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University Daily Kansan
Friday, May 13, 1960
In Hot Water
The spy-plane incident has put our President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in deep trouble. But you might say he brought it all on himself.
When he stepped into the Presidency, Eisenhower installed the Army staff system, whereby many of the details of policy and action are left to subordinates. In many cases the President doesn't know what is going on.
HE EVIDENTLY has not had a close watch on the Central Intelligence Agency. The responsibility was given to someone else. That "someone" blundered in sending an espionage plane over Russia just three weeks before the critical summit conference.
Eisenhower has been able to pass the buck on many of the boo-boos of his administration. He removed Harry Truman's sign, "The Buck Stops Here," from the presidential desk. But he cannot forever remain on his pedestal, allegedly above reproach. He is the chief and he is responsible.
Eisenhower has been "caught in the system of his own choosing," in the words of James Reston of the New York Times. Reston says Eisenhower has "institutionalized the Presidency," dispersing authority and creating a general state
of uncertainty about who is doing what.
THE PRESIDENT believes in leaving things alone whenever possible. Clinton Rossiter, Cornell University professor, says of the Eisenhower administration that "A dozen factors militated against a steady display of Jacksonian leadership, but the most important factor of all, we must acknowledge regretfully, was Mr. Eisenhower's inability or unwillingness to work hard at being President."
Political reporter William S. White has noted that the U.S. seems to be operating, in this lame-duck presidential year, on "an unuttered assumption that God will save the U.S. (and the rest of the free world) until that day when we can do more to help ourselves."
EISENHOWER is coasting through those last few months in office. Not that he was such a fireball about doing things during the earlier years of his administration — but it's worse now.
The President is in trouble, because of the spy-plane incident. But his actions, or lack of them, do more than hurt him. The rest of us are right in the hot water with him.
- Jack Harrison
Peaceful Prosperity
Editor:
I would like to correct some misleading impressions which your readers might have got from Mr. Chagla's statement regarding the alleged American bases in Pakistan. I did not expect an ambassador to be so hopelessly ill-informed, for according to the provisions of Pak-American Alliance, Pakistan is not obliged and does not allow any espionage flights from its soil. But Indian leaders, to get over the guilt of aggression in Kashmir and cover up India's highly militant attitude towards Pakistan in contradiction to its so-called policy of non-violence and coexistence in the rest of the world, would like to spoil the name of Pakistan by hook or by crook.
PAKISTAN as an independent and sovereign nation does not have to pattern its foreign policy after the infamous doctrine of carbon-paper diplomacy of India. Our membership in various economic, cultural and defense alliances with the free world is the direct outcome of our economic and strategic needs. We intend to channel the support and co-operation of our allies towards elevation of material and cultural progress of our masses. It is the figment of imagination that Pakistan is planning to attack India, China or Soviet Union. We don't believe in individual or national suicide. Treemendous emphasis has been and continues to be laid on the economic and agricultural aspects of the member nations.
At the same time we are convinced that unless an effective international ageney like the U.N. can provide safeguards to preserve the independence of smaller nations, necessary defensive measures would seem to be an inevitability. In international affairs it is not a novelty. Take for example the Soviet Union. In early stages of her history, particularly from 1921-1939, she entered into various pacts with Iran, France, Germany and England to provide safeguards for her security and let Indian leaders not make you forget the Warsaw Pact.
INDIA might have some spare territories to cater to the needs of expansionism of China, but we in Pakistan don't, because India's naked and flagrant aggression in Kashmir, Junagadh and Hyderabad has already deprived us of areas
which legitimately belonged to us. If India enjoys the company of murderers of human dignity in Eastern Europe, Hungary and Tibet, that is her privilege, but we in Pakistan would prefer to work along and co-operate with the like-minded nations in pursuit of freedom and peaceful prosperity which constitute the main landmarks of our domestic and foreign policy.
Monammed Aslam F. Faridi
Peshawar, Pakistan
graduate student
Rhino Hunting
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"Relax, fellows, it's my sister with the laundry."
Seeing Uganda spelled wrong (three times) in the article about A. Tattersall, from Makerere College (UDK 5 May) reminds me of an incident that happened on a safari in '57.
We were out to bag a white rhino, which is a very highly prized trophy. Before sailing from New York we wired to Mubbende in the province of Buganda, in central Uganda, to contract for three porters.
The Baganda people (singular Muganda) of Buganda speak Luganda which is a Bantu language. This lent a little difficulty in transmission of the message but we got it through with the help of our old friend, Sir Sedwick, who had hunted extensively in that area.
