Kansas State Historical Society Topeka, Ks.
Photo by Bob Rose
CURIOUS ONLOOKERS watch as firemen battle the flames which destroyed the Acacia fraternity house at 1147 Tennessee street Dec. 29. The fire is believed to have started in an automatic coal stoker. Damage was estimated in excess of $25,000.
Twenty-nine residents of the Acacia fraternity house at 12th and Tennessee streets which burned Friday are now living in Oread and McCook halls and in private homes.
High Personal Loss In Acacia House Fire
Professor Max Fessler, Acacia adviser, said the fraternity will probably make no attempt to regroup until next semester. The Delta Delta sorority house at 1115 Louisiana may be taken over byocia. The sorority has a nearly completed new house in West Hills.
Alesson Pessier said that most of the personal property in the fire was covered by insurance. House furnishings, students' books, term papers, class notes, supplies, and clothing were almost a total loss. A charge to the house may be $35,000. A.M. Horkman, owner said.
2. M. Rorkham, owner, said.
The fire left the walls and chimney standing, but the interior was completely gutted. The blaze is believed to have started in the basement. It had reached the second floor when neighbors called in the alarm.
Fire chief Paul Ingels was treated for cuts on the hand, and Charles Snow, a fireman who suffered severe cuts on the hands, was taken to Lawrence Memorial hospital.
Today students were still picking their way through the soggy debris inside the charred building searching for undamaged belongings. Nearly all of them came out with the same report—a total loss.
Some of the 29 residents of the house were lucky. They had taken most of their clothing home with them. Neil G. Peterson, engineering senior, who expects an army induction call soon, had taken almost all of his clothing home. Still, he lost a typewriter, a desk lamp, textbooks, a radio, and class notes—with final examinations less than a month away.
Clothing of the housemother Mrs. hauncey L. Veatch, who was visiting relatives in Wichita, was safe plastic bags in a locked closet.
Clinton Carrier, business junior, found the charred remains of a camera, a typewriter, a radio, books, and several suits in his second floor room.
A pre-medical student salvaged all-important notebooks simply because they were stacked in a neat pile. Flames charred the edges, but did not consume the paper.
Three first floor living rooms, including one which had been redecorated and refurnished this fall were in ruins. A grand piano in one is a useless, waterlogged instrument.
BULLETIN
Tokyo—(U.P.)—The U. S. 8th army began abandoning Seoul early today. It withdrew under pressure of a three-day-old Chinese Communist frontal assault combined with a wide outflanking move in the east by Mongolian cavalry.
Student Injured As Car Hits Pole
Kansas City—(U.P.)-Dorothy Cress special student at K.U. suffered injuries early today when she went to sleep at the wheel of her motor car and it crashed into a light pole three miles east of De Soto.
Miss Cress was admitted to the University medical center shortly after 4 a.m. She told Johnson county sheriff's deputies that she went to sleep at the wheel.
Topeka — (U.P.) — Kansas will furnish 981 drafttees to the armed services in March selective service officials said today.
UNIVERSITY DAILY
Red Hordes Rip US Lines In Massive Drive On Seoul
Tokyo—(U.P.)—Chinese Reds in overwhelming strength ripped through U. S. 8th army lines to within seven miles of panic-stricken Seoul in a blazing two-pronged offensive today.
The South Korean government joined tens of thousands of civilians in chaotic flight from the apparently doomed South Korean capital.
"There is every possibility that the Chinese will be at the city's
gates tomorrow," United Press war correspondent Gene Symonds reported in what he said was probably his last dispatch from the capital.
The thunder of battle north and northwest of Seoul already was audible in the stricken city. Both Ko-yang, eight miles northwest of Seul, and the strategic highway junction
82nd US Congress Convenes Today
Washington—(U.P.)—A new congress, with new power in its dominant conservative wing, convened at noon today with the nation's biggest foreign policy debate since Pearl Harbor in the offing.
This 82nd congress confronts President Truman with both a challenge and a threat because of its reduced Democratic majorities and its nervousness over the crisis in relations between the democracies and world Communism.
Debate will be heard almost daily on proposals of Mr. Truman, former president Hoover and others for dealing with that crisis.
Today's program called for only routine organizing for the next two terms. The old 81st congress adjourned sine die Tuesday.
The Democrats retain control of both the house and senate in the new congress but with majorities reduced until they are almost meaningless. This is particularly true in the senate where conservative Republicans and Democrats form the actual majority.
of Uijongbu, 11 miles north, had fallen to the onrushing enemy.
At least one item on today's agenda promised a major test between the administration and the coalition of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats — the coalition's plan to restore the conservative house rules committee's power to prevent legislation from reaching the floor.
There were 31 senators and 435 house members ready to be sworn in today. They and Gov. James H. Duff, Republican senator-elect from Pennsylvania who does not report until Jan. 16, were victors in the November elections. There are 64 holdover senators.
