PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1940
The Kansan Comments-his hobby is a trifle risky. For catching snakes, he uses a long wooden stick with a metal hook on one end. With this he pins the snake's head to the floor, places his hand directly behind the "ears" and pops it into an old sugar or flour sack. Spring and Snakes
EDITORIALS
Food for Europe
THERE is considerable agitation in the United States for a movement to permit us to send food through the British blockade to help the starving populations of countries that have fallen under the German war machine: Holland, Belgium, France, Denmark, Poland, Norway.
These countries are short of food because the German army has stripped them of supplies. One published report stated that Germany took 58 per cent of the food supplies of occupied France; nothing is said of the "take" in unoccupied France, but the strict rationing now being imposed there indicates the condition, made more acute by the worst wheat harvest in 40 years.
Those who would have Britain open the blockade to feed the hungry people say, "No food will go to the conquerors." They forget that the conquerors already have the food. American supplies would simply be replacements. It would be the same thing if the United States were shipping supplies to the German army, with France keeping her own goods.
The people who would send food into Europe would strengthen the hands of the dictators who would some day, if and when they could, produce the same conditions here. Germany has written a lesson for the world to see and America must achieve foresight and perspective.
Draft Experience Teaches
CONGRESS had reason aplenty for providing in the selective service act a penalty for any man attempting to evade the draft, buy his way out once he is in service, or obtain a substitute to serve the year of active military service for him. Furthermore, special bounties to any conscript or volunteer also was forbidden.
During the Civil War, the army depended on voluntary enlistments to fill its ranks until 1863, when a national draft system was set up. All able-bodied men between 18 and 45 were required to register. The quotas of future calls not filled by volunteers were made good from his registration, much the same system as today's draft. Persons refusing to report after being drafted could be punished as deserters, although a conscript could furnish a substitute or buy his exemption for $300. Certain bounties were paid for voluntary enlistment.
This system soon shifted the burden of the draft upon the poor. Three hundred dollars, a trifle to the wealthy, was an impossible sum to the poor man, who was least able to leave his family. When government wages, bounties, and pensions failed to relieve this distress, mobs gathered, especially in the cities, to resist the draft. In New York City, a mob riot broke out which lasted three days, causing 450 deaths, and damage amounting to $2\frac{1}{2}$ million dollars.
Elsewhere the system was subject to abuse. A class of "substitute brokers" established the market price of a substitute at about $1,000. Unscrupulous persons became "bounty-jumpers," men who enlisted for a bounty, deserted, enlisted for another bounty, deserted, and so on indefinitely. The number of men who enrolled, but were never afterwards accounted for, was large.
That very faulty draft brought disappointing results. Of the three million men who enrolled, almost one-half were exempted, and one-third bought substitutes. The number finally drafted to serve was only a little more than one-fifth.
BOOKS★
LETTERS★
Add to immortal quotes: Dr. Clarence Dykstra's assurance to Mrs. Mildred Bell, Washington, D.C.. who was in the audience at the draft sweepstakes when the first number drawn was that held by her son: "We will take care of him in fine shape."
Vitamin B-1 probably will become part of the draftees' menu, since it was recently reported that the fighting efficiency of a person may be "considerably increased" by a tenthousandth of an ounce ration a day.
Venus represents the world's past, according to a statement by Spencer Jones, astronomer royal of Great Britain. If it's true, Cleopatra may soon be made to appear as little Nell alone in the big city.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Student Paper of
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Lawrence, Kansas
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor-in-chief
Associate editors
Fiction writer
Bill Fey and Mary Lou Kandall
Marc
NEWS STAFF
Campus editors ... Stan Stauffer and Art O'Donnell
Sports editor ... Bob Trump
Society editor ... Betty West
Photographic editor ... Ed Carson
Video editor ... Orlando Epp
Makeup editor ... Pat Murdock
Rewrite editor ... Wandela Carlson
PATTER★
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager -- Rex Cowan
Advertising Assistant Frank Beaver
Assistant Ruth Spencer
Subscription rates, in advance, $3.00 per year, $1.75 per semester. Published at Lawrence, Kansas, daily during the school year except Monday and Saturday; later as second class teacher (last 17, 1916) or post office at Lawrence, Kansas, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS OFFICIAL BULLETIN
Vol. 38 Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1940 No. 32
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.
CATHOLIC STUDENTS: The Reverend E. J. Weisenberg will be in room A15 Watson Library every Thursday afternoon from 1:10 to 5 o'clock for personal conferences.—Joseph A. Zashka.
PROFICIENCY EXAMINATION: Proficiency examinations in French, German, Latin, and Spanish will be given at 10 o'clock next Saturday in 107 Frank Strong hall.
JAY JANES: Jay Jane meeting at 4:30 in the Memorial Union. Pledging services will be held. Please wear uniforms.—Ruth Spencer, president.
RHADAMANTHI: Rhadamanthi poetry club will meet Thursday evening at 7:30 in the west ballroom of the Memorial Union. Mary Elizabeth Evans and Bill Stafford will present the program. Anyone interested in the reading, writing, or study of poetry is welcome.—Bob Humphrey, president.
