PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1940.
The Kansan Comments-- EDITORIALS ★ LETTERS ★ PATTER
A Time Like This
By Prof. Walter Sandelius Department of Political Science
The Daily Kansan asks for an opinion on something. What about the aims of the University itself just now? We are perhaps soon at war. In one sense we are already at war. How may this fact affect the university point of view?
A university reflects the various communities of which it is a part, but particularly the national community. It is true that the medieval university of Paris once prided itself that there was not a single Frenchman teaching on its faculties. But that was before the day of the nation-state, and before the national ideal had got such hold as it has since achieved. No university, in any case, has ever stood alone, however true it may have held to its specialty as a university. In time of crisis it becomes a rather more than normally dependent. Crisis demands a heightened degree of conformity to the general need. At such times all the too highly individualized members of the larger community, whether as persons or as groups of individuals, will tend to be sacrificed.
With such ends in view, the university is not essentially a place of regimentation. It has been suggested, even among some in our own city, that we have become too highly individualized, and that a too highly individualized education may have had something to do with this. It is said that what we need is discipline and greater regimentation—its advocates are not afraid of the word—in view of some common purpose; democracy will not survive if we cannot march together. There is just enough truth in this point of view to make it dangerous.
Yet the very function of the university is something of which the time of crisis has special need. Its specialty is to foster a sustained thought to the largest issues of social conflict, as well as to those of the individual adjustment to the changing conceptions of nature and the world.
What is too often forgotten is the difference between a discipline imposed from without and a self-discipline. This is where the university comes in, as higher education, with methods and with aims that are essentially those of democracy itself. The end of both is the responsible individual.
It is said to be an English trait to esteem the individual. Is this fact accountable, as some appear to think, for the "decline and fall of the British Empire?" If that power is disintegrating, no one who has understood the economic forces that have made it what in the past at least it has been, will ascribe its decline, by and large, to the national character. The amazing thing is a how strong that power has proved, how long it has endured beyond the time of the English industrial advantage. And, it may not be done just yet. Even if it should be conquered soon, while the faults of the deceased go down with their pride, will not their virtues in the end prevail over the conquerors?
Aim is Search of Truth and Living
What are the premises where knowledge and character meet? To know oneself will lead to no antisocial attitude. This aim, in the long run, will do no harm to the pursuit of a technological equipment and of the technical skills that also are necessary. Are these within the university function to supply? Secondarily, yes! But of the university, as distinguished from the technical school, the liberal tradition always has been the center. Of course, this is not to say that the professional schools must occupy a secondary place; but that these recognize, in their own offerings and in the interest of the professions themselves, the force and value of the liberal tradition.
Wherever it is feasible at all to maintain a university, its members and supporters will insist, so far as possible, upon the disinterested search of truth and of living for their own sake. The young will be taught that nothing is more important than to be able to recognize what is spurious and ephemeral. One will not blush or stammer in defense of the classics of human understanding. There is no undue worship of the past or of established reputation, but also no pretentious strain to be original. Among persons there is no compromise with flattery or with double-dealing, but a mutual respect based upon a self-respect and a self-reliant judgment that is not forever cocking an eye upon some weathervane as to what others may think or say. Character and a liberal knowledge are not separable.
Mount Oread is part of Kansas and at the same time
something to itself. Kansas will want it so. Paul Claudel, the French poet and at the time ambassador to the United States, when he was here some years ago said that this institution, he could see, was fairly situated on a hill. We who are here have reason to appreciate the cooperative enterprise which it represents. It is ably led, and its divisions efficiently administered. With regard to method and organization it is tending in the same direction with other progressive institutions. Nobody wants to be a busybody agitating for change, but for myself I should like to see that we go a little further in the direction of the English proficiency examination. To the ideal of the self-reliant kind of student the more significant and less frequently administered kind of test would seem essential. But we know of no royal road to learning. Diversity of method, within some limitation, is appropriate to a university. The university is a unique kind of community of individuals, who must not forget that they are responsible also to a larger community—in any kind of time.
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UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS OFFICIAL BULLETIN
Vol. 38 Sunday, Oct. 13, 1940 No.21
Notices due at Chancellor's office at 3 p.m. on day before publication during the week, and at 11 a.m. on Saturday yfor Sunday issue.
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.
FACULTY MEETING: The first meeting of the College Faculty will be held Tuesday. October 15, at 4:30 in the Auditorium of Frank Strong Hall. All members are urged to be present to welcome the new members of the staff.-Deane W. Malott, chancellor.
FLAG SWINGERS: Rehearsal at Stadium at 1:30 this afternoon. In case of rain, we rehearse in Robinson Gym.—Jimmie Berkson.
KAPPA BETA: Kappa Beta pledging services will be held on Tuesday at 6:30.—Lois Worrell.
PHI SIGMA; Dr. N, P. Sherwood of the department of Bacteriology will give an illustrated talk on "Allergy," on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in 101 Snow hall. - Hal Smolin, President.
SCHOOL FOR REGISTRATION BOARD: A school of instruction will be held at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, in Room 103 Frank Strong Hall for the workers who have volunteered to help with the registration of students on Wednesday. Instructions will be given as to the procedure to be followed in registration and the board will be sworn in at this time—George O. Foster, registrar.
REGISTRATION OF STUDENTS: All students of the University of Kansas who are required by the provisions of the Selective Act of I940 to register on Oct. 16, may do so in the Kansas Room of the Memorial Union between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.—George O. Foster, registrar.