For the most part, the new congress will be marking time until the
administration program is outlined in messages from the President. Mr. Truman will deliver his annual state of the union message next Monday and send his economic message a few days later. His budget will go to congress Jan. 15.
In the new lineup, Mr. Truman can find little reason to hope for approval of his disputed domestic programs which were rejected by the congress that adjourned yesterday. Those included the Brannan farm plan, national health insurance, federal aid for education and repeal of the Taft-Hartley labor law.
Photo by Hank Brown
The foreign policy debate which will dominate congressional thinking for months will come in speeches dealing with legislation inside and events outside of congress. It will involve the billions to be spent for defense, military aid for other democracies, policy in Europe and the Far East and the assignment of American troops abroad.
Other major issues before the new congress will involve stiff new tax increases to pay for climbing defense costs, ways of cutting non-defense spending and the economic controls to curb wages and prices and to check inflation.
One Killed, 3 Injured In Crash
MISS NATALIE PIERSON
Unconfirmed reports said fanatic Chinese had driven a wedge between the U. S. 25th division and British Commonwealth 27th brigade forces northwest of Seoul and had broken through the center of the U. S. 25th division due north.
One college woman was killed and another seriously injured Dec. 30 when the automobile in which they were passengers struck two trees
near the entrance of the Kansas City Country club in Kansas City, Mo.
Natalie Pierson, 19, fine arts freshman from Kansas City, Mo., was killed and Anne Jordan MacDougall, 18, fine arts freshman, from Topeka, suffered internal injuries, compound fracture of one arm, a broken nose, the loss of two teeth, and a fractured jawbone. She is in the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. Both girls are Delta Gamma pledges.
Driving the convertible was J. Damon Walthall, 18, a student at Brown university, Providence, R.I. He is in a critical condition at the medical center. Another passenger, Donald Taylor Marvin, 18, a student at Rollins college, Winter Park, Fla., was treated and released.
Miss Pierson attended Barstow Girls' school in Kansas City before coming to K.U.
She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Pierson, Kansas City, Mo. Miss MacDougall is the daughter of Mrs. Catherine MacDougall. Toebea.
MacDougall would be in the hospital indefinitely. She has been responding well to treatment.
Mrs. W. S. Shaw, Delta Gamma housemother, said Tuesday that Miss
Photo by Hank Brown.
MISS JORDAN MacDOUGALL
A British company of 200 men was surrounded and wiped out. A 24th division company also was overrun.
Some 50 miles to the east, another powerful Communist force drove as much as 27 miles south of the 38th parallel in an apparent attempt to encircle the defenders of Seoul from the rear and cut the city's communications with Taegu and Fuegan.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters reported that four Chinese armies and two North Korean corps—a total of perhaps 150,000 men—were pushing west and south on that sector toward the strategic road junction of Wonju, 53 miles southeast of Seoul.
An 8th army spokesman said that United Nations forces still were engaged in a general withdrawal all along the 140-mile front across Korea. He said seven Chinese armies of the 4th field army totalling 21 divisions plus nine reconstructed North Korean divisions—some 300,000 men—had been thrown against the United Nations line. Moreover, he said, the Chinese 3rd field army of 100,000 to 150,000 men had begun moving south from the Hambung-Hunngam area on the northeast coast to join the assault.
Up to 1,000 allied planes from both land bases and carriers offshore strafed, bombed and rocketed the Chinese, inflicting what one from report called "fantastic casualties."
They killed or wounded 1000 to 1,700 enemy troops yesterday alone. They also destroyed six enemy tanks. Up to mid-day today, the air fleets had killed or wounded 400 more enemy soldiers and wrecker 200 Communist-occupied buildings
Discarding camouflage and driving hundreds of refuges before them, the Chinese swarmed down from hills on either side of the Kae song-Seoul highway northwest c the capital in the face of heavy American and British artillery an mortar fire.
Collector To Give Lecture
Pygmy elephants and giant toises of the Celebes islands will be the subject of a lecture by Dr. Dic Hooijer of Leyden, Holland, today at 4 p.m. in 206 Snow hall.
Dr. Hooijer is the vertebrate pleontologist for the State museum at Leyden. He is in this count on a Rockefeller grant. Dr. E. Hall, zoology department chairs describes Dr. Hooijer as one of Europe's greatest young paleontologists
While Dr. Hooijer is on the camp he will study fossil vertebrates the Museum of Natural History. I recently spent some time at t University of Nebraska studyi specimens.
Dr. and Mrs. Hooijer are gue of Dr. and Mrs. E. R. Hall
THE WEATHER
KANSAS — Light snow tonight ending Thursday morning. Not cold southwest tonight. Low 10 northwest, 20-25 east and so much cooler Thursday with a cwave in northwest. High 15 nonwest to 25-30 southeast. Winds coming strong northerly 30 m.p.h. over west tonight and enstate Thursday.