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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Dec. 20, 1951
Daily Kansan Editorials
We Have Slept Too Long, Much Too Long
In his recent book, "While You Slept," John T. Flynn blames poor American leadership for causing the present-day disasters in China and Korea. The book is the story of how leftwingers in the U.S. influenced the press and persuaded our leaders "to support the Communist plan to turn China and Korea over to the Soviet."
Falling along the same lines as Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, Flynn lists many of our present leaders among the Reds and pinks who assisted the Kremlin in the Far East by poor and frequently mistaken decisions.
He cites the failure of the U.S. to furnish aid to Chiang Kai-Shek as the first serious mistake.
Flynn is correct in pointing out the lack of leadership after Roosevelt's death. The ship was sailing without a navigator. But there is reason for disagreement in at least part of what he says. In advocating our early support of Nationalist China, he fails to remember that Chiang's government was a corrupt dietatorship which opposed the basic principles Americans uphold.
The American Friends Service committee offered a plausible solution several years ago, called "The Quaker Proposals for Peace." In the plan, reasons were given to show how it was then possible for the two opposing ideologies to co-exist peacefully in the world.
It was advised, as an early step, that the U.S. recognize the Communist government of China, since there was no actual political connection with Russia at that time.
Their point was to widen the gap between the Soviet Union and Communist China by helping the Chinese set up a better standard of living, including higher education, which would eventually lead to a democratic form of government.
The U.S. did not recognize Communist China and, as a result, may have lost China's friendship for many centuries. Instead, America furnished
only a smattering of aid to Chiang. The word "Communism" became treason in America, for it came to mean the opposite of democracy.
Actually, in China the word Communism meant food and clothing for millions of hungry people, 90 per cent of whom were farmers.
Competition meant very little to those people. They wanted to be fed and clothed, something that was not being provided under Chiang. And how could democracy hope to exist in China on such a low rate of public participation, when only 10 per cent of the people can read or write? Yet the U.S. policy was to defend the government of a corrupt dictator with the goal of making the nation "free."
Today the chance to assist China is gone. Close Chinese-Russian tieups have been made as a defense against America's propaganda attacks, as Flynn said. Hundreds of thousands of Western sympathizers have been killed by Red leaders in China. The barrier between the U.S. and Russia has now moved to the China coast.
If the Kremlin's ultimate purpose is to eliminate democracy from the earth, the U.S. will have to brace itself against the attack. Wouldn't it have been much better to have China on our side?
Instead, if total war is avoided for 10 more years, it will be a fierce struggle to win back China to our point of view. By then there will be few Western sympathizers left in China, for even the youth will have been disciplined. Either they support the cause or die.
Flynn was right about our leaders following W.W. II. They were extremely short-sighted. By their failure to see the tremendous influence their decisions would have on world progress, the cause of freedom has lost one more important friend.
And there seems to be no return. We have slept too long, much too long. —Jim Powers.
Should U.S. Business Finance Education?
Irving Olds, chairman of the board of U.S. Steel corporation, gained the rapt attention of a Yale university audience last month by proposing that U.S.business go to the financial rescue of independent education.
Olds was seconding a proposal made some months ago by Alfred P. Sloan, chairman of the board of General Motors. For a number of well-known reasons, including higher costs and dwindling income from investments, more than half of the country's 900 privately-endowed colleges and universities are operating in the red; some 200 are afraid of going under.
Both men argue that free enterprise has a big stake in free universities. Said Olds, in part:
"Every American business has a direct obligation to support the free, independent, privately-endowed colleges and universities of this country to the limit of its financial ability and legal authority. And unless it recognizes and meets this obligation, I do not believe it is properly protecting the long-range interests of its stockholders, its employees and its customers.
"Every well-managed corporation, of course,
Daily Kansan
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As Ruml and Geiger see it, high taxes have actually imposed an obligation on corporations to make such contributions. They point out how corporations, taking advantage of the five per cent deductions allowed for charity, can provide financial support at bargain rates.
must preserve, improve, and develop the major sources of its raw materials; but if it is necessary for us to spend millions of dollars to benefit the ore which goes into our blast furnaces and to process the coal which goes into our coke ovens—then why is it not equally our business to develop and improve the quality of the greatest natural resources of all—the human mind?
