Page 2
University Daily Kansan
Friday, Feb 24, 1956.
Let's Not Be Wedges
What are the voices in our land saying today?
"Riots in Alabama! Hate! Race! Ignorance! War!"
Are these the voices of our land?
In our country there have been many voices. True, they have not been the same voices; there have been voices harsh with the dust of the plains, voices brittle with the crisp air of the mountains, voices soft with southern sun and voices heavy with the accents of many languages. But they all spoke for the same thing—freedom and a way of life—the American way.
But today how many voices are there in our midst? Only the truly discerning of us have heard these other voices and recognized them for what they are. They are voices strange to the true American way. They are voices which mean to make us tools to divide and destroy ourselves.
Abe Lincoln knew the value of a good wedge. A wedge is a simple, efficient tool used for splitting rails—or other things. For efficiency a wedge is placed where there is already a division in the object to be divided. Even a slight division is enough when a good wedge is used. After the wedge is in, force is applied with a hammer.
These strange voices in our land are for the purpose of making wedges of us. Hate, race, ignorance, riot, and civil war are the slogans of these voices.
Are you beginning to recognize these voices? Have you heard them? Any of us are prospective wedges!
Where is the division into which these wedges may be put? Once our land was split by a line. That line is called the Mason-Dixon Line and still exists in the minds of many.
Of what significance is the case of Miss Autherine Lucy and her persecutors? Does Miss Lucy only represent one student who wished to attend college? Undoubtedly this case is representative of much more than that. True, Miss Lucy stands for many Negroes in the South who wish for a change.
But what is of more vital importance is the fact that Miss Lucy, all her backers, and those who oppose her actively or passively, have been duped and placed in the fire of hate, race, ignorance and riot by these strange, subversive voices
and have been wrought into wedges which could split our nation asunder!
No doubt, all those involved in these shameful happenings are, individually, patriotic, loyal Americans who would stand and fight side-by-side if they knew they were to be attacked by an alien force. But do they realize they have been duped? Obviously not, or white southerners would not have torn up the Constitution of our land, whether or not it was printed for propaganda purposes by a Negro northerner.
Let's not reopen the graves of those who fought and died valiantly for what they believed. Let's not become wedges which can be pounded by the hammer and sickle to divide our American heritage and destroy us.
Don't be a wedge!
Jim Tice
..Short Ones..
Doctors for the President have announced that Ike could run for another term if he wanted, but that it was his decision to make. From the looks of the Kansas City Times and its headlines, one might think that Russia had dropped a bomb on us. Besides, we can't understand the fuss. It was obvious that he was recovering from the way he has been working the past month.
Abner and Rebecca Braude, a 93-year-old couple married on St. Valentine's Day in 1885, gave their solution to a happy marriage. "Always be kind, considerate, and never, never try to boss." They were probably talking about the husband's place in marriage.
Most people think that walk-ins and fraternity initiation stunts are all lots of fun; that is, everybody except the family of Thomas L. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology freshman who drowned last week while on an initiation stunt.
Terry Moore announced last week that she has been married since New Year's Day. That means no more ermine-clad female Santa Claus for the soldiers overseas.
Communist Party Congress Has Great Political Import
The main purpose of the congress is to announce and introduce the new policy of the Communist leadership for the development and propagation of communism in the world.
LONDON — (U.P.)- It is now clear that the 20th Communist Party Congress in Moscow is an international event of the first magnitude, comparable in importance to the death of Josef Stalin.
The Presidium of the Communist party of the Soviet Union has debated these policies since before the death of Stalin. Now it has formulated the new principles which will govern its relations with the outside world.
The reappraisal of the doctrine and tactics of international communism was made necessary by the
UNIVERSITY
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded, became biweekly 1904,
trained as a librarian.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 251, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daly Press Association,
Associated Collegiate Press. Represented
National Advertising Service, 420
Madison Avenue, Madison, WI.
service: United Press. Mail subscription
rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Pub-
uled Monday through Friday, noon during the University year except
Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays,
and examination periods. Entered as second class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at
post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Marlon McCoy ... Managing Editor
Larry Hell, John McMillion, Harry Eliott, Pace Necinovsky, Assistant Managing Editors; Barbara Bell, City Editor; David Webb, Telegraph Editor; Daryl Hall, Assistant Telegraph Editor; Ann Kelly, Society Editor; Felicie Fberg, Assistant Society Editor; Kent Penny, Editor; Bob Lyle, Assistant Sports Editor; John Stephens, Picture Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Sam Jampé, Associate Editor
Dick Walt, Associate Editor
entirely new international situation which has resulted from the invention of the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the possibility of their use in a future war.
Veteran co-existentialist Anastas Mikoyan, a first deputy premier, stated that this congress is the most important one since the time of V. I. Lenin. Soviet experts in the West may well agree with that statement.
The congress has settled the most important issues of foreign and internal policy and it has provided final answers to some of the questions observers have been asking since the death of Stalin three years ago.
