the isolation
of the student and the denial of democratic exchange of ideas.
John Bav
Topeka graduate student
Pigeonhole 340
Layer 3
J.R.P. Cliffdwellings
"IT'S A WONDER HE LETS ME STAY IN THE CLASS - I SEEM TO REQUIRE SO MUCH INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION."
Editor:
From Toronto
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Received letter from friend on latest happenings in Kansas: good old Kansas, where you can choose to support any shade of political thinking from very moderate Conservatism to absolutely full-Blooded Conservatism.
Here at Toronto University the range of political variety available is much broader than at KU. There are Social Credit, Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, and Communist clubs. Naturally, they all enjoy equal academic freedom and protection. The essential "soundness" of the Kansas sophomore might be spoiled by such a rich intellectual diet, and it is a wise tradition which protects him from himself, during such a sensitive period of his education.
From the standpoint of the stimulation which it might have provided — the change in the character of Action — the nearest thing to a dedicated Liberal group on the campus, last year, can only be regrettable. It is a pity to see it succumbing to mistaken arguments of expediency in the shape of a catch-all "Moderationism." One wonders whether the catch-all, will, in fact, catch anyone, given the pre-dynastic quality of Kansas Conservatism?
Denis Kennedy
P. S. Some literary critics might quarrel with the word pre-dynastic, but it certainly suits the eleven members of the ASC who voted against censoring Governor Barnett. They remind me of the Mummies in the pyramids: from their point of view conditions can only get worse.
Alumnus
UNIVERSITY
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone: 512-3700.
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 Street, New York, United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the weekdays on Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
COMMENT A Chance to Live
Mrs. Suzanne Vandeput, a young Belgian mother, killed her eight-day-old baby daughter last June by putting a barbiturate in the child's milk. The baby girl, named Corinne, was a "thalidomide baby," born without arms.
As a result of this act, Mrs. Vandeput and four other people, including the doctor who prescribed the barbiturate, were charged with the baby's death.
DURING THE EMOTIONAL trial, held in a courtroom filled with cheering supporters of the defendants, the defense attorney called Mrs. Vandeput's act "one of love."
He said the mother "could not imagine that baby growing up and being unable to play because of lack of arms."
The prosecuting attorney labeled this statement false logic. He asked the jury to consider the "thousands of mothers who kept their children alive in spite of malformations."
THE DEFENSE REPLIED, "You said they (the defendants) were alone in having decided to kill their baby. You do not know whether or not they are alone. You only know that so far they are the only ones who have been tried for it."
(During the trial, the defense said hundreds of letters had been received from mothers of other thalidomide-deformed babies and that "some approved us; others understood us, but not one condemned us.")
In his closing remarks, the prosecuting attorney told the jury that the defendants had not given Corinne Vandeput a chance at life.
"EXCEPT FOR HER very grave malformations, that baby was fit to live," he said. "You must bring in a verdict of guilty because you must affirm that the principle of respect for life is sacred. The accused did not commit euthanasia. They never seriously examined the chances of this child in this world . . . you cannot acquit them."
But the members of the jury, all of whom were parents except one man, did indeed acquit the defendants. In effect, they established a dangerous and amoral precedent.
An expert witness for the defense had testified that babies exhibiting Corinne Vandeput's symptoms had "only one chance out of ten to live more than one or two years and usually died sooner."
The jury's verdict denied that one in ten chance to other babies like Corinne Vandeput.
USING THE JURY'S logic, the club-footed Lord Bryan would never have been given the chance to write his masterpieces nor would the malformed Toulouse-Lautrec have had the chance to paint the Paris he knew so well.
Using the jury's logic, all the soldiers ever maimed or wounded in battle should be put out of their misery, because no one can "imagine them being unable to play without arms" or legs or with shrapnel in their eyes.
Corinne Vandeput will never see a sunset or hear a bird in a tree. She will never smell a circus or watch her father light the candles on her birthday cake.
CORINNE VANDEPUT is dead, and with her has gone the potential every child is born with. She might have grown up to become a fine woman. She might have invented a cure for cancer or written a great novel.
At the very least, Corinne Vandeput might have overcome the one in ten odds she was born with and lived out her life in spite of a bad physical handicap.
But Corinne Vandeput is dead. One cannot help but wonder if her death was truly an "act of love."
-Zeke Wigglesworth
BOOK REVIEWS
ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN, by John Dos Passos (Popular Library, 50 cents).
In a catalog of the proletarian novels of the thirties this volume should occupy an important place, along with Dos Passos' other books and the writings of Steinbeck and Farrell. It also is important in its depiction of what was happening to Dos Passos himself.
For an early-day enchantment with communism was becoming grim reality for Dos Passos. For his hero, Glenn Spottswood, grim reality comes with the Spanish Civil War. He has been a fiery idealist, a party organizer, a worker throughout the Midwest and the East. Then he goes to Spain, as many young leftwingers were doing in the thirties, and his growing "deviationism" brings him death at the hands of his former comrades.
In style and form, "Adventures of a Young Man" is like the narrative segments of "U.S.A." It is an important novel that seems to have been lost in the shuffle—CMP