PSYCHOLOGY CLUB: The psychology club will meet tomorrow in Room 316 Frank Strong Hall. Professor T. D. Jones of the Fine Arts School, will give a color demonstration. Everyone is welcome. — Lois Schreiber, secretary.
TAU SIGMA: There will be a meeting of the members of Tau Sigma Tuesday evening at 7:30.—Carolyn Green, president.
WESTMINSTER FORUM: Westminster Forum will meet this evening at 7:30 in Westminster hall. The speaker of the evening will be Rev. Edwin Price who will talk on "Reality in Religion."—Robert Talmadge, president.
Y. W.C.A.: The Y.W.C.A. Membership Banquet will be held on Tuesday at 5:45 in the Union ballroom.— Margaret Learned.
The Book Shelf
Trelawny: A Man's Life, by Margaret Armstrong, the Macmillan company, New York; 369 pages, $3.
Here is a book that deserves a prominent place on any collector's shelf of new fiction works, preferably at the side of "Fanny Kemble," also by Miss Armstrong, which preceded "Trelawny" in 1938. Both books were assured of success before publication. "Fanny Kemble" was selected two years ago by the Book-of-the-Month club, and "Trelawny" will be issued this month as the October choice of the organization.
Miss Armstrong sets the pace of "Trelawny" in the opening paragraph of the book: "Now and then a man is born with a surname that fits him so well it might have been chosen for him by a poet or a painter. Edward Trelawny was one of these fortunate persons. There is a wild flavor in Trelawny that would lend a touch of romance to the most commonplace family; and that the Trelawnys never were. They were courageous, adventurous, full of vitality, eccentric, unreliable, prone to extremes; never, to judge from the family records, commonplace."
Trelawny was imbued with an inherent hatred of tyranny, a hatred which was nurtured through his father's lack of understanding and the English school system of that day, which held that the rod was mightier than the pen. When he was sent to sea, his tendency to champion the cause of the weak and oppressed found outlet in a brawl with his ship's Scotch lieutenant, after which, a deserter, he became a privateer through his chance meeting and instant friendship with De Ruyter, a Frenchman, one of the four persons who had a strong influence in shaping his life.
The life of Edward Trealawny—privateer, soldier of fortune, writer, friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron—is a virile biography of just such a member of the Trealawyn family. Edward, whose many-faceted character was imbued with a strong restlessness, had lived a "full life," by any standards, before he had entered his twenties, although he was defined to die peacefully, despite his wishes, only after all who were dear to him had preceded him in death.
It was during the days he was sailing the Indian Ocean as a privateer flying the French flag that he rescued the daughter of an Arab sheikh and was married to her as her father lay dying. Zela, his wife, later was poisoned, and with her death he returned to England. But his restlessness could not be stilled there and he went to Pisa to meet Shelley "for the exercise of my brain."
His friendship with Perey and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron gives the reader an intimate insight to another side of the Trelawny and to the poets themselves. Trelawny admired the genius of both men, although his friendship with Word Byron ended when he became infatuated with the poet's former mistress. After Shelley's death, it was Trelawny who undertook the cremation of the poet's body.
A reconciliation was effected between Trelawny and Lord Byron, and the two men went to Greece to fight for the cause of independence. Later, he came to America, and it was here the adventurer nearly lost his life when he swam the Niagara river just above the Falls. Here, too, his belief in independence asserted itself, for he purchased a slave in order to set him free. Returning then to England, his last years were spent quietly; and, at his request, his ashes were buried beside those of Shelley in Rome.
Miss Armstrong's "Trelawny" is reminiscent of Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom." The latter, of course, was autobiographical, yet Trelawny also is more than biography. Miss Armstrong, in the short preface, explains; "There are no imaginary characters, events, or conversations in this book. It is fact, not fiction. The narrative is based on Trelawny's writings, corrected and amplified from reliable sources." Indeed, the subtitle of Miss Armstrong's book, "A Man's Life," was intended by Trelawny to be the title of his autobiography, although it was printed under the title of "Adventures of a Younger Son." Miss Armstrong's "Trelawny" is a scholarly piece of work well told. It is a worthy successor to her earlier biography, "Fanny Kemble."-G.K.
Reese Goes East For Pharmacy Meet
Dr. J. Allan Reese, dean of the School of Pharmacy, has been selected as one of the 50 members of the Pharmacoepeia Revision Committee, which chooses its members from all sections of the United States and its possessions. Dr. Reese, the youngest member of the group, will left Thursday for Focono, Pa., for the three-day convention.
This meeting is held annually to revise the standard for drugs used throughout the United States and possessions, and decisions of the group are enforced by the federal government. The committee consists of 17 physicians and 33 pharmacists, each holding his office for a period of 10 years.
U. of Va.-K. U.
Debate Is Cancelled
The debate between the University of Virginia and the University of Kansas varsity teams, which was scheduled to be held here Nov. 1 has been cancelled, according to Prof. E. C. Buehler, head of the department of speech and dramatic arts.
The reasons for the University of Virginia's cancellation of their western trip are not known.
Professor Buchler has negotiation under way for a debate between Kansas and the University of Missouri, October 30.
HEAR
JOHN ISE
TONIGHT
"The Future of the Art of Making a Living" on College and Graduate Age Group Unitarian Church, 12 and Vermont, 7:30 p.m.
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