FRIDAY, SEPT. 20, 1940
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE SEVEN
Text of Malott's Speech
OPENING CONVOCATION
Last year in addressing the incoming freshman class the Dean of the College compared the freedom of American young men and women to the condition of those of the same age in the countries of Europe and of Asia who were not being regimented, who were being drilled and killed in wars for which they individually were not to blame.
Now, as we face another academic year, we still have cause to draw an enviable comparison with a lmost every nation on the globe. But times have changed enormously from those we faced just a year ago this week. The War has become more grim; its dark shadow clouds our thoughts of our actions affects everybody of our lives. This brought increased instability, an increased feeling of insecurity, and for many a changing point of view, as we realize the inevitable necessity of preparedness. It emphasizes anew the appalling swiftness of change in this modern day.
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, closes his fascinating biography of youth and early manhood by saying "Scarcely anything that I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital has lasted. Everything I was taught to believe impossible has happened."
That statement is a direct challenge to education, and might well serve as a guidepost to you in your own thinking. Educational institutions—students and faculty alike—cannot survive in a cloistered world apart, teaching as eternal virtues that are transient to outward touching and to an old-fashioned pattern of formal education. Tragic blunders are not confined to military or political strategists. We who call ourselves educated men and women will commit equally dangerous blunders unless we can prepare ourselves and others to live in the world of the 1940's and the 1950's and the 1960's—and beyond. We must not only recognize the trends, as our lives are speeded up and changed by new conditions, but we must be able to evaluate trends, to appraise the effect of new conditions. For trends can be studied just as systematically and objectively as any chemical can be. For instance, administrative law receives added attention in the law school because of changes in cedules and schools of government. A recent enumeration gives fifty-one new Federal agencies with judicial powers. The study of busi-
new becomes more than applied economics because of the businessman's enlarged responsibilities under our system of modern mass production. Economic illiteracy has many manifestations in the prevailing notions about money, gold, silver, credit, government expenditures, social security, the relation of government to business, liberalism, economic planning, and other current hallucinations.
The school of education grapples anew with its age-old problems as new techniques are sought to cope with a world where simple facts have a confusing way of coming suddenly not to be facts at all. There are new frontiers in engineering and medicine. The faculty of one school in the University is undertaking a serious and detailed reappraisal of its entire course structurq—content, coverage, prerequisites and all. I hope every school in the University will undertake just such a study during the coming year. For only thus can we assure ourselves of offering the maximum benefit to you who are students here. Life is fortuitous at best, but as Pasteur once said, "Chance favors the mind that is prepared." And in this University, with 60 separate departments and a full-time faculty of 280, adequate preparation is available to you all.
As a nation we are engaged in a momentous program of national defense. Whereas a year ago a significant proportion of our people sincerely felt an economic waste futility, if not a danger in concentration on matter is preparedness—today the situation is substantially united in the view that preparation is the vital concern of us all. Ways and means are subject to debate, but of the objectives there is near unanimity.
There has come to be the feeling that democracy—our democratic system of government with all its free alternatives—is fighting for its life.
Whether this is so or not as an explanation for the complex economic, social, racial, and political factors which have produced the War, certain it is that democracy has been lost to a large segment of the world today. It is high time that this nation rallied around the fundamental tenets of our way of Ivling. But national unity is more than military preparedness. Democracy cannot survive by the creation of a vast military machine. Pre-aredness for the swift events of today involves economic and spiritual preparedness as well. Men and women trained in pre-aredness numbers because modern war is a war of chemistry, metallurgy, engineering, and other techniques. But it is necessary as well that we understand the taxation and financial implications, the trade dislocations, industrial procurement and industrial mobilization problems. We must understand the social problems incident to war inflammation.
Dr. Hu Shih, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, recently wrote that "the greatest fallacy of man is to imagine that social and political problems are so simple and easy that they do not require the rigid disobedience method, that they can be judged and solved by rule of thumb."
We must understand that the inevitable end of war brings economic and political adjustments in which all must share equitably if peace is to be lasting. We must finally put the nation's welfare above personal expediency and convenience, else the breakdown from within may be more devastating than war itself. In a these efforts University has a vital students—has a vital role. The liberal arts, the fine arts, and the professions are in reality a training for emergencies. They give you values, rather than certainties. They teach resourcefulness, not routine procedures.
Democracy after all is peculiarly in our care. We in the colleges and universities, we who call ourselves educated, must, each for himself, find a meaning for democracy. After all democracy is not a natural way of life; it has developed by the unending struggle of idealistic minds over inherited brute force. It is not transient; it cannot be bestowed, but must be acquired by understanding and conviction and endless self-directed effort in application, even at the cost of self-sacrifice.
The pages of history, written as well as unwritten, are crowded with failures of democracy when attempts have been made to force it upon those who failed to comprehend its fundamental meanings. One hundred and sixty-four years ago democracy as we established in this our country in a simple society, where our citizenry, individual by individual, had thought out for himself a way of life and was willing to pay the price for it.
