This is Kansas
Discrimination, Liquor Sales
An interesting paradox is evident in the fact that, a few years ago, a majority of the voters of this state voted to make the sale of liquor legal, and that since then every imaginable type of discriminatory law has been put into effect to deprive retail liquor dealers of a fair chance to conduct their businesses.
Kansas has the most unfair laws possible regulating liquor dealers. One merchant on Massachusetts street here accepted a calendar from a local florist. He displayed it in his liquor store. Though it had no illustration, no lewd text, or anything offensive (how offensive can a flower shop get?), he was not allowed to display it—even at the rear of his store. He was compelled to paste a white sheet over the advertising matter.
Another discriminatory law makes it illegal for the liquor dealer to enjoy the right to advertise. This we can't understand. After all, liquor dealers are licensed by the state, and are the most effective weapon ever found to thwart bootleggers. Can any Kansan reading this deny that bootlegging was practiced in his area before the repeal of prohibition a few years ago?
As far as we're concerned, any merchant whose business has the sanction of the state in which he operates has the right to conduct his business in the same manner as any other businessman. Ha
Kansas decided that fair play is something applicable only to the other states?
Of course, the faction behind the laws choking the retail liquor dealers is what we call the Lobby of Medieval Thought—a very powerful group. We feel that Kansas laws go beyond being conservative; they are mostly "old hat." The gentlemen at Topeka know that the laws which will keep the noisiest part of their constituency the happiest are the laws that are the stodgiest, the most reminiscent of the Victorian era.
Is there any logic in a law which forbids a dealer the right to place his product within three feet of the front window of his store? We think a dealer should be allowed to run "Merry Christmas" ads in newspapers, but the state thinks otherwise.
Let's go. Kansas. Let's do our best to dislodge ourselves from this intellectual mud in which we have been wallowing. Let's admit that the state had a thriving bootleg industry a few years ago, and that the presence of above-board liquor dealers, licensed and regulated by the state, denies bootleggers any chance of existence.
Why can't liquor dealers be emancipated? Is it anything but discrimination to say that a dealer can do no more toward promoting his business than lettering (in small letters, to be sure) on his window the fact that he sells liquor?
Let's give our retail liquor dealers a chance
BOOKS: South African Apartheid Seen in New Paton Book
Out of the misery and turmoil of Dr. Malan's Union of South Africa has come a book of poetic tragedy that likely will sink some readers into the depths of depression.
-Tom Stewart
TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE. By Alan Paton. New York: Scribners. 1953. 272 pages.
"Too Late the Phalarope" has one of the strangest and maybe worst titles ever devised. The phalarope is a bird that inhabits the coast of South Africa, but it is found in the grassyland regions by the book's hero and his father. It is found in an attempt of the father to obtain a relationship with his strange, disturbed son.
It sunk this reader, for sure. The book is "Too Late the Phalarope," by Alan Paton, whose only previous novel was "Cry, the Beloved Country," possibly one of the great books of our time.
The father is an old-line Nationalist, who knows only The Book, who follows the doctrines of stern racial segregation and seems little different from his ancestors. His son is a combination of father and mother—strong, handsome, athletic, but possessing a certain femininity in his love of flowers and birds (at least so Paton believes). He is also possessed of an overpowering sexuality and is slowly being driven from his home by his lovely but unyielding wife.
In his desperation the son, a police lieutenant, turns to a beautiful, weak, and tempting black girl, Stephanie. His sin is found out, but in South Africa it is more than sin, it is crime, for the stern moral code of the Boers forbid any relations with the native, or colored, population.
And so tragedy strikes the family, strikes, indeed, the entire community. For Pieter, the son, is loved and admired by all. He is the finest rugby player in the region, and in his fall from grace everyone suffers. He is like our great Bill Tilden of the 1920s, a brilliant athlete who succumbed to weaknesses
of the flesh and was virtually cut out of the American moral community
The story of "Too Late the Phalarope" is told by the understanding aunt of the offending man. She writes in the Biblical style that set apart "Cry, the Beloved Country," as a masterpiece. There is much of the Bible, in fact, in the story. The father is as fierce and as wonderful as many of the old Hebrew patriarchs. The son could be compared to Joseph in his strength and weaknesses.
