PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1940
The Kansan Comments -the general direction is upward, that is the best we can hope for. We do what we can to reverse the downward trends and accelerate the upward ones, but we must not expect perfection or even consistent advancement in the changing drama of human affairs.
EDITORIALS★
PATTER
A Confession of Faith
BOOKS★
UPON invitation of the Kansan editors, I have consented to write the guest editorial for today. And, in the best manner of English teachers, I wish to center my comments upon a poem which has meant much to me. Its author is Robert Frost, known to many of us from his visit to our campus; its title is "The Armful".
Yet the discerning reader who looks through the particular instance to the universal significance beyond will find in Mr. Frost's poem much more than a familiar street scene. The bottles, buns, and other parcels are figurative as well as literal. Each human being carries with him a mass of activities, interests, plans, duties, none of which he wishes to abandon, all of which seem of some value to him. Even when the unimportant are discarded, one day seems too short, one life too short, for all that we wish to do or think that we ought to do. The claims upon us are oftentimes conflicting and hard to reconcile. With difficulty we maintain them, we struggle to keep some harmony and balance in our daily lives and sometimes we fail. The smash-up may come in our health, our business, our love, our family affairs, our scholastic records, or in some other quarter; but the one parcel slips, the others follows, and we find ourselves sitting ludicrously in the midst of our thwarted plans and shattered hopes, crying that the world is unjust, that our efforts have surely merited a better reward than this.
For every parcel I stoop down to seize,
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with, hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.
On a first reading, these lines are deceptively simple. The image is familiar in our actual experience and even finds a frequent place in the comic strips. The person overladen with parcels, trying to balance them without losing any, and finally dropping the whole armful, is a usual and somewhat ludicrous sight. Each of us has played the role at one time or another.
The progress of humanity, whether of one person or of the whole race, is never in a straight line. It zigzags across the chart of eternity in a whole series of progressions and retrogressions, of high and low points. If
May I humbly suggest that the proper test of a man is not whether he falls down but how he picks himself up. The careless man will bluster, "To hell with it," and stalk off sullen and pouting; the weakling will whine and call upon the whole world to witness his misfortune; the cynic will remark, "I told you so," and take the certain perverse pride in this ironic circumstance which proves the world is hopeless; the courageous man will look about him, gather together such parcels as are still intact, and "try to stack them in a better load." Struggling to his feet, he will balance once more the unwieldy bundles at his breast and will move forward such distance as he can before the jolting of his stride jars loose and forces him to stop and stack them over again.
Impermanence is the law of life, the law of development. The rock is reasonably permanent, its slow organic changes measured in aeons rather than in years; but it cannot develop much within the span of a human life. Yet we cry for the stability of the rock while we demand the advantages of change. We insist that our institutions, our religions, our political systems, are built for the ages, and when they collapse we cry out that the world holds no hope, that nothing can be achieved since we have not already achieved it. We should remember that there is no change without risk and no development without change. The living tree becomes more permanent after it is petrified, but it also becomes very dead.
LETTERS★
A foolish pessimism is worse than a blind optimism. The optimist who fails to see the harsher realities may perchance accomplish something, even by accident; but the pessimist will not accomplish anything, for he will not try. "There is no use," he says, "the cards are stacked against you from the start." The better way is that of the man who sees things as they are and then seeks to discover what can be done about them, confident that something can be done.
When Omar Khayyam "sent his soul through the invisible" to determine the nature of the after-life, he was disappointed that he did not get a complete answer. When Cardinal Newman followed the "kindly light" of God's teaching, he did not ask that all knowledge should be revealed at once; "one step enough for me," he declared. One step at a time is about as much as any of us can forsee; visibility is usually poor in the atmosphere which enshrouds the future. But the one step is what we should have to take next anyway, whether we behold the "distant scene" or not. Let us then have courage to take it. Gathering together our scattered parcels after each fresh disaster, balancing them precariously in our arms, we stagger forward through the fog and mist, toward what end we do not know, knowing only that the track must be explored, that those who follow after us may find the going easier for our having passed that way.-John E. Hankins, Associate Professor of English
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OFFICIAL BULLETIN UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Vol. 38 Sunday, Dec. 8, 1940 No.56
Notices due at Chancellor's office at 3 p.m. on day before publication during the week, and at 11 a.m. on Saturday for Sunday issue.
NOTICES★
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ORGANIZATION: Christian Science Organization will hold a regular meeting Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 in the Pine Room of the Union building. All students, graduates and faculty members are welcome.-Patricia Neil, secretary.