A great danger today is that millions of our citizens, each a voter, do not and will not think for themselves, but follow the panaceas of propaganda and whose mental effort is listening to the radio. We must rally around the objective of national unity, not blindly like rats in a cage, nor yet under the glow of a falsely sentimental patriotism which precludes free speech and open discussion. In our country, we want our leaders to follow our intelligent will; if the opposite process is invoked we no longer have democracy at all.
STUDENTS! . . . A Free Show
Awaits You at the Granada
Theatre . . . If You Can
Take it-
Here's our challenge to your courage... the management will award a FREE TICKET good to any show during the next three weeks to every patron who sits through our special midnight horror show Saturday night 11:30. The picture "The Mummy's Hand" is of such a spinetingling nature that we defy you to see it and the pleasure will be all ours when we hand you Your Free Ticket as you "stagger out".
Special arrangements have been made concerning the running time of this special show so it will be out before closing hours for women students.
While wars are now raging with unprecedented fury on three continents, our own nation faces problems more acute than any in its existence. The University must and will carry its share of responsibility, resolve the problems, our people to withstand the shock of new problems and new ways of life.
Tragedy, more intimate and infinitely more personal came to us with sudden finality in the death of Cancellor Lindley, gracious and scholarly head of the University for nearly twenty years. His classes in history have started yesterday affording him stimulation of his broad experience, his keen and kindly philosophy. His courage in standing firm for a free and uncontrolled University brought forth the admiration of Kansas, and
(continued to paze eight)
A FREESHOW
IF YOU CAN TAKE IT!
Here's Our Challenge
To Your Courage---- A Free Ticket to Every Patron, Good Any Show During the Next Three Weeks, Who Stays Thru Our Entire Special
HORROR SHOW
SATURDAY 11:30 p.m.
Here It Is--
It Makes
a Sissy
Out of
"Frankenstein"
Horror Show Prices 10c - 25c
KANSAN CLASSIFIED ADS Phone K.U. 66
Make The STADIUM BARBER AND BEAUTY SHOP
Your Headquarters
Personnel: Joe Lesch, Frank Vaughn
Phone 310 1033 Mass.
SPECIAL
SPECIAL
SHAMPOO — FINGERWAVE
Mon., Tues., Wed. — 35c
Thurs., Fri., Sat. — 50c
NU-VOGUE BEAUTY SHOPPE
927 $ \frac{1}{2} $ Mass. Phone 458
ACKERMAN'S
Hat Shop —— 1023 Mass.
"Welcome Students"
Shampoo and Wave 35c and 50c
Phone 533
Iva's Beauty Shop
DRAKES
for
BAKES
ROSE BEAUTY SHOP Your Fall Beauty Aids Receive Best Attention by Calling 31 841 $ \frac{1}{2} $ Mass.
Latest in Hair Trims and Styles
VENUS BEAUTY SALON 842 Mass. Phone 387
Lock and Key Service Lockers, Fadlocks, Guns and Ammunition
RUTTER'S SHOP
1014 Mass. Phone 319
Money Loaned on Valuables Unredeemed guns, clothing, for sale WOLESON'S
WOLFSON'S
743 Mass. Phone 675
Oyler's Welcome Students
To Try Their Shoe Repair
at 14th & Tenn.
OYLER'S SHOE SHOP
"STUDENTS CHOICE"
HOTEL ELDRIDGE
BARBER SHOP
Downstairs
PIANOS TO RENT
$3.00 to $6.00 per Mo.
Kimball Pianos, New and Used
Records and Sheet Music
HOLYFIELD MUSIC CO.
1109 Mass. Phone 171
Call
LESCHER'S SHOE SHOP
For prompt, efficient shoe repair.
812 $ \frac{1}{2} $ Mass. Phone 256
TAXI
Hunsinger's 920-22 Mass.
Phone 12
Typewriters
We have complete typewriter service.
Sales, rentals, cleaning and repairing.
Lawrence Typewriter Exchange
735 Mass. Phone 548
THE FERRY
Fountain Service — Sandwiches Dancing Every Night 1031 Mass.
Marion Rice Dance Studio
Private Lessons in Ballroom Dancing 927 $ \frac{1}{2} $ Mass. St.
Dye Those Summer Shoes
Now - At
Burgert's Shoe Shop
1113 Mass. Phone 141
HIXON'S 721 Mass.
HEADQUARTERS FOR
Cameras & Supplies. Moving- Picture Cameras—Projectors
For Sale or Rent
Expert KODAK FINISHING
Dusty Rhodes Drive In Get a Jumbo-Burger
110 W. 7th Fone 2059
VIRGINIA MAY
GIFT SHOP
ELDRIDGE HOTEL PHONE 88
KEELER'S BOOK STORE Buy your school supplies from us 939 Mass. Phone 33
TYPING
MIMEOGRAPHING
Stenographic Bureau Journalism Bldg.
BOGGS & ALBERT
Hats and Dresses
941 Mass. Phone 849