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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1951
Thought for the Day
What's the use? Yesterday an egg, tomorrow a feather duster.
—Mark Fenderson
The Editorial Page-
When World War III Comes
How often in the past few weeks have you heard or read the phrase, "when World War III comes. . .?"
A story appearing in the Kansan on March 8 said, "But neither Paris nor London dares to take its eyes off the main threat—the danger that Russia may start World War III and send the Red army sweeping to the English channel."
It is only natural that our attention should be directed toward Western Europe. There exists not only the cultural bond of western civilization, but also a bond of sympathy resulting from the fact that England and France have been our allies in two world wars. And, from a more practical standpoint, loss of Western Europe's industry would shift the balance of the world's industrial potential from our hands to Russia's.
And so anticipation of a war in Europe overshadows the Korean conflict. The history of the past eight months shows only a pendulum of advance and retreat, up and down the Korean peninsula. The Inchon landing, and later the Red successes in North Korea, stimulated interest for a while. But now that the war has become a "battle for casualties," and day after day the newspapers seem to report almost identical stories about one- or two-mile advances, the Korean war doesn't make very interesting reading.
Not such interesting reading, for example, as our first year in World War II provided. Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Bataan. The fall of Hong Kong, Batavia, Rangoon, Sumatra, Mandalay, and the Malay States. Sevastopol. New Britain, New Guinea, and the shelling of the California coast by a Jap sub. Doolittle's Tokyo raid.
The battle of the Coral sea. The Lexington. The battle of Midway, and of Savo island. The Yorktown. The Dieppe raid. The battle of the Solomons.
The Wasp. El Alamein. Cape Esperance. The battle of the Santa Cruz islands, and the Hornet. The invasion of North Africa. Guadalcanal. New York harbor blocked by German mines.
Quite a war. The American casualties for that first year of war were 52,000.
Another quote from that Kansan story mentioned above: "Our casualties are now more than 52,000." In eight months.
It's only a matter of terminology, but let's quit talking about "when World War III comes." As far as the United States is concerned, it's already here.
No Bread Breeds Isms
By DOROTHY OGLESBEE
Two million Italians are unemployed and hungry and they don't give a hoot about the defense of western democracy. They're looking for a system that will provide jobs and food, something the present Italian government has failed to do.
These people are fertile ground for the growth of any "ism" that will offer some hope for the future. The Italian Communist party is the largest outside Russia despite a recent split.
The split occurred when two deputies and 13 local officials bolted the official party to form a new "Workers' Movement." The United States state department has interpreted the split as a gain for the western powers.
Even if one can call a party which has announced its opposition "to the Atlantic Pact, the United States imperialist policy and the bourgeois government of Premier de Gasperi" again, it's easy to see how communist party propaganda might balance this effect by pointing out Italy's present unemployment and economic depression.
The United States has poured many dollars into the Italian economy. Economic Co-operation Administration officials charge that the Italian government hoards its dollars and gold rather than making credit available for modernization of Italian industry.
Business men find it difficult to get capital for expansion. Business credit costs from 10 to 12 per cent interest. Italian industry now operates at only 60 per cent of capacity.
Italy is plagued with chronic unemployment and overpopulation. The Italian laborer's average wage is one half that of other European labor. Even the tax system is strictly a little man's burden. The rich get richer while the poor pay taxes.
The two million unemployed Italians coupled with two million loyal Italian communist party members are a formidable threat to western defense.
You can't expect citizens to be too concerned over preserving a government that has failed to provide them even a chance to work.
Rodney Nipnay says John Ise is putting out another revision of his Economics text so he can pay off his income tax.
Budget note: If K.U. keeps adding to its coaching staff, it will have to cut the salaries of some of its football players.