When we arrived at the Safari lodge in Mubbende, we found 300 porters milling around outside, all grinning and jabbering to one another. We located the head porter and asked him what it was all about. He told us they were the three hundred porters we'd ordered. Sir Sedwick insisted that he had only wired for three, then he said "Oh, I say, how silly of me to forget, the word for three is the same as the word for 300, except for a short grunt at the end, and of course it was impossible to convey this in the telegram." The Buma, or head porter had chosen to interpret it as 300 instead of three. These Buganda are craftly people when it comes to taking care of their tribal welfare. Anyway we fed them and picked three for the safari, and started off after our white rhino.
Editor:
K. C. King
Washington, D. C., Jr.
****
Vote For
Does Igniatus Schumacher of Hays, Kansas pretend to speak for all Republicans when he classifies us as conservatives? Does Iggie really believe that a large number of Republicans will not vote for R. Milhaus Nixon? I know dozens of GOPers here in Lawrence who will vote for a Stevenson, Bowles, Kennedy, or Symington but not for Nixon.
Out of necessity an omission of signature
Sound and Fury
College Life
Far be it from me to subvert the sweet uses of the intelligence in this academic community. But as the semester slowly runs itself down and the inevitable grind of study begins, I am reminded of what a friend told me of his college life, a life that had little time for massive doses of English, mathematics, philosophy, language, economics, history, government or political science.
"Mom used to cram that bird so full of chestnuts, breadcrumbs and other edibles that had she not a firm grip on that bird's neck, it would all have oozed out like toothpaste."
JIM WAS a well-educated man, despite his likening the six-subjects-a-semester dosage to his mother's pre-Thanksgiving wrestling with the turkey.
- JIM TOOK what he was ordered to take, rode the curve to eke out C's in most of his courses and did well in those he liked, a mixed bag of metaphysics, calculus, ancient history and other unrelated tidbits.
These days, Jim would have been branded a Soviet spy. Or, at least, unpatriotic for his unwillingness to study and thereby do his bit to close the missile gap.
What brought Jim to mind was my seeing a copy of Copeland's freshman grades at Harvard: Greek, 79 and 62, German, 64; Latin, 54; mathematics, 43 and 36; physics, 40; chemistry, 50.
Don't despair, friends. I overheard one enlightened faculty member remark that he'd rather have in his class a "guy who knows his beer and some Bach than half the bright boys who've never gotten off the academic treadmill."
-A. B. C.
By Jon Muller Salina Freshman
Bell also discusses some controversial people who have been close to Eisenhower: "Bird-dog" Wilson, Benson, Strauss, and, of course, Nixon. He has dealt at some length with Nixon and has summed up Nixon's career—including his, at least unfair, campaigns against Voorhis and later Douglas—in the statement, "It must be remembered that, in a way, almost everything Nixon did was calculated, reasoned out in advance, and carried out with the best technical perfection he could summon." Bell points out that Nixon himself has expressed regret over his methods in these campaigns. Bell has hopes, however, that the "new" Nixon has matured enough to prevent repetition of these campaigning methods. Let us hope that not offly Nixon but the American people have matured.
THE SPLENDID MISERY, by Jack Bell, Doubleday. $4.95.
Bell sees two reasons for the weakness of executive government in recent years. First there was the position of Eisenhower as a non-partisan President, thus refusing to work to push through his programs; and, second, the Eisenhower-Taft coalition which Bell sees as a surrender to Taft of executive influence in the Congress.
Thomas Jefferson's statement of the "splendid misery" of the Presidency is the inspiration for this book, but its nature is best described by the sub-title, "The story of the Presidency and power politics at close range." This "close range" is presumedly possible because the author is a journalist who has been in Washington for a number of years. It will not be necessary to go into a discussion here on the qualifications of journalists in general as historians—this discussion is left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice it to say that Mr. Bell is well-acquainted with the facts and has produced an interesting and readable book. Reading it will probably shatter many illusions—except, of course, among political scientists.
THE MATERIAL COVERED is mostly re-hash up to Hoover, but after that it is increasingly original. The campaign accounts have a particularly personal touch. The inside story of the Nixon-fund scandal is told and Democratic campaigners will undoubtedly find it most interesting. However, other inside stories are about Democratic blunders and both Republicans and Democrats will be alternately pleased and angered.
Dailu hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912 Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 776, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50th St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Morton ... Managing Editor
Ray Miller, Carol Heller, George DeBord and Carolyn Frailey, Assistant Managing Editors; Jane Boyd, City Editor; Ralph (Gabby) Wilson and Warren Haskins, Sports Editors; Carrie Edwards and Priscilla Burton, Society Editors.
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Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison Co-Editorial Editors
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