U.S. of Brazil Playing Vital Resource Role
The United States of Brazil is beginning to play a very significant role in supplying resources to the United States and her allies. Brazil as a source of necessary resources is important because she is a friend of the United States and is also located in the same hemisphere, making the transport of products convenient.
The United States of Brazil is the largest republic in South America, occupying nearly half the continent. In world size, it is surpassed only by the Soviet Union, China, and Canada.
The population of Brazil was estimated at 50 million in 1950, comparable to that of Italy. a much smaller country.
In the immense Amazon basin the heavy rainfall and uniformly high temperatures have produced dense tropical rain forests, comprised of hundreds of varieties of evergreen broadleaf trees intermingled with tropical vines and orchids.
The people are descendants of the Portuguese, native Indians, Negroes, who were freed from slavery in 1888, and more recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. Despite a high mortality rate, the population has grown rapidly in the past few years. The population, however, is concentrated along the eastern edge, and the interior is still sparsely settled.
There is little flat land; only 10 per cent in the Amazon flood plain, and the remainder of the country is gently rolling. There are two highland areas, the Guiana and Brazilian.
There is some semi-deciduous forest in the country. Most of the interior is covered with dry savanna and scrub forest.
There are only a few areas not suited for agriculture. Most of Brazil receives 40 inches or more of rain annually. There is a small semi-arid area in northeast Brazil where the problem is the irregularity of rainfall rather than a moisture deficit. Rainfall of more than 80 inches a year is found in the upper Amazon basin.
Temperatures are not extremely warm, contrary to a popular belief. At Santarem, a few miles from the equator, the highest temperature ever recorded was 96 degrees Fahrenheit and the lowest on record was 65 degrees. It is the 78 per cent humidity which makes it so uncomfortable for Europeans and North Americans.
Brazil has the most extensive variety of plants of any country in the world. Economic plants are the Brazil nut tree, timbo, para rubber, tapioca, yerba mate, and many timbers used in the making of fine furnitures. The most outstanding economic plant is the coffee plant. Sugar cane, upland cotton, castor beans, citrus fruits, bananas, and wheat have been introduced to the country. The basic economy is agricultural and thus completely dependent on its economic plants.
Trees and herbs used in the manufacture of quinine, tanning chemicals, insecticides, wax, turpentine, and valuable drugs and medicants are also grown. The Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree, producer of the finest rubber latex, is grown in the tropical rain forest.
The raising of cattle for export is becoming an important agricultural industry.
The country is rich in minerals which have been only slightly developed. There are placer and vein gold deposits in the highlands. Coal necessary for industry, however, is very scarce and expensive. The iron ore available is 70 per cent high grade. One of the world's largest deposits of manganese is found 300 miles from the coast. There are also deposits of bauxite, chromium, molybdenum, tin, and tungsten. Brazil is the world's only source of topaz. Some petroleum also is found.
Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday. Feb. 11. 1954
The most important industry is cotton weaving. The cement industry and ceramics works play an important part in the economy. New steel industries and other industries are being developed slowly.
Forty per cent of Brazilian exports go to the United States. Other important importers of Brazilian products are Great Britain and Argentina. The United States is also Brazil's chief source of imports.
The process of developing resources and industries is slow but Brazil will begin to play an even more important part in supplying the world with necessary materials. —Elizabeth Wohlgemuth
BOOKS A MAN AND TWO GODS. By Jea
MAN AND TWO GODS. By Jean
Morris. New York: Viking
1954 250 pages
"A Man and Two Gods" starts slowly, picks up, achieves a whirlwind pace, slows down, becomes a confused philosophical rambling, and peters out to nothing.
The book comes to this country from England, where its writer, Jean Morris, is hailed as a promising find, or so says the dust jacket. It reminded this reader very strongly of a book issued a year ago by the same publisher, Viking-Graham Greene's "The Shipwrecked," first published in the 1930s as "England Made Me."
The resemblance is that neither book (or neither author) seems to know where it's going. "A Man and Two Gods" gives promise of being a story of exiting proportions, in the grand tradition of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. But the writer also has a sense of the classical, and she tries to make it a problem of the difference between right and wrong—if, as she suggests, there is a difference.
The story concerns a young Army officer named Richard Bering in a mountain-bound country that could be any of the real countries of central Europe or anywhere in Graustarkia. A man of almost naive devotions and interests, he is ordered by a superior office to prevent the escape of Radeaev, believed to be an enemy spy, at all costs. He prevents the escape, killing Radeav in so doing.
But Radeav is not proved to be a spy, the two countries are at peace, and high officials of Bering's
country want the other nation to continue to be unaware of vast preparations being made for war. Bering is made the patsy, and is condemned to death. Almost on the eve of his execution, Radeav's country declares war, and the condemned prisoner becomes a national hero.
It would be easy for some to don the mantle of hero, but not Bering. For he has inner doubts about his act. He obeyed an officer and was condemned for doing so. Had he refused the order he likewise would have been condemned. When the time comes for him to receive a high honor from his now grateful nation he flees, for he will not accept the fact that he can be knave one day and a god the next.
Miss Morris's belief—and shu may be right—is that there is a parallel between "A Man and Two Gods" and the Orestes myth. Orestes, of course, kills his mother, Clytemnestra, on orders of Apollo, and then is pursued by the Furies because he has committed the sin of matricide. Orestes like Bering, was caught in the dilemma of right and wrong. And Bering, like Orestes, finds it a dilemma that has no solution.
Some of the boys were calling the Jayhawks the "little pink team" after they lost that 11 point lead and the game to Colorado last week.
The Editor Sez
- Chuck Morelock
Now that Chuck Mather has taken over control of the Mount Oread eleven, perhaps the lack of observance of training rules which has been too prevalent and obvious on Saturday afternoons will come to a halt.
After seeing the newsreel at the local cinema, it is said that John Landy of Australia is most favored to run the sought-after four minute mile. The doings of the Aussies seem to be more known to our coastal states than what is happening here in the Midwest. Wes will run the four minute mile. Didn't he say, so?
The ASC has taken a step in the right direction with its provision for younger judges as stipulated in the organization's homecoming queen bill passed Tuesday evening. Its not that the old folks don't have any appreciation of feminine beauty—its just that the "kids" on the faculty should be a little closer to student sentiment when it comes to choosing a doll that will be satisfactory to all.
And here's hoping the grade point and activity considerations will be in the ash can come next fall. We're of the radical school that says a coed needs only two weapons to grab a "queen" title~superior face and figure. We'll take a .9 female with Terry Moore-ish features over a 2.5 winner with less outstanding characteristics any day.
Late news caption reads that "CCUN Recruits 200 Members." Recruits seem like a mild statement after encountering the "fifty cents or I'll break your arm" tactics used to do the recruiting.
Young officials would be a welcome sight at the KU-Nebraska game Saturday also. The ancient whistle-tooters that have been huffing and puffing up and down the Hoch auditorium court this season do their best but just don't have it any more. Officiating is stricly a young man's racket. A referee has to follow the play the full 40 minutes. When he gets up in years he naturally can't move around as fast as he used to. Consequently, he frequently gets out of position and is unable to see all the elbow-flying, double-dribbling, and traveling that occurs.
Short Ones
And for his efforts—or lack of them he is, of course, rewarded with a ringing chorus of boos. With a pair of younger men at the helm, this situation wouldn't be as common.
Spring enrollment was "simplified" this year, according to those in control. They mean that the confusion was merely shifted to different places.