The Public's Pulse-
Dear Editor:
Again We Hear From Pawnee Rock
From an editorial by W. A. White:
Twenty years ago today the Gazette's headlines spread all over the first page the story of the sinking of the "Lusitania." The horror of the slaughter shocked the world. Finally the memory of that incident led America into the war. We went in to fight for the rights of neutrals, which being sloganized read, "Make the world safe for Democracy."
The next war now is looming up. Everything that America sells will be contraband of war. Every American ship nosing out of our harbors carrying anything but ballast and passengers will be a target for one or both of the combatants. So we will go out again to fight for the rights of neutrals and again be embroiled in a foreign war.
What are the rights of neutrals for which we shall fight? The right to trade. To trade in what? American goods; American products of the farm and factory. Why? Because it pays? Why does it pay? Because prices abroad in the war are much higher than prices at home in peace. And we crave those prices for our workmen and our farmers? Sure that's it. So we will toss our sons into cauldrons of war. Have them choked to death by gas. Disembowled by shrapnel. Their hands bashed by gunbutts—all for money, for profits for ourselves.
A rather sordid business, that of trading sons for money? Sure. But that is the net of the kind of greedy raging patriotism that nags nations into wars. The rights of neutrals are the rights of traders. We went into war to uphold the rights of trade, and the debts of war which fell upon our shoulders in the end. For our allies would not pay those war debts, in one form or another, which are now devastating our civilization.
So try to keep your head when the drums roll and the bands play and the flags wave. Don't forget this editorial. For the net of it is that you are going to swap your sons for money. But the funny part of it is that you'll lose your son in the long run and you won't even get the money. But you will get the trade.
And may we add in closing, looking back these twenty years: **TO HELL WITH WAR.** It settles nothing. **War patriotism** is the fanaticism of a mad mob brain.
William Allen White in the Emporia Gazette..
I 'ATES WAR
Sometimes "Old Bill" showed signs of being smart. When he wrote "Stop-Look-Listen" was one of them. He lived long enough to change his mind about some of the things that he wrote. This piece evidently was one of them, judging from the way one of The Saturday Evening Post boys took him apart, and forgot to put him back together again, in an editorial just before the last war. Bill was right the first time.
I know "The Book" says that "Without the shedding of blood is there no remission of sin." But I'm not reading from that page now. I rather would be in favor of shedding someone else's blood. Maybe we should revise our Sunday Schools a bit and teach the boys to stick each other in the guts with a bayonet and to swear like Harry Truman while they are doing it. This sending the boys to war is a far cry from "Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me." It's a helluva way for Christians to act. We go down town, buy a war for the boys and tell the man to charge it. Then we come home, tell the boys to fight it and when and if they come back to work hard and pay for it—with interest. That's what we call "Patriotism."
The boys won't come home better men for having had the brutal training of war. The great majority of them that do return will come back as mendicants, bums and tramps—their lives warped and blasted. War experience does not make men out of boys. The girls at home won't stand the shock much better. When the boys leave our shores most of them will be bound for that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler comes back. They are not expendable. We are signing our own death warrant when we send them.
Someday I may have to go to jail for my one man campaign against war and sin. I 'ates wah and Eleanor' ates wah. Of course we gotta have a little wahoo. I like to think that old Don Quizote had a good time fighting the windmills. I have nothing, in this world, to lose but my self respect and I won't lose that standing up for the boys. This time I am right.
Frank Sprier, '14
Pawnee Rock, Kan.
University
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Republicans To Hear Legislator Tonight
Marvin M. Cox, state legislator from Kingman, will speak to the Young Republicans club at 7:30 tonight in 106 Green.
In addition to the talk by Cox, there will be a discussion of the results of the 1951 Young Republicans convention held in Wichita on March 9, 10, and 11. Bill Buechel, new state chairman, will report on the resolutions passed by the delegates from Kansas colleges.
Airport Land Bill Introduced
A bill to authorize the state board of regents to lease 100 acres of land in Lawrence for airport purposes was introduced by the committee on state affairs last week in Topeka
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