"I am not suggesting that we tailor our scholastic pattern to the self-serving specifications of any individual or any group, industrial or political. We might as well accept government subsidy and control and be done with it."
"But I am suggesting that freedom of education and freedom of enterprise are part and parcel of the same thing—that they are inseparable—and that neither can survive without the other."
Businessmen who agree with Irving Olds can read a pamphlet, "The Five Percent," prepared by Beardsley Ruml and Theodore Geiger for the National Planning association. They attack the same problem from another angle.
If the only well-known colleges got donations, smaller colleges might end up worse off than ever. A study of gifts from all sources over the past 30 years shows that five universities (Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Northwestern and Columbia) got 46 per cent of total donations.
There was the legal question that Olds himself raised. Could corporations spend stockholders' money on a department of Egyptology, for instance? This was Olds' main point—that corporations should support the liberal arts and the humanities, that they should help underwrite the pure business of developing and improving the human mind.
The complicated legal aspect of the question was something for corporation lawyers to take up. Meanwhile, harassed college presidents asked, "When do we start?"—The Minnesota Daily.
"Drink it—It's compounded by the greatest sports-minded scientists in the University. It'll make you grow big an tall!"
Hurry Up To Blair House
President Truman recently returned to Blair House after cutting his Key West vacation short. Speculation has since been running high as to just what his reasons were for the hurried action.
Truman says that action, drastic and far reaching, are soon to be initiated to bring about a general housecleaning in the national administration. It's a man-sized job and long overdue.
There is little doubt that conditions have been rotten in various sections of the justice, treasury and internal revenue departments. Recent investigations have shown various branches of these departments to be overflowing with graft and corruption.
The big thing that remains to be seen is how much abuse of public confidence has spread to other branches of the administration.
These exposures are relatively recent. The causes of the misuse of official powers can be traced back, however, to the point where "I'm from Missouri" was the password for getting the right doors opened in Washington.
One thing for sure—if the present administration is to withstand the charges of graft and corruption and prove themselves innocent of the unsavory affairs now being revealed, it must start tossing out the bad apples, big and small, that have raised all the stink. William Stanfill.
Since the time those words started opening doors the rot and corruption has been spreading in the present administration. Just how bad and how far it has spread remains to be seen. The investigating committees are still grinding away at what looks like a badly decayed tooth that should have been pulled long ago.
And now, finally, the national administration, for the sake of it's own continuation, is belatedly turning on its own backers. The protective shield of official sanction has been lifted by the investigating committees and the public is being allowed to see what has been going on for so long.
An All-American? So What!!
Last season, Bill Gable of the University of Wisconsin received: (1.) a vote as the nation's Lineman of the Week, and (2.) a place among the outstanding early-season performers observed by scouts for a national magazine's All-American list.
It takes more than a dunde cap to discourage All-American team-pickers, says the current issue of the magazine People Today, in a sports article titled "Our All-American Farce."
Someone gently suggested that something must be wrong. Due to a pre-season injury, Gable didn't participated in a single Wisconsin play.
Another All-American selector once conferred first-team honors on a fullback before it was pointed out that the kid was only a third-stringer on his own team.
When Casper Whitney, New York sportswriter, and Walter Camp in-augurated it in 1899, the idea was at least sane, says the article. In a season, the experts could get a look at all the candidates because all that were worth seeing were confined to a small geographical area occupied by the Big Three (Yale, Harvard, Princeton).
Today's selector can see no more than a small detachment of the nation's players at major schools, much less worry about those who annually emerge from obscure schools. Therefore he is reduced to the absurdity of trying to compare a player he's seen with others he's only heard about.
Circulation and promotion departments are partly responsible for perpetuation of a custom that even most selectors now privately admit is so much hogwash, the writer says.
Mall subscription: $ a semester, $450 a year, (in Lawrence add $1 a semester postage). Published in Lawrence, Kans. During the University year except holidays and Sundays. University holidays and Sundays. Periods. Entered as second class matter. September 1910, at the Post Office at Lawrence, Kans., under act of March 3, 1879.