KAPPA PHI: "Kappa Phi Goes to Church" today. All pledges and acts meet in the Wesley Foundation room just back of the sanctuary at 10:45.—Kathryn Schaake, publicity chairman.
KAPPA BETA: There will be a Kappa Beta Christmas party at 6:30 Tuesday evening at Myers hall. This is a dessert party. Please bring 25 cents.-Lois Worrel.
NOTICE TO ALL STUDENTS: Dr. E. T. Gibson will be available for personal conferences at Watkins Memorial Hospital on Tuesday afternoons from 2 to 5. Appointments should be made at the Watkins Memorial Hospital.—Ralph I. Canuthes.
PROFICIENCY EXAMINATION IN ENGLISH: The second Proficiency Examination of the year will be given on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 8:30 a.m. Registration at the College Office, Monday-Wednesday, Dec. 9-11, is obligatory for all who wish to take the examination. Only juniors with credit for five hours of rhetoric may register—J. B. Virtue.
PSYCHOLOGY CLUB: The Psychology Club will meet Monday in 21 Frank Strong hall. Mr. Holy of Czechoslovakia will speak. Everyone is invited.-Lois Schreiber, secretary.
W. S.G.A.: W.S.G.A. Council will meet at 7 o'clock in the Pine room Tuesday evening.-Doris Twente, secretary.
Y. M.-Y.W. COMMISSION ON CHRISTIAN EMPHASIS: The Commission on Christian Emphasis will meet Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 4:30 o'clock at Henley House. Royal Humbert will lead a discussion on "What Has Modern Religion Done to Christmas."—Bob Collette, Mary Helen Wilson.
Men's Dorms Are Latest University Friends Give Many Campus Buildings
Of the 31 units comprising the University on Mount Oread, 13 of them, having a value of more than a million and a half dollars, were gifts to the University.
The latest additions are the three men's dormitories: Battenfeld hall, Templin hall, and Car- $ ^{ \textcircled{4}} $ ruth hall. versity the building which is now
Battenfeld hall, housing 52 men, was built by Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Battenfield of Kansas City, Mo., as a memorial to their son, John Battenfeld, who died while a student at the University.
Templin hall, formerly the Acacia fraternity house, was purchased, redecorated, and furnished by alumni and friends.
Carruth hall was a gift of William B. Spooner of Boston, Mass., in 1894 and was used as the Chancellor's residence for many years.
Mr. Spooner also gave the University the building which is now the Spooner-Thayer Museum.
In 1899, George Fowler of Liverpool, England, built the Fowler shops, which house the R.O.T.C. and the machine shops.
Oread Training school was built from funds donated by the faculty and friends as were the Memorial stadium and the Memorial Union building.
Watkins Memorial hospital was built and equipped by the late Mrs. Elizabeth Watkins, and her will provided that her home should become the Chancellor's residence.
ONE PERFECT ROSE By DOROTHY PARKER from "Not So Deep As A Well"
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the Flowerlet;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
ROCK CHALK TALK
The first four men Marvin Goebel saw when he came up on the Hill at 7 o'clock Saturday morning were dressed in R.O.T.C. uniform. First rifle practice was at 8:30, but uniforms were not required. Could the reserve officers have been on an all night raid?
When Pi Phi Patty Lockwood left the Phi Delt party last night, she carried with her a bunch of mistletoe. For a souvenir?
This week the Phi Psi's scored again in Hollywood. Deanna Durbin's fiance, Vaughn Paul, is a Phi Psi who did his book worming in California. His K.U. fraternity brothers are framing a letter to invite him to bring Deana here so they can kiss the bride.
Another time the Phi Psi's scored was at the basketball game Thursday night with the Phi Delts. Tragedy of the week for feminine fans of the two teams was that they played the game at 11 p.m., half an hour after coed curfew.
Sigma Nu Barrett Van Dyke gave library studiers a jolt Thursday morning when he upset his chair with a mighty crash. Witnesses in the east end of the reading room report that he was doing a sleeping beauty act at the time.
Playing post office as well as playing football seems to come natural to Mizzou's Paul Christman. Did you see the picture in the Friday evening Kansas City Star of Christman doing a quick mug with Inez Potter after tasting the lipstick of all her sorority sisters.
In the early edition, the Star's topline read, "Christian Hemmed by Kappas, Each Ready for a Kiss." Now Inez isn't a Kappa, she's a Theta.
Before the next edition, however, some outraged Theta, insulted Kappa, or Greek reporter enlightened the desk that Kappa Alpha Theta is known by the last letter, not the first, because the rest of the papers had the topline correct.
Now Christian can clip both versions for his already bulging publicity scrapbook.
SUNDAY
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