PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 1948
The Editorial Page
It's A Matter Of Personality
Comparatively few Americans ever see the men who declare themselves candidates for that job in the White House. Yet most Americans have thumbnail impressions about each candidate's personality that are amazingly similar. These impressions have been gained almost exclusively from the press, radio, and newsreels, and once the public has blithely pigeonholed a political aspirant's personality, he is apparently typed forever and ever like a Hollywood actor with a dearth of versatility.
In the popular fancy Franklin D. Roosevelt performed the deft feat of tempering "the grand manner" and a regal strain with the "common touch" and endeared himself to the public, although they stood somewhat in awe of him. Few American figures on the political scene could get away with wearing a Cape as President Roosevelt used to do.
On the other hand presidential candidate Douglas MacArthur's sun glasses and braid-laden visors apparently are not going to be a political asset. The general's personality seems to convey a cool, disdainful aloofness that will not be received with enthusiasm by most Americans. It is difficult to imagine the general being made an honorary member of an Indian tribe or mixing genially with newsmen and photographers in a smoke-filled room.
President Truman, however, appears to be able to do just that with a great deal of aplomb. The public's impression of the President is that he is no different from the head of the local Rotarians or an active member in the Kiwanis club. The President has fumbled important issues or made mistakes and then blandly admitted that they were too big for him or hinted that he wasn't the man for the job. The reaction of a large number of Americans to this apparent ineptness was that Harry Truman wasn't "such a bad guy" because he is "just like you and I."
It is only reasonable to believe that these men who have won high public offices have many sides and a variety of personality quirks that the public never gets to know. The politically ambitious must shrewdly weigh the impression they will make on voters through the limited mediums of contact they have with them. If the impression they make is good, they can overcome a lot of shortcomings. Personality is going to be an important factor in determining who our next president is going to be. The wise voter will try to discover what more there is to his favorite candidate than meets the eye or pleases the ear.
An economics professor is a man with a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end of his watch chain and no watch on the other.
A senate appropriations sub-committee is trying to learn why is costs three times as much to run the White House now as it did ten years ago. Remember the 5c hamburger?
Louisiana recently elected Earl K. Long as new governor. When will the voters realize that they always get the short end of the deal when a Long is in power?
Gen. Douglas McArthur has turned a cold shoulder on the American press in Japan. Evidently he has given up all hopes of trading his gold braid for red tape.
Dear Editor
Red Menace
Dear Editor,
So Douglas Jennings has decided that it is time to say "when." In other words, the red monster is reaching out menacingly to gobble up all of God's children; and all good men and true must rally to halt its fiendish onrush and save Christianity, capitalism, and civilization from annihilation.
Undoubtedly Mr. Jennings has a picture of American foreign policy as dedicated consistently to peace, democracy, freedom, and rectitude, and constantly obstructed in its quest for virtue by Soviet wickness. Perhaps Mr. Jennings could profit by a look at our military aid to Fascist reactionaries in Greece, the 1,071 planes we are sending to Nationalist China to silence the cry of 100 million people for relief from the oppression of feudal masters, our passive approval of Franco's Fascist Spain, and the sell-out of the Truman administration on the Palestine partition. When oil counts more than human lives—is that not also a sickening, degrading thing?
Mr. Jennings evidently feels that there is a distinction between the use of dollar diplomacy in Greece and the use of naked force in Czechoslovakia. I must admit that I can find no such distinction. The hands of neither the U. S. nor the U. S. S. R are free from the stains of blood. And a demand for the use of atomic bombs will not help matters any. That can only mean that the most hideous of Nazi atrocities will pale before the infernal spectacle of scores of millions of human beings perishing in agony by fire and poison. All civilization as we know it will crumble into radioactive dust and rubble. As Mr. Byrnes, who also advocates saying "when," once said: "There must be one world for all of us, or there will be no world for any of us." Apparently he overlooked that when he wrote his recent book, "Speaking Frankly."
I beg of you, Mr. Jennings, and all others who unthinkingly call for a war that cannot be won by either side, I beg you to take a second and closer look at the realities of American-Russian policies and relations. Ask yourself whether our actions have been the kind which would convince the Soviet Union that we sincerely desire peace and cooperation; or whether they have been the kind that would indicate a desire for the downfall of the Soviet government, or at the least its submission to American supremacy throughout most of the world. We most definitely have not made a really sincere attempt to cooperate with the U. S. S. R. Until our actions are those of a nation which is genuinely seeking peace and "one world," until we propose to cooperate with Russia on a basis other than one demanding virtually complete acceptance of our terms or none, until we have made every possible attempt to secure peace and cooperation with the Soviet Union. I cannot help but feel guilty when I hear other Americans call for a war which can only end in the destruction of mankind. Can you?
Dewey Radcliff College junior
Poetry Contest Ends On April 2
The deadline for submitting poems to the William Herbert Carruth poetry contest has been set for April 2.
Entries must be submitted in three copies with a pseudonym instead of the writer's actual name on each copy. The author's real name should be enclosed in a sealed envelope and submitted along with the manuscripts. The poems may be of any length and on any subject.
The judges will be a committee of three faculty members, and two outside judges—an alumnus of the university and a practicing poet.
Entries should be left at the English office, 201 Fraser, or given to Prof. Ray B. West, Jr., chairman of the contest committee, 201 Fraser.
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