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15.3
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1949
The Editorial Page—
"Hide yer cigarettes men—Here comes ole 'By-Gosh-I-Walked- Right-Outa-My-Room-And-Forgot-Mine-This-Morning'!"
Safe Odds
Eleven days of school until vacation. Only eleven days of torture yet to be undergone by an impatient student body.
As the longest eleven days in the world drags slowly on, the frantic pace of school life will increase. Plenty of things to do... assignments to make up, dances and parties to attend, and tests to take.
And on the eleventh day joy will abound among the students, and still in fast tempo they will rush toward home and Christmas.
Most of them will make it
But remember, driving home, the way most students will, is a great gamble. The bookies would bet against the student's chances.
Why? An astute bookie would consult the tip sheet. Which in this case is an appallingly bloody and brutal record of traffic fatalities of previous years. The bookie would easily see that the odds are against the students.
He would see, for example, that in 1948 one person was killed in traffic accidents every $16 \frac{1}{2}$ minutes; one injured every 29 seconds. Not all students, of course, but there were some. Students seem especially susceptible.
Most students are between 18 and 24 years of age—that age group has 83.3 per cent more than its share of accidents.
Most students when driving home spend most of that driving time on the highways—twice as many accidents occur on highways than in the city.
Most students will be driving home for Christmas—December is the worst month for automobile accidents, year after year.
And many students will be driving at night----55 per cent of all fatalities occur at night.
Merry Christmas, and be one who makes it.
Warren Saas
'Small Things'
A dirty trick, this cold wave, after we had begun to think that we might just skip winter this year.
Letter found on a professor's desk: Dear sir, When I was forced to take the course "evolution of the insect wing" from you 10 years ago, I wondered why on earth I was forced to take such a thing just because I had some divisions to fill. I wondered what good such learning would ever do me in the outside world. Since then, I have matured considerably, and now realize that K.U. knew best. You may know that I am now the head of a large manufacturing concern. Well, just the other day one of my associates said to me, "George, the grasshopper has an ovipositor of four pieces." I was able to reply to him, "You are wrong. The grasshopper has an ovipositor of six pieces." yours, George D.
David Lilienthal's resignation gives the president an opportunity to appoint as his successor a man of vision and proved executive ability and with a thorough knowledge of the problems of atomic energy. In short, a man like David Lilienthal.
—The New Yorker
'False Gods'
In Wednesday's Kansas appeared a letter strongly objecting to the play "False Gods". The writer, who was apparently ashamed to sign his name, hadn't seen the play, but had nevertheless decided that it "promotes atheism."
Dear Sir:
He demands censorship or boycott. I don't know whether or not the play "promotes atheism" (what ever that may be) but the truth of the charge has nothing to do with the point. He asks: "Why are plays on personal religious questions permitted to be given at the University?" Why, may I ask, not? Can our unknown friend give any reason that they should not be—other than his own apparent desire to deny free expression to those who happen to disagree with his methods for judging plays? Is atheism, even if his hasty judgment were to prove correct, a crime? Not under the constitution of the United States it isn't—and this isn't Spain! However, such matters of democratic legality do not seem to be in question, but rather a Goebbels-style official who our anonymous benefactor seems to think should be empowered to check the speech and drama department's plays and stamp those found suitable for our benefactor's attention, "Permitted to be Given." It might be hard to find someone of suitable moral caliber for the job; but then, he himself could undoubtedly be persuaded to take it.
When his notion that an attack on a 30-century-old pagan cult undermines his faith, he should have informed us of his church affiliation. Could it be that we have among us a worshipper of Isis and Osiris, ready to rush to arms at the charge that his gods are false? Or is he merely afraid of other members of his church repudiating his views, which surely are not held by many Americans.
Name printed by request
Zane Cole,
College sophomore
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