First was the question whether Russia is to be ruled by one man as it was ruled during the 20 years up to 1953. It is now possible to answer this question with a big no.
One of the most important members of the former Poliburo, the "all-powerful" Police Chief Olivier has was executed in the political melee.
The struggle for power which started after Stalin's death appeared at first to be going in favor of former Premier (now Deputy Premier) Georgi Malenkov, then in favor of Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov whom Stalin had appointed as his official heir, and finally in favor of Nikita S. Khrushchev, Secretary General of the Communist party, and of Premier Nikolai Bulginin.
In February, 1955. Molotov, the most experienced member of the team, was given a resounding snub by the Central Committee. It was administered as a correction to a minor point of communist doctrine and was made public in the form of a letter from Molotov to the journal Kommunist, principal organ of the Central Committee.
When the Congress convened, some western observers assumed
Molotov's stock immediately dropped.
Editor:
.. Letters ..
Mr. Dick Walt's editorial on the Kansas weather "The Weather—Here Today, Here Tomorrow" Daily Kansan, Friday, Feb. 17), was one of the most inaccurate pieces of writing I have read in a long time.
From what Geography books does he get his information?
The location of Kansas is by no means unique in terms of weather phenomena. Kansas weather is not "the result of this state's location" between the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Appalachians on the east. Where are the Appalachians, and where is Kansas?
A discussion of the weather we even should include the following factors:
1. The latitudinal position of Lawrence
3. The absence of any east-west tending relief barriers to the north or south of Kansas, thus allowing cold, dense polar air masses from the south to sweep in unchecked.
2. The central 'continental' location of Lawrence.
You do have "trouble keeping things straight," Mr. Walt.
Ratnam Swami
Matale, Ceylon
graduate student
that it would bring the definite emergence of Khrushchev as the top man. Instead it brought the official and final consecration of the principle of collective leadership.
Mikoyan's violent attack on the absurdities of one man rule was not only an attack on Stalin. It was, more than anything else, a blow against personal dictatorship in general.
While Stalin was dying for a second time, at the congress, the possibility of personal dictatorship in Russia was being eliminated, at east for the foreseeable future.
It is very unlikely that Khrushchev or any one of the small group of old men who are now the masters of the Communist empire will attempt to grab Stalin's mantle.
Book Review
Boon Island-A Shipwreck But Without Romance
Boon Island-by Kenneth Roberts;
Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y.
1956; 275 pages.
With all the gusto of his earlier historical novels and a situation reminiscent of Nordhoff and Hall's "Men Against the Sea," Kenneth Roberts has written a stark and exciting story of the wreck of the Nottingham galley on Boon Island, a rock off the coast of Maine, in 1710.
It is not a book of the size of Roberts' celebrated "Rabble in Arms" or "Northwest Passage." But it happily marks a return to fiction for the writer who has been all too concerned in recent years with the mystical water-finding properties of dowsing rods.
"Boon Island" begins in Greenwich, England, in a setting of rich old homes, theaters still not too aware of the greatness of the Shakespearean plays they are offering, and the docks, where the narrator, Miles Whitworth, is attracted to a handsome boy who performs on the stage.
Roberts contrives to get most of the central characters aboard the Nottingham, takes three pages to take the galley from Greenwich to Boon Island, and spends the rest of the story detailing the privations of the castoffs for nearly a month in the dead of winter.
The ship—laden with a store of cheeses and butter bound for Portsmouth, N.H.—is wrecked through carelessness of the monstrous first mate—a villain to rank with the most elaborate knaves in the Roberts
A common practice in measuring the water equivalent of snow is to assume that the density of newfallen snow is 10 per cent. Ten inches of snow equals one inch of B.W. Water Bath. Affirmation says density varies and depth cannot always determine water content.
novels. Practically nothing is saved, except for bits of cheese, and the crew lives on seaweek, rawhide, mussels, and one unfortunate seagull.
Finally the rescue occurs, but not until a dead member of the crew furnishes "beef" for his starving mates.
-C. M. Pickett
Best of all is the clash between personalities, an area of writing in which Roberts excels. It also is fortunate that "Boon Island" has not been burdened with romance, for love is scarcely Robert's forte.
EASY
TO GET
GOOD
PICTURES
WITH THE
BROWNIE HAWKEYE CAMERA
Has big brilliant. waist-level viewfinder. Gives you twelve big negatives per roll of 620 film, black-and-white or color. Here's a camera that's a real picture maker. . yet so-o-o easy to use. No adjustments. . no focusing! Takes flash, too. Only $7.45
Your watch can get that tired and run down feeling.
Just too Tired to Tick!
It forgets and misses appointments. That's the time to let Guenther's meticulous repairmen give your timepiece new life and accuracy.
Pocket watch, wrist watch, desk or mantel clock; all repaired to insure you of complete satisfaction for time unlimited. . .
824 Mass.
VI 3-5445