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University Daily Kansan Monday. January 3, 1955
'Across College Campuses'
Pressures Don't Affect College Editorial Policy
Most student editors say they are little affected by intimidation of pressures arising out of "the climate of fear prevalent" on American college campuses Their opinions are reported in a survey conducted by "News Workshop," quarterly published by the New York university department of journalism. Forty-one editors of leading college dailies and weeklies—14 from the East, 10 from the West, 11 from the Midwest and 6 from the South—participated in the poll. Results of the query show that:
— Congressional investigations of education institutions have had little effect on the college press.
College newspapers have outspokenly opposed these investigations and the methods employed by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The investigations have affected the entire college community, but not as strikingly as reported in other surveys.
— College editors are divided when it comes to calling their generation the "Silent Generation."
—The college press appears to be as free today of administrative control as it was two years ago.
Ohio colleges, lacking facilities for educating in a few years the youngsters now swamping grade and high schools, have organized a committee to act on the problem. The Ohio College Association has named six Ohio college presidents and one school superintendent to the Ohio Committee on Expanding Student Population. The committee hopes to alert the state generally to the situation and urge the colleges to study ways for increasing their capacities for meeting the enrollment needs in 1960, 1965, 1970. The college-age population in Ohio will have increased 96 per cent to a total of 731,992 in 1970.
India Gains Prestige By Nehru Leadership
Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India, is a man with a sturdy, brown, carved face, a man leading the weary millions of India up the slow climb to progress.
This man, the foreign secretary of India, the head of the strong Congress party, the man acled the spiritual heir of Mahatma Gandhi, is a paradox.
He is an aristocrat by birth and environment, yet he sacrificed all for the uplift of the "downtrodden and hungry millions of India." He championed the people, but unlike Gandhi, he did not identify himself completely with them. He was and is among them, but he is not one of them, and never will be one of them.
Gandhi went down in history as the "idolized personification of the masses." Nehru will go down as the antithesis.
He is the unquestioned leader of the Congress party, but he is no party politician. He has no clique within the party and he is not held down with narrow party loyalties.
Nehru wants the idea of India as a secular democracy become a reality. But he wants to do it "India's way," and not after the fashion of another government.
He wants to reconcile the democratic machinery with socialistic objectives, and individual feelings with state planning and directions.
He wants to, yet he has announced just recently that he is tired—he is 63—and that he will not again be prime minister of the country. Still, he says, he will be active in the Congress party.
If he quits as prime minister, there is no one in sight to replace him—and India, we think, will be badly let down. He has enemies, as does every great man, yet he has given India a prestige she has never before known.
He has, and is trying to capture the leadership of Asia, for he knows that if India doesn't, China will.
We pay tribute to the man who has brought a big and retarded child into the family of great, or at least coming great powers. We think history will do the same.
—Mary Bess Stephens
'Moon Is Blue Was A Hit Despite Critics
"The Moon Is Blue" tickled Broadway's funny bone for two years. It skipped across the Atlantic and delighted audiences in Germany, Austria, England, France, Italy, and Scandinavia. And all the time, no one was shocked.
But early in the summer of 1953, United Artists released a movie version of F. Hugh Herbert's sparkling little comedy, and the moon got bluer and bluer. Suddenly the unobtrusive "bedroom farce set in a living room" became a nasty symbol of immorality.
"The Moon Is Blue" was refused the Production Code seal of the Motion Picture Association of America. The Catholic Legion of Decency rated it "C" (condemned).
Despite the fact that "The Moon Is Blue" was not endorsed by the Production Code, the producers sent the film out to an eager public and dubious censors. Only one other film, "The Outlaw," starring Jane Russell, had dared run in recent years in protest of the Code.
From its New York premier, "The Moon Is Blue" fell into one censorship shadow after another. It became a test case for the legality of censorship, playing its merry way toward the maze of squirming censors. And for the most part, "The Moon Is Blue" continued to play.
