Sorel's News Service
Ike in Europe: the man, the era
DWIGHT D.
EISENHOWER
The stamp is based on a photograph made by Bernie Noble of the Cleveland Press. Mrs. Eisenhower approved the photo, which captures the famous Eisenhower grin.
The House Banking Committee has approved a bill to authorize issuance of a dollar coin to honor the late President. The committee chairman Wright Patman, said he will try to have the bill passed by Tuesday, when the stamp is to be issued.
Dwight D. Eisenhower will be honored Tuesday, Oct. 14, 1969, when the United States Post Office Department places a six-cent stamp on sale in Abilene.
The ceremonies which coincide with what would have been the late President's 79th birthday, will be preceded by memorial services at the Place of Meditation at the Eisenhower Center.
Hung by the heavens with black, yield day to night!
NEW YORK—H. Rap Brown, 1967-68 chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, from his new book, Die Nigger Die!: "I saw no sense in reading Shakespeare. After I read Othello, it was obvious that Shakespeare was a racist."
By HOWARD PANKRATZ
Kansan Staff Writer
General Eisenhower probably has no special significance to those just entering KU. To them, he is probably no more than a hazy memory. But to an American that gapped two generations and lived in a Europe that thought much of Ike, he meant more.
The 50's in Europe was a time when a Britisher would still come up to an American and offer him a drink as gratitude for America's part in the war. It was a time when the British kids at the school you attended would invite you home for tea and the head of the household would be delighted his son had brought home a "Yank."
Americans in Europe were rare, and the derogatory sense of "tourist" used by the Europeans had not yet come into existence. It was great to be an American because, even if you didn't like yourself, the Europeans did. They still talked about Patton and Ike.
When I walked with my British scout troop through European railroad
stations I walked with special pride because on my right sleeve was a big American eagle resembling the famous "Screaming Eagle" symbol of American paratroops. People would go out of their way to carry your luggage for you, something quite embarassing for a British-American Boy Scout.
It sounds like a dream, but it wasn't. Eisenhower and his troops had left such an impression on everybody that, seven years after their departure, they were still remembered with fondness. America was just beginning to send its business representatives abroad and no friction had occurred between the few Americans and their European hosts. Racial tension had not exploded across the American landscape, and thus few Europeans had any reason to question America's ideals of liberty and justice.
Moreover, Americans in Europe were at ease with other Americans in Europe. McCarthy had faded from the scene and Ike, the father figure, was presiding over a relatively quiet country. I'll never forget that cold, windy
and rainy night in 1955, when approximately 80 American families, all that there were north of London, met in the coast town of Whitby to celebrate Thanksgiving. When we waved that little American flag, we waved a flag we respected and the English honored. To the British, Ike personified that symbol and made it honorable.
I remember Ike's first visit to Paris since the war years and remember the way the Parisians showed their affection for Ike—and all things American—by letting the little runt that I was stand in the front row of an eight-row crowd. And I'll never forget the roar that swept the avenues and squares of Paris as Ike passed by on a brilliantly blue day.
I'll never forget walking the beaches of Normandy, the beaches where Ike's combined forces landed in 1944, on two cold, overcast days in early March of 1959. Except for the four of us, the wind and rain-swept sands were deserted. Late in the afternoon of the second day a dignified museum curator
opened the Arromanches museum to us—a museum that normally would have been closed. His assistant had aroused him from bed after he had spotted us strolling the beaches. He not only gave us a personal tour through a fascinating exhibit but invited us to his private quarters for tea and pastries.
All these people talked of Ike and you knew that if Britain and France had been united and allowed an American named Ike to enter a British-French presidential race, he would have won hands down.
If it sounds like mom, apple pie and the flag, it was. For a young lad, it was a time when the only social conscience that existed was knowledge that you didn't tell Europeans about washing machines because it would hurt their feelings. Rationing had just ended and washers, dryers and T.V.'s simply did not exist. Moreover, you behaved yourself; because, at that time, Europeans thought that was the way most Americans acted . . . like Ike.
In the public interest
To the editor:
Tuesday afternoon the Lawrence City Commission refused my request to place a booth on Massachusetts Avenue October 15 for the purpose of disseminating information on the Vietnam war. As reported in the Lawrence Daily Journal-World, they denied my request and admitted that the ordinance that they enforced against me, for all practical purposes, was not enforced against others whom the Commission deems to have a "community-wide interest." Whether such open deviations in the application of law are fair and just poses an interesting question of constitutional and municipal law.
It is clear to me, at all events, that the City Commission has not spent much time trying to determine just how they figure what is or isn't of a community-wide interest. What it seems to boil down to is that the City Commissioners and those with whom they agree about the common affairs of this town have arraged to themselves the power to determine in practice whose rights get honored on the main thoroughfare of Lawrence, Kansas.
I should have thought that the Viet-
nam war was of pretty general interest
since it is a matter of life and death for the innocent young who are called upon to fight in that country for what the authorities of this nation have decided to be the national interest. My whole purpose was to make available, as conveniently and unobtrusively as possible, information which asks us as citizens to debate this question openly and honestly and to decide whether this war is, in fact, the true interest of the United States.
In my opinion this is a service rather than a special interest since we are called upon to pay taxes which this war drains from our income, to sacrifice for the inflation by which it has deranged our economy, and, most important by far, to suppress honest feelings of conscience about the wisdom and conduct of this war. Apparently, however, the City Commission has decided that one innocent booth along the whole of Massachusetts Avenue may well represent the forward hosts of the "extremists" such as Mr. Wells chose to term whatever it was he meant by the word.
Mr. Wells admitted, in other words, that the Commission had decided to determine for itself who and what constitute "extremism" in the same manner by which it decides who and what fall within the bounds of the community-wide interest. Under these circumstances what difference would it make for me to convince them that I am not, in fact, an extremist? Since they chose so to treat我 I am led to believe that they wouldn't care in the first place.
But then I don't suppose that I should be compelled to prove and defend my moderation to the City Commission of Lawrence. Almost a whole year ago the people of this country elected a President who promised to end the war in Vietnam. Since he is our elected leader and the Congress of the nation claims to represent the people, I believe I have the right in a peaceable manner to express my opinions to my fellow citizens and to our leadership concerning matters of pressing public importance.
This is, or used to be, a common understanding of representative democracy. In any case, I sincerely believe my request was my right and duty as an American citizen.
Danna Lou Santee Lawrence King Henry VI, Part I
But this didn't matter, because for thousands of Europeans with whom I had lived, he was a friendly, well behaved liberator who freed them from a gruesome conqueror in a war where American motives were beyond question. When taps blew in Abilene, I said good-bye to a man and era for my European friends.
So it was when Ike's train headed across the nation toward Abilene that I took special note. He recalled a time of innocence and a time when we respected ourselves and were respected by others. He was not, according to most, a great president and I can still remember his fumbling ways in press conferences and the humiliation of the U-2 incident.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN An All-American college newspaper
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom- UN 4-3646
Burdinger Office- UN 4-4058
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination peri- mester, 10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions express- not necessarily those of University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.