University Daily Kansas Thursday, April 14, 1955
Letters
'Richard' and Watkins Are Back Again!
To the Editor:
The writer does not wish to get embroiled in the fruitless and tasteless dispute between a faculty member and journalism student over the Kansan's criticism of "Richard III." He merely wishes to inject a few ideas as to the role of the Kansan in reviewing campus productions.
Arguments have been put forth that the Kansan does not give proper display to criticisms. Few newspapers review plays or musical presentations on Page 1. The reviews are too much the opinion of one person to warrant such display. We have carried reviews on Page 1, but only because the Kansan "editor for the day" saw fit to do so.
It has been said that reviews are worth more than the less than 250 words devoted to "Richard III." I subscribe to that point of view, especially when the presentation is well done. But one of my favorite reviews appeared in Time magazine, in 1939, in a criticism of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The criticism, in its entirety, "Mickey Rooneyov vs. Mark Twain."
As for whether or not one Dee Richards should be reviewing plays, he happens to be the person now taking our second semester reporting class who put himself forward as wanting the drama-debate beat.
The journalism student who probably knows more about the drama than anyone else in the school—and possibly as much as many KU students of the drama—is Gene Shank. We normally do not make it a practice to continue one student in a certain job indefinitely, and Shank likely will graduate some time.
And my recollection is that some of Shank's criticisms of last year were not greeted too well in the drama department. For that matter, does everyone agree with John Mason Brown, or Brooks Atkinson, or Wolcott Gibbs? I recall a tongue-lashing given the critics a few years ago by Maxwell Anderson because, he said, the critics had killed one of his plays.
But having taken issue with the anti-Richards point of view, I now would like to go after Richards myself—and I have already done so to his face. I consider his review of "Richard III" as superficial and smart-alekey. I can hear the journalistic outcries from this building should someone dismiss eight weeks of the Kansan as utter trash, and yet Richards, it seems to me, so dismissed "Richard III."
He dismissed it, originally, on what I consider a faulty premise, that "Richard III" is a bad play. I often wonder how our 22-year-old students can become so omniscient in playing Shakespeare, or a certain play by Shakespeare is good—or bad. Let them say they don't like it, or don't understand it.
The Kansan's biggest problem in the field of criticisms concerns extremes. One student, fearing the wrath of music or drama folks, praises even the worst offerings as "superlative." Another, summing up his many years of training, writes off distinguished offerings as trash.
Last year one of my students asked me what I thought of "A Streetcar Named Desire." I replied that I considered it a dramatic achievement. "I thought it stunk," he said. Maybe this boy will be the Kansan's drama critic next year.
Kansan Adviser
Dear Sir,
The letter of March 29 by John L. Griggsby pertaining to Watkins hospital seems to have been written by a person incapable of writing on the subject. The following was one of Mr. Griggsby's statements pertaining to the girl who slipped on ice last Saturday. "In spite of the fact that our hospital was located only a block away, at least a quarter of an hour passed before an ambulance appeared representing that institution." May it be pointed out that neither Watkins nor Lawrence Memorial maintains any ambulance service, therefore both hospitals have to depend on the three ambulances in the downtown area. In greater Kansas City, Mo., only General hospital gives ambulance service.
Mr. Grigsby then suggested that the patient could have been carried on a stretcher by two good men on foot. This of course is true if the two good men had a stretcher at the time, and if they dare make themselves liable for moving the victim. We do not believe that the question of being one block away is as important as the fact that the ambulance had to come from town. Viewing this, fifteen minutes does not seem to be out of line. This was pointed out as the lack of efficiency in our hospital. Does it actually pertain to our hospital?
Another example that was offered to show the lack of efficiency was about a student who lay in shock for over an hour in a University dormitory until finally a Lawrence doctor was summoned. In most hospitals, doctors do not make house calls. Our Lawrence Memorial hospital does not offer any service of this type unless a doctor happened to be there at the time. Watkins has a full time time staff which furnishes a doctor on call at all times. As to the girl who slipped and fell, only a few minutes lapsed before a doctor was in her room. There is not much a doctor can do on a house call, whereas, if the patient is admitted to the hospital, the doctor will be there with the proper equipment.
Now about the insurance that was mentioned. If you will investigate, there is no insurance policy that will give as complete service as Watkins offers for ten dollars a semester. Most policies only give limited coverage whereas Watkins handles any situation which might arise.
Watkins is one of the most modern student hospitals in the United States. It maintains a staff of five doctors, twelve registered nurses, six laboratory technicians, and a full time dietician. We believe that anyone who has been in the hospital for any period of time at all would be willing to commend it on the good service, food, and attention it gives. Also, Watkins has other commendable features such as a central food system, a radio speaker for each bed, and intercommunications for each bed, and air-conditioning in the summer months.
After being patients in other hospitals and here, we feel that Watkins and its staff definitely do not deserve to be ridiculed.
Robert D. Crist,
college freshman
Carroll D. Esry,
engineering senior
When we say we are loyal, we are openly affirming our faith in the great purposes for which the country was created.
Loyalty has become an obsession in the United States today.
Book Review
But now the word has taken on a new meaning—a negative meaning. This negatism of loyalty is evaluated in Alan Barth's "Loyalty of Free Men," written in 1951.
Mr. Barth, an editorial writer for the Washington Post, (now the Washington Post and Times-Herald) has attempted to examine the suspicious attitude which is gripping and enricling our country, and he wrote this book at a very opportune time.