How could one film cause so much commotion? That is one point at least that was perfectly clear to almost anybody who was interested.
By July 6, four of the seven state censorship boards in the United States — New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts—decided "The Moon Is Blue" was moral enough to be presented. Washington state put a 21-year-old age limit on those who could see the film. In Las Vegas, it ran wild. But Kansas censored it.
There is no doubt about it. "The Moon Is Blue" is about sex. It spoils sex, it tickles, it tesses. But in the moon there is 'aflection, but no passion,' . . .
Mr. Herbert has a way of making nice things look naughty. In two previous plays, "Kiss and Tell," and "For Love or Money," he uses much the same method. He says very little, his plots are flimsy, and he makes no pretenses at being profound.
So it was not a great movie that tested the nation for censorship. It was not a great movie that upset censors' ulcers. Rather, it was a simple, witty face of sex in our time.
Except for the excellent performances of Maggie McNamara, William Holden, and David Niven, most critics find little but an amusing comedy in "The Moon Is Blue." It seems rather strange that it took a week for the editors to release the censorship ice, but "The Moon Is Blue" did, and nobody but a few rattled censors and fruitless box-office sales are sorry for it.
At any rate, "The Moon Is Blue" is now free to play throughout the country despite state rulings. It can bounce from state to state in its candylike flavor without being eaten sway by censors.
The heroine's gib comments about sex still are witty and provocative as ever, but not nearly so startling. Even now, maturity in the movie industry has softened what was once shocking dialogue. Censorship couldn't have done it, but maturity did.
Gene Shank
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bidk
"Where do you buy your leotards, Miss Williams?"
1955 Predicted As Crisis Year
Americans will drink just as much coffee in 1955 as they did in 1954. They may not smoke as many cigarettes because of the "cancer scare," but if not, chewing gum sales will rise. The nation will be just as busy, worried, nervous, split by isolated controversies, and under as much or more pressure as in 1954.
Every year since the end of World War II has been a crisis year and 1955 will be no exception.
The worst that could happen to the nation this year we "preventive war"—the war to end all wars, the war to annihil civilization as we know it.
The best the nation can hope for is maintenance of the state quo—time to resolve the extremely difficult policies of "co-existence and "containment" into workable forms.
The last year was a year of major successes and major flops the policy of the soldier president and his National Secur Council.
In that the gains are cumulative in their effect, 1955 could a year of unprecedented success for the nation's foreign policy.
Mr. Dulles should be able to bargain in Europe with the ad- strength of 12 German divisions. Europe now seems more a- of the Russian bear than the Swastika legions, and except for a- continued dispute over the Saar question and the possibility of French Russian talks which could nullify the London agreement. Europ- within sight of effective defense for the first time since the last w
Some of the most important of the early 1955 headlines will concern with putting the President's "atoms for peace" plan in effect. The USSR did not block the proposal in the United Nation this year, but it is hard to believe that the Kremlin will let a plan go into operation without some form of opposition.
Mr. Dulles and the nation also are faced with several failure of 1954 which could lead to more trouble in 1955.
And the Democrats will hold majorities in both houses of the 84th Congress. Their leaders have said they will work with the President, but co-operation seems doubtful in view of the squabbles already generated.
Republican power policies (including Dixon-Yates), income tax revisions, a re-introduced Bricker amendment, and universal military training probably will be well debated in 1955.
And every rise or fall of the pulse of the United States will have a definite effect on the rest of the world. It will be largely up this nation to keep the peace in 1955. —Ron Grandon
Daily Bansa
University of Kansas Student Newspaper, News Room, KU 251 Ad Room, KU Member of the Inland Daily Pressclation, Associated Collegiate Press Association, Advertising service, 420 Madison, ave. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester) Lawrence, Wisconsin every afternoon during university year except Saturdays and days University holidays and duration periods. Entered as second post office under act of March 3, 1879
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