Registration for this examination may be made at the College Office any time until Thursday morning.— W. H, Shoemaker.
W. S.G.A. COUNCIL: W.S.G.A. Council will meet at 7:00 in the Pine room tonight. -Doris Twente, Secretary.
W. S.G.A. TEA: There will be a W.S.G.A. tea for all University women Wednesday from 3 to 5 in the lounge of Frank Strong Hall.—Jean Klusman, social chairman.
TAU SIGMA: There will be a Tau Sigma meeting at 7:30 this evening—Carolyn Green.
YOUNG REPUBLICAN CLUB: Meeting of K.U. Young Republican Club this evening at 8:00 p.m. at the Union building. Important meeting. Final drive before election—A.I. West, vice president.
NOTICES★
THE BOOK SHELF
My Name is Million, by Anonymous, the Macmillan company, New York,
268 pages, $2.50.
GERMANY'S conquest of Europe has been a source from which has flowed a constant stream of novels for more than a year now; It is a source that promises ample material for a great many more. As is true of those already published, some of them will be good; others will be, literally and literarily, bad. For it is difficult to translate casualty lists into terms of human suffering, and it is an even more difficult task for any writer to describe the love of a conquered people for their land.
It is of this latter tragedy of war the author of "My Name is Million," an anonymous Englishwoman, writes. Hers is a factual account of blind flight before the Nazi war machine, of leaving her home, her possessions, her friends; of unexpected havens, of bloodshed and destruction, of the homeless and landless Poles from whose land has been harvested crops of rye and wheat and blood for centuries.
"My Name is Million" is not a great book, unfortunately, because at times the author apparently cannot find the words to convey adequately the stark horror she witnessed. Not always is this a fault, however, for a person who has experienced great pain needs only to describe that which was felt before numbness set in to build a word picture of his suffering that all can understand. But, just as the proof of a pudding is in the eating, so also the test of a good book is in the reading. And once "My Name is Million" is begun, it cannot beep down until it is finished.
According to the publisher's note, the author and her husband, a Pole, had lived in the Polish Carpathians on the Slovakian frontier for two years prior to the Nazi invasion. The couple was in Warsaw at the time the conquest was begun, and it is Warsaw that the story begins. Fleeing before the Nazi tanks and dive bombers, the couple ran smack into the Soviet advance on another border. Later they were captured, and after imprisonment in Warsaw and Stettin, she was released. Her husband was refused a pass, however. The book was written in London.—G. K.
Not the D. T.'s--his hobby is a trifle risky. For catching snakes, he uses a long wooden stick with a metal hook on one end. With this he pins the snake's head to the floor, places his hand directly behind the "ears" and pops it into an old sugar or flour sack. Spring and Snakes
Student's Basement Is Hangout for Snakes
When Phil Jenkins, College sophomore, was 10, he brought home a thin, wiggling little garter snake only to be told by a horrified mother, "Get it out of here!" When he announced at 12 that his hobby was henceforth going to be collecting snakes, his startled parents were inclined to disagree. Last spring, however, with steel cages in the basement and backyard of their Kansas City, Kan., home holding almost 1,000 snakes, the Jenkins family was philosophical about the whole thing, if not pleased.
Phil, who at one time or other has had a representative of every kind of poisonous reptile in the United States, admits that
The rest of his collection he sorts for "swapping." He has exchanged a variety of reptiles with young collectors as far away as Chile or the Bahama Islands. His bigges trade was with a dealer in Michigan of 400 native snakes for an assortment of tropical and semi-tropical reptiles. Bitten by Rattler
Spring and Snakes
Spring, he says, is the best time for collecting. In winter snakes hibernate on the southern slope of a hill in any rock crevice deep enough to go below the frost line. His problem, of course, is to be on hand when they come creeping out in the spring. If his timing is good, 100 or more in an afternoon is not an unusual catch.
The best of these specimens he saves for exhibition at the Boy Scout camp at Osceola, Mo., where he teaches reptile study every summer. His students are 14- and 15-year-old boys who come in groups of 25 every two weeks.
Last summer, while exhibiting a timber rattler to his Boy Scouts, Phil was bitten on the right hand. He applied first aid immediately so that for two weeks his condition was more uncomfortable than actually dangerous.
Because it is hard to care for a colony of snakes and major in zoology at the same time, Jenkins gets rid of most of his collection every fall. Now his cages are almost empty. A rattler, a black snake, a blue racer, several copperheads and some water snakes are all that he has left.
But when spring comes, he'll be out ranging the southern slopes of rocky hills with his stick and flour sack—trailing reptiles.
Set $9,500 Goal In Charity Drive
Solicitors for the 1940 Community Chest drive set out today to reach the goal of $9,446 set by Walter Schaal, chairman of the finance committee. The drive will last for three days, and all the housewives, storekeepers, and business men will be canvassed. Dr. F. C. Allen of the department of physical education will head the drive on the Hill. The money received will be used in charitable organizations and community activities.
The chairman of the various divisions of the solicitorspoke over station WREN last night. Doctor Allen was the University representative.
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