UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE TWO
SEPTEMBER 28,1945
University
DAILY KANSAN
Student Newspaper of the
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Member of the Kansas Press Association,
National Editorial Association, and the
American Press Association.
Represented by the National Advertising Service 450 Madison Ave, New York City.
Mail subscription: $3 a semester, $45 a year, plus 2% tax; (in Lawrence and add $1 a semester postage). Published in Lawrence, Kan., every month. Arrives on Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at the Port Office at Lawrence, Kan., under act of March 3, 1979.
NEWS STAFF
MARY TURKINGTON   Managing Editor
JOAN VEATCH   Asst. Managing Editor
MARY ROGERS   Managing Editor
MARY MARGARET GAYNOR  Society Editor
PAT PENNEY    Sports Editor
BILLIE HAMILTON  Feature Editor
JANE ANDERSON  Militant Editor
MARIAH WENSKI   Asst. Sports Editor
ELIANA ALEGRIGHT  Asst. Telegraph Editor
JOEY CAYES  BETTY JENNINGS
DIXIE GULLIAND  MARY MORELL
EDITORIAL STAFF
EDITORIAL STAFF
TAMAD MASRI
Editor-in-Chief
BUSINESS STAFF
NANCY TOMLSON ... Business Manager
BETTY BEACH ... Advertising Manager
Reconversionitis
One of the most compelling thoughts raised by Chancellor Mautt in his opening address Wednesday was the question of whether or not this country could attain anything like success in its efforts at reconversion. He compared the situation with the period of reconstruction after the Civil War, and there are, indeed, many remarkable similarities. Only one of these is the ever increasing number of persons who are more than willing to sacrifice the rights of others in order to increase their own positions and powers.
Another similarity is the assumption of power, following the struggle, of a new and relatively inexperienced president. The Chancellor suggested that his training, as a party regular in the school of partisan politics, might well be insufficient and even dangerous when applied to the complicated problems that face him daily.
A military bureaucracy is not a pleasant prospect, but its unpleasantness should not deter us from studying its implications and the possibilities of its appearance on our national scene. The reluctance of the military high command to relinquish wartime powers is not lightly to be compared to the relatively democratic means by which the military assumed-power in Germany and Italy.
All this can only show the more plainly, as time goes on, that students, if they are to be big in the sense applied by the Chancellor, must be awake to the changing world about them, alive to the responsibilities placed on their shoulders by a weary world.
Quiet, Please!
Just because this University is regaining its pre-war aspect of educational mass production is not sufficient reason, or shouldn't be, for the academic hallis to resound with noises approaching in volume those of a factory. The 10-minute period between classes is fine for shouting, if there is anything to shout about, but during class hours a quieter campus and buildings would be more profitable for everyone concerned.
Probably the opening of class days was reaso nenough for the particuar noises that were noticeable this week, but it can't be too early or too late to warn students of the disturbances they cause to classes when they are unreasonably noisy in buildings or outside open windows. Quiet is definitely essential to effective class work.
'We Are on the Verge of a New Existence'
(Editor's Note: When Chancellor Deane W. Malott addressed the 80th annual opening exercises of the University on Wednesday, the Daily Kansan was not able to report as much of his speech as it would have liked. Here we reprint a condensed version of his entire talk, in the belief that its far-reaching challenges warrant a second and serious consideration by every student.)
By DEANE W. MALOTT Chancellor of the University
As we stand today on the threshold of peace after the grim, unrealistic shattering war, years, let us cast our eyes ahead into the future of our own times, realizing that the immeasurable progress since 1886 could not have been foreseen then, nor can we today imagine the advances, the technology, the daring ventures and experiments, the sheer human ingenuity which shall fashion the ways of life tomorrow.
The curtain of the war is coming slowly down. We do not return to the days of 1941, or 1933, or before. We are on the verge of a new existence.
The intensive and persistence of great social and economic problems, on a world-wide frontier, will try our souls.
It will take big men and women, big in tolerance and understanding, big in breadth of interest, in intensity of training, and in ability to work.
--forces of change and reconversion, vie with a desire for an impossible return to the days before the war. A new president faces serious problems, after a brief period of universal goodwill.
It will take a world full of people willing to work, not alone willing to accept compensation, to accept short hours, to accept government aid, to accept benefactions, but willing to do plain, honest, hard work.
The war has been won, but the war is only a link in the great chain of events, a link in the policy of mankind. The price we paid was enormous, the effort fantastic—the whole thing a travesty, unless we can weave a new social and economic fabric to stand 'the stresses and strains of the coming years.
***
ARE YOU GOING TO BE CAPABLE OF HELPING IN THIS GREAT TASK?
Can you so order your lives as to set about earnestly to develop and train the great capabilities and mentality that lie within you?
Does university life in this first year of the new peace entice you merely with a renewal of the trivia of undergraduate days, or does there hurt also within you the desire and the fortitude and the will, to forge yourself into a human being capable of filling a niche somewhere in the great panorama of events?
What a fascinating day for one who is aware of what is going on. What a tragedy for the human vegetables who miss the drama of events, because of lack of curiosity to read, or because of mental laziness which inhibits them from the most rudimentary thinking processes.
