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University Daily Kansan
11
Friday, April 15, 1955
The End of a Career The American Way'
Editor's Note: This is a reproduction of the foreword to John Ise's book 'The American Way.' We think it is a beautiful introduction and we submit it to you with thanks.
When John Ise retires from teaching at the University of Kansas, as very sadly he is soon to do, it will seem as if some unkind person had tunneled away Mount Oread itself and left the University on the dull plain.
To those of us who know John Ise or have felt his influence, KU will thereafter be a different place. We can only hope that somewhere on the campus, another authentic Kansan will hold up the same clear, candid mirror to the life about him, will press insistently the claims of reason and will continue to invoke the truly liberal spirit which admits it may not always be right.
Mr. Nevins examined with professional detachment the relations between the hundred-year career of Kansas and the parallel career of the whole republic. He found that in their respective careers they had followed "highly divergent roads" and that "national destiny and State destiny have in large degree lain crosswise."
It seemed to me that with all his polished prose, Mr. Nevins was prey to an uneasy feeling that he wasn't being quite nice. Why, shucks, Professor, compared to what John Ise has been giving Kansas with the bark off all these years, your cadenced rhetoric was a lullaby!
The same mail that brought me the essays in this book with their happy freight of memories also brought a copy of a lecture delivered at the Kansas Centennial conference at the University on April 30, 1954, by the distinguished historian, Allan Nevins, who wrote the magnificent Ordeal of the Union. He had entitled it "Kansas and the Stream of American Destiny."
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The inner security which permits John Ise to raise the right questions is matched by a brain which makes them the right questions.
After I had returned from a stint of war correspondence, I found myself seated at dinner next to an economics professor from Bowdoin college in Maine, one of the select company of admired small colleges in our country. "Believe it or not, you see before you an economics major," I told him. "What texts are you using?"
John Ise has spent a lifetime trying to drag his native Kansas into the twentieth century. Nobody can say Kansas hasn't put up a fight. There were moments when it almost seemed that John was winning—with an assist from the depression. But farm prices went up and Kansans turned back happily to singing—strictly to each other, of course—John's favorite song: The More We Get Together, the Happier We'll Be.
"We think, and many colleges agree with us, that we have the best economics text," he replied. "Oddly enough, it comes from Kansas . . .."
Throwing Emily Post to the winds, I interrupted. I was right, of course. John Ise wrote that text.
I pass over that phrase "oddly enough." When I went east to work I became accustomed to the question: "What was your college?" Meaning of course, did I go to Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr or Smith. I always answered haughtily, "College? I went to a University." Then I moved away before they could ask me how long it had been since Oxford admitted women.
The fact is that I went to that kind of ideal university which was in President Garfield's mind when he said that the ideal university was a log with a boy at one end and Mark Hopkins at the other.
Fortunately for me, KU is co-educational and fortunately also John Ise was at the other end of my log.
—Doris Fleeson, KU '23
Cuts are becoming more frequent as a combination of senioritis and spring weather begins to set in. Some teachers have to check to see if is the right day when they enter the near-barren classrooms.
The Chi Omegas advertised last night that they will wash cars today and tomorrow for $1. Our yellow car needs a good cleaning, but we're afraid they'll wash it with green water.
A new honor system is proposed. An honorable alternative was needed.
Notice the sunbathers lately round and round the campus? And Sidney's restaurant in Kansas City think they specialize in cheese-cake! Who are they tryin' to kid?
The Jayhawker needs money. Anyone ever try national advertising accounts?
Best you get out and vote in the ASC elections Wednesday. Because if you don't, you're likely to wake up Thursday morning and discover you're living under the UVO honor system, and then it will be too late to yell that you didn't vote for it.
One Woman's Opinion
The proposed UVO honor system will be brought to the final test in the elections, and if student apathy towards ASC elections is as great this year as it has been in years past the honor system just may have enough votes because too few people voted—if you see what I mean.
Lack of interest in elections is something national party machines count on to get "our man elected." Nobody votes but the machine, and that is how people like Huey Long and Tom Pendergast get in power—and stay there.
In this instance it's not the man, or even the party, but an issue that is of greatest importance in this election. So friend—this ASC election is unlike many others in this respect—if you don't vote it will make a difference to you. A big difference. Think about it and be at the polls, ID card in hand, next Wednesday. —Margot Baker
Here's a new tweeter twist—a man in Memphis, Tennessee, used his wife's eyebrow tweezers to plant seeds in boxes at home. Her husband said the tweezers helped him put the seeds in place so that the rows "would be nice and straight."
They'll do it every time—an FBI agent reported that someone stole his hat while he was attending a meeting of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association.
Talk about your advertisements!
In Milwaukee the following ad appeared in the want-ad section of the Sentinel: "Swap—Spinet desk for I Braves' opening day ticket."
Mrs. Bernard Norman, who placed the ad, said her husband will be at the opening game.
...Short Ones...
An embarrassed hydrant—Firemen doused a blaze at a fire hydrant. They explained that fumes from an underground gas line had seeped up about the hydrant base
A wife in Knoxville, Tenn., divorced her husband twice within three years; both times on grounds he has another wife. She said he tricked her a second time after their first breakup, pretending he had obtained a divorce.
GUYS IN THEIR CUPS SHOULD STAY OUT OF THEIR CARS
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
(English assignment: An O R I G I N A L composition)
The People Sang-andDied The Night the Titanic Sank
Forty-two years ago the hymn, "Nearer My God To Thee," gave 1.517 fear stricken persons new hope as they awaited their inevitable death. And the world was vet to be shocked.
They were those on board a sinking ship that was "sinkproof." The ship was the Titantic; the day—a disastrous Sunday evening; the year—1912: the place—the North Atlantic ocean.
The steamship was British made, guaranteed to have been built to withstand a leak. With this guarantee, 2,207 people of all nationalities—blindly believing—bought tickets for the ill-fated voyage
And who wouldn't have believed?
There had been no limit of cost in its building.
The vessel took its place at the head of the line of every modern improvement in shipbuilding up to that date.
Confidence was the by-word.
About noon on that Sunday, a smaller steamship, the Baltic, plowing through the icy waters, warned the Titantic of ice sighted within five miles of the big ship's track.
That afternoon at 5 o'clock, another steamship, the Californian, warned of ice.
Lurking somewhere near the ship in the near-freezing waters on the foggy night, a block of ice waiting to collide with the ship to test its unsinkable powers. Why did the captain not turn back, before it was too late? Was he so smugly confident that his was a ship built to withstand the icy monster 200 feet above the level of the sea?
There are only two words which characterize the thinking of Captain Smith of the Titanic—overconfidence and neglect to heed the oft-repeated warnings. His crew was the worst the world had ever seen—as was proved by the disorganization.
Then the impact—the iceberg had stolen upon her and struck her in a vital spot.
Finally, after much haphazard running around through the corridors of the ship, the crew decided it was time to adjust the life belts and clear away the insufficient number of boats which had been placed on the ship by some far-sighted crew members.
Very few passengers were loaded into the life boats, thus needlessly sacrificing hundreds of people.
And the unsinkable ship sunk.
And the confident sang.
And died.
We don't think the Chi Omega are getting the exact effect they had planned for when the water was turned on. Is it supposed to be that unbalanced?
-Karen Hilmer
Daily Hansan
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