The word, "loyal," is said to be negative because we do not think in terms of being loyal today—we dwell on the disloyal and the un-American. For this very reason our individuality is being suppressed and when individuality is gone, so goes our free speech and then we lose the substance of our republic.
Disloyalty has not been constitutionally deemed treason, as the author points out. But one can be sure that when a congressional committee says a man is disloyal, the public immediately sends up cries of "traitor."
The committee was given an extremely vague assignment—that of investigating and routing un-American propaganda activities in the United States.
Issue is taken in the book on the Un-American Activities committee—and rightly so.
It was in 1948 that this group scored its greatest triumph. In the summer of that year it turned its attention to espionage within the government.
The outcome of the 1948 hearings are by now old stuff to the majority of American people, but these hearings are a good example of the uncalculated, ruthless suspicions so prevalent today. Elizabeth T. Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, both former Communist couriers and undercover agents of the Soviet Union, were the chief accusers during the hearings. The most prominent of the accused were Laughlir Currier, who had been an administrative assistant to President Roosevelt, and Harry Dexter White, who had been an assistant secretary of the Treasury during the Roosevelt administration.
Both of the accused were called Communists by Miss Bentley and Mr. Chambers, but they could not testify that the accused were former members of the Communist party.
In our schools and universities we should not fear to follow the truth—but that fear also is generally taking over our educational system. Unorthodox ideas are taboo.
It should be fairly clear that when we start to suppress the educational system we are getting pretty close to the bottom of the deck. We need a diversity of ideas for a democracy—this diversity we could get and do get from those professors who are not afraid to take different stands.
It stands to reason that if there is actual evidence that a Communist in this country is working for the Soviet Union to overthrow our government and our democratic ideals, then he must be investigated—but there must be evidence!
They are able to sift the democratic from the Communist.
University students are not dumb.
Haphazard investigating for the sake of investigating will do just exactly what we fear ruinage of the loyalty of free freedom. Karen Hilmen.
10 Years Ago-Armistice Now-A Time for Reflecting
The End of World War II—10 Years Ago.
One decade is only a thin slice of the centuries of history, but 10 years of our life have such great importance for ourselves that our remembrance is overshadowed by present and future impressions and if we look back we will most likely judge and view through the viewpoint of our present situation.
The more time passes and the more we are involved in present developments the easier we forget. And the first things we forget are the bad things, as human nature delines to the positive and enjoyable sides of life.
If we in these days remember and look back over the past decade toward the year when the five-year-old World War II ended, we not only do not see what we saw 10 years ago but we also consider what we have seen since then, how we have changed and developed.
Other wars have come during this time, have been fought and concluded, and new talk of war is in the air. Wars appear through all history, and there seems to be no chance to avoid them.
Therefore we should not stop speaking about war after we learn or guess who started or caused or finally won wars, but we should speak and think about every detail of this cruel phenomenon of war.
Our experience of World War II should teach us individually what war is, and it should be always in our mind when again the possibility of war arises. But the danger is that the more we forget the weaker the influence of this experience becomes.
War in our century of distances and speeds has two sides. The indirect one influences politics, economics, sciences, and the whole feeling of the people. The direct one kills the men.
An estimated total of 55 million people was killed during World War II, including soldiers and civilians of all participating nations in all parts of the world. Each single life among the millions was killed by the war and the death of them all made it possible for us to continue a life that they began.
It kills not only men but fathers, brothers, women, children, babies. It kills in many cruel ways and each individual way is full of pain and desperation. Death comes from a bullet in a second's time, or it creeps into the body by a blazing flame, by frost or illness. Life flees with the running blood for endless hours or with the pain of hunger during unbearable days.
But the account of war makes not only differences between being dead and aliye. War in the perspective of World War II, with all modern facilities to kill and destroy, is accompanied by the many stages between being alive and being dead.
The family no longer is a home but a group of scattered individuals struggling towards each other through fights, fires, and raids, counting those who are killed and praying for those whose fate is unknown.
Religion no longer is a prayer and a chorale in the quiet hant of a church. Churches are ruins or hospitals and roaring guns and planes make the songs. Prayers are thought or screamed in seconds of desperation, fear and death, they are mixed with hard words.
Morals are unknown in the dim light of ruins, smoke and sudden flashes, when a man kills his brother because someone told him that he is his enemy. And all the rules of education, culture, and society cease and make place for new proportions, like bread and water, life and security. And even after a war ended with victory for one side the struggle is not over.
The successful side has to administer a heritage of ruins and disaster, and the defeated has to start a whole life from the beginning—if he has the strength. He has to face the grim and suspicious eyes of his guides and has no voice to tell them how he hated the war.
And everybody complains that he did not want the war, as wars same and will come without the decision of individuals.
And the row of millions who were killed in the war is continued by the thousands who die afterward of hunger, sickness, grief, and new political complications.
A total of 35 million returned from World War II wounded and unable to continue their former normal lives.
Is anything worse than these figures?
If we remember during these days that 10 years ago World War II was ending we should never forget what years, days and seconds were over. We should be aware of this experience at any time we again might have to think or to worry about war.
Seven per cent of the fatal accidents in 1953 in which a driver violation of the law was involved were due to one or more drivers failing to yield the right of way.
Heiko Engelkes
. . .
Minnesota has 2,029,000 acres of fishing lakes.
Daily Hansan
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