***
PROBLEMS PRESS FOR SOLUTION, NO MATTER WHERE WE LOOK ON THE GLOBE, AND ANSWERS SOMEHOW MUST BE FOUND.
We must feed the rest of the world, these miserable millions, and not grumble about it, either. There is no other alternative. That is at least the first step.
Can we fashion there a democratic society within the framework of an ancient monarchy? Can we help establish a self-sustaining economy for the masses of those islands, in area less than the state of California?
In the islands of Japan we find a teeming people, shorn of empire, relegated to third rate importance, a subjugated people of the East, with the background and the philosophy, and the religions of Asia—people we do not understand, but whose destinies we now absolutely control.
A Challenge to Thinking Students
CHANCELLOR MALOTT
Do we really have a plan? There is little evidence of it, at all. Can we, with our punitive and disciplinary measures, yet avoid a continued responsibility for the care and the economy of the Japanese people?
Beyond Japan lies Asiatic Russia and the whole enigma of the U.S.S.R. Can we live alongside a strong Russia? I believe we can, but it will not be easy.
- * *
Great Britain is in trouble-debilitated by war, her material and human resources mortally weakened. She seeks loans from us. In the long run, it would be to our own best interests to give her outright five billion dollars for her resuscitation.
France has too brilliant a history to be looked down upon or rebuked. Her contribution to our civilization has been large in every area. In France we see the results of the loss of a whole generation of her young manhood in World War I—a loss which 20 years later left her without the vitality or the leadership to play her part in the rigorous days of 1940.
Nowhere is there a better example of what happens when we lose a generation of young people, young people such as you today. With sympathy and understanding, France will yet again rise to influence and to a contribution to civilization.
- * *
CERTAINLY THE DAYS AHEAD WILL BE VIVID, MEANINGFULL, EXCITING FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EYES TO SEE, EARS TO HEAR, AND MINDS TO REFLECT. Within America, too, the resties
VARSITY
TONITE - SATURDAY
ROY ROGERS in
"SILVER SPURS"
2nd Feature
William Gargan
Ann Savage in
"Midnight Manhunt"
SUNDAY — 3 DAYS
SUNDAY — 3 DAYS
Jane Frazee,
Brad Taylor in
"Swingin' on a
Rainbow"
2nd Hit
JOHN LODER in
"JEALOUSY"
Can the pressing problems of America, a nation newly emerged as the greatest world power, be solved by a man trained as a party regular in the school of partisan politics?
Can the restless labor groups, under high-paid pressure organizers, be kept within the bounds of reason, or reconverted to pre-war standards of wages and hours, and still preserve the essential and significant gains of the past 15 years?
Can the army and navy, grown great and somewhat arrogant with power, be so handled as to prevent the tenacled grip of a great military bureaucracy on a peace-time basis?
Is-universal military training the logical concomitant of the United Nations?
Must we prolong indefinitely the induction of young men into the military forces, when we already have 10 to 20 million men trained in the perishable techniques of present-day war?
WHO ARE WE AFRAID OF?
We have only two possible adversaries — Great Britain and Russia. The former is fitted neither by inclination nor resources to fight us; the pattern of the latter is not yet clear, but war with America certainly is not evident today, and would scarcely be physically possible for a generation.
Somehow the American people will fight a war, when called upon; to uphold the principles of freedom, but we will not build up a general
JAYHAWKER
NOW!---Ends Saturday
"JUNIOR MISS"
PEGGY INN GARNER
"will laugh your heads off!" .sez Winchell. And you will too! .say we.
Dana ANDREWS • jeanne CRAIN
Disk HAYMES • Vivian BLAINE
Music by RICHARD ROODERS
Lyrics and Screen Play by
JULIAN CARMESTER STENBILT
SUNDAY Entire Week
staff and a permanent military bureaucracy.
In this hasty sampling, you may not see these problems as I do—that is unimportant, and my own ideas may change with the passing evidence.
What is important is that you are living in the midst of stirring times—great events usher in a new era which the history books will record a thousand years hence.
Here in the University of Kansas there are resources—the largest library in Kansas, stimulating experts in the fields of history; and science, and economics, and politics. The world may move around you, or through you, but move it surely will. May you be a part of your day and times, thoughtful, inquiring, argumentative, judicial. In this way you will grow to the full measure of your stature, and be a power in your day and generation.
Let us all, then, face the momentous events which impend in this new era which is beginning, with the firm resolve to listen, and to learn, and if possible to understand, something of what is going on around us—the drama, the speed of change, the human relations, the power politics, richecotting across the globe in one of the greatest spectacles which any generation has ever known.
IT IS A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE. A GLORIOUS YEAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
Rock Chalk will be found today on page 5.
The moon, when full, gives off about nine times more light than it does when at the quarter.
GRANADA
TODAY ENDS
SATURDAY
JOHN WAYNE
A Mighty Drama of Epic Glory!
"Back to Bataan!"
OWL SHOW Sat. Night
SUNDAY—Entire Week