Depressing as the book might be, it should not be cast aside merely because it ends on a note of absolute tragedy or because the tragedy has been building throughout the story. From what contemporary books, newspapers, and magazines report, South Africa is what the old-time editorial writer would love to call a "powder keg." Dr Malan's Nationalist, fascist policies seem little different from those of Hitler and Mussolini. His attempts to build a pure race, his virtual cancelling-out of the Supreme court of the country, his fighting any opposition groups make him a truly frightening figure.
Greene, who lives in the ghost town which is all that remains on the site of the once thriving U. S. arsenal, is fond of his few neighbors. His book is essentially about their predecessors, and the impact on them of Brown's raid and all that followed rather than about great events on the wider stage of history.
The spiritual disintegration of defeated Germany and the burden of guilt borne by individuals for a nation's sin, is somberly depicted in The Quest (Knopf), written by Elizabeth Langgasser. Published in Germany in 1950, and the first of Mrs. Langgasser's 11 volumes of novels, poems and short stories to be translated into English, this is an account of seven Germans in search of understanding for themselves and for the future.
The Raid, by Laurence Greene (Holt) is a gay irreverent "biography" of the sleepy (West) Virginia town of Harper's Ferry, with special emphasis on the high point in its history—the weird pottery of John Brown's two-day "insurrection."
There are the actor, Albrecht, the tormented young widow Lotte and her brother Ewald, who bears the pain of murder for a life lost because he refused his hand in help; the soul-carried girl from the underground, Irene; the homecoming soldier Friedrich, lost in cynicism; and the elderly Levi-Jeshower couple whose nights
are shared with the dark horrors of the pogrom.
It was indeed amusing to recognize some of my own writing in the letter which ASC president Dick Sheldon allegedly wrote to the exalted Pachacamac Inner Circle. One of the paragraphs appeared not in a letter to Pach, but in the FACTS newspaper last spring.
Setting out individually for Anastasiendorf, the village of the Resur- crection, from still crumbling Berlin in the summer of 1945, they share their pilgrimage to the ancient convent where each hopes to "find the beginning".
Here, clearly and simply told, is the story of a strange rising against the slaveholding South which began and ended with an attack on a federal arms factory.
Letters
To the Editor:
At that time I was editor of the paper, and author of most of the articles that appeared in it. Apparently the Pach leaders can't even keep the various FACTS writers straight when they set out to concoct one of their cloak-and-dagger fantasies.
Will Adams former student
Page 2 University Daily Kansas Wednesday, Oct. 28, 1953 LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"Your entrance exams predicted failure in college, but your A's and B's show that tests don't take into consideration ambition, hard work, drive, and determination."
KU Band's 'New Look' Deserves Much Praise
We lost the game Saturday, yet gained a victory on the gridiron—a revitalized, revamped band that out-snapped and out-performed the well-known SMU organization, and marched along at about 200 steps a minute.
The first inking the fans had that something was in the air, when the band lined up on the sidelines before game-time, instead of forming at the south end of the field as they have done in the past.
Glenn Opie, drum major, raised his baton and gave a blast on his whistle. In an instant the band was on the field and in a three-line front, leaving the spectators open-mouthed with surprise.
The formation marched the length of the field in almost perfect form as the crowd applauded its approval.
The half-time performance was equally awesome. The band snapped through the pageant, "A Day in the Life of a College Professor," forming a four leaf clover; a professor's face that grinned and winked; a beer mug, complete with foam, and salutes to both schools in the form of large letters.
The formations were manipulated by the band with such professional precision that most of the crowd couldn't believe this was the same band which had performed in previous games. Applause poured from the stands as the group strutted off the field in its last formation—a big KU.
Prof. Russell L. Wiley, who has always done a fine job of directing the KU band, can add another feather to his cap after Saturday's performance. Under his expert tutoring the tone and sound have not been sacrificed and remain as good as when the band was plodding at 140 steps a minute.
Under-staffed and with need of more financial support, the U band proved that it could thrill the audience with what it had. Most of the members will agree, however, that this is just a beginning and better things are yet to come. As soon as the band and the student body get used to this new snap, an even smoother outfit than was seen Saturday should hatch in Memorial stadium.
If the band can continue improving, the pageant planned for the KU-MU clash should be as polished and precise as any Big Ten school can boast. —Tom Lyons