Page 2
University Daily Kansan Wednesday, April 20, 1960
Push Buttons
With "Waltzing Matilda" still being whistled on campus and the phrase "on the beach" heard often, our thoughts now and then return to the theme of the destruction of mankind.
No one will admit that such a depressing story has any realistic basis. But the fact remains that we are striving harder and harder toward that millenium where pushing buttons, whether accidentally or otherwise, will be the most important motion in the world.
THE IMPORTANCE of the push-button mechanisms was brought emphatically to the foreground last summer. Somewhere — maybe in Germany near the Iron Curtain, or in a vast Army installation near Philadelphia — a technician pushed the wrong button. It wasn't a very big
mistake. Only two digits were out of place. But it was still important enough to send many rectangular green objects across the Atlantic, headed for the heart of Europe.
The earth's surface was not altered in any way. The green objects were 30,000 foot lockers sent to a European base which had ordered only 300. The cost was $100,000 — the price paid for two misplaced zeros. The amount doesn't really sound very significant when comparing it with the destruction of the world.
YES, IT was just foot lockers this time that were missent. But it makes one wonder if the same fingers also could push that certain row of buttons which holds our destiny at stake.
—Elva Lundry
Friend of Nixon
I should also like to contribute a few cents worth concerning Vice President Nixon. Jack Harrison listed, via contemporaries, the following charges against Nixon;
Editor:
1. "radiates tension and conflict."
2. "irresponsable action in dragging the Supreme Court into parisian polities."
3. "Nixon's record as an executive is a blank page."
4. "whole record is the flexibility that suggests an almost total indifference to policy."
5. "the Nixon Fund."
FROM THE Democratic side here is suggested an ogre which Herblock loves to show crawling through a sewer hole. But they are Democratic charges overlooked when we consider such late Presidents as Roosevelt and Truman.
1. Did Truman radiate nothing out serenity? His eronies gave us a federal government infested with sleep freezers and mink coats.
Speak Truman's name and you'll develop all kinds of tension and conflict.
2. Roosevelt went even further;
he tried to pack the Supreme Court.
3. Name a present candidate, with
he possible exception of Johnson,
and you run into a manuscript of
blank pages.
4. Every Democratic administration (and Congress) has added another mail to an ever-growing socialist coffin in the name of "Public good." All this of courseiot to sell itself to the voters?
5. The Nixon Fund was money hat belonged to the individual donors. Let us call for an account-
jing of the Democratic ledger in political contributions. For me, did Walter Reuther ask every single union member if he could give their money to the Democrats? If not, every member endorsed the Democrats, then we may say not all the money was honestly given, now can't we.
NOW IF ANY Democratic candidate can himself refrain from falling into the pitfalls so generously placed in Nixon's path, we will indeed have found that paragon a democracy has always sought for the Presidency.
Ignatius Sehumacher
Hays graduate student
* * *
Early Impressions
Editor:
It is refreshing to find a newspaper that is not controlled by the special-interest groups for which Richard Nixon would run the country if elected President. In support of the forthright stand by Kansan editor Jack Harrison against the candidacy of Mr. Nixon, I offer below a few of my own early impressions of our current Vice President.
DURING Nixon's first four years in Congress, I attended prep school in his eastern Los Angeles County district. Although most of this school's faculty were either Conservative or Republican or both, I recall that their general feeling toward Conservative Republican Dick Nixon after his first campaign in 1946 was one of bitter resentment. Why? Because Nixon, using slanderous innuendo, anonymous phone calls, and other below-the-belt tactics, had made a travesty of our cherished institution of free elections in defeating Jerry Voorhis. Voorhis, a capable young Congressman, a loyal American, respected by those who knew him, was portrayed to the voters as the next thing to a Communist. In a year when fear of Communism was exceeded only by ignorance of its true symptoms, and in a district where new residents, not knowing the true character of the incumbent, were pouring in by the thousands each year, this unethical procedure sufficed to start Mr. Nixon off on his political career.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
VOORIHIS was an educator himself, among other distinctions; this would help explain an anti-Nixon sentiment among teachers. Yet even in various political discussions with my fellow students — a Truman-hating, Roosevelt-cursing lot if there ever was one — I can't remember ever hearing a good word on behalf of Congressman Nixon. They plastered "Had Enough? Vote Republican!" stickers everywhere; but few of these Dewey-eyed dreamers were inclined to brag about the Republican who sat for them in Washington.
After continuing his "guilt by association" charges against other opponents in later elections, Nixon has now learned to be more careful with his tongue. There is grave doubt, however, that his motive is any more than a desire to remain popular with a public that now properly distrusts McCarthyist tactics. Our pro-Nixon letter writer admitted as much when she said that "politics is a game of compromise — not of unwavering principles." This is the tip-off on Nixon and his kind. Those who put compromise ahead of principles have no business being considered for the Presidency.
John Chappell, Jr.
Topeka graduate student
* * *
Exotic Critique
Editor:
I would like very much, if I may, to air my opinion regarding the taste in popular music which grasps this Holy Mountain.
The "Martin Denny Group" has brought its "exotic sounds" here, and many people have exotically dug them and gone away feeling, I presume, exotic.
A man by the name of Count Basie and his band played here several years ago and only last year the Modern Jazz Quartet appeared, sponsored by the now-defunct KU Jazz Club. The M. J. Q., probably the greatest single influence in modern jazz composition couldn't attract enough people to pay for the cost of having them. I think Count Basie fared better, but that was before the days of "Exotic Music."
I see the campus emplastered with limpidly leering Hawaiian (?) girls, who might as well be proclaiming the benefits of soma and a thousand sexophones (sic). Give them time.
Until that wonderful day, we must be satisfied with "Exotic Music," music for Mongoloids, Paranoids, and Perverted Pimps.
Jim Heaton Baldwin senior
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
THE CALL OF THE WILD, AND SELECTED STORIES, by Jack London. Signet Classics, 50 cents.
Perhaps in recognition of stimulated interest in the Far North because of the admission of Alaska to the Union, or perhaps in recognition of Jack London's continued popularity with many readers, Signet Classics has issued an attractive new volume that contains London's famous "The Call of the Wild," as well as such well known stories as "To Build a Fire."
LONDON PROBABLY does not occupy the critical position of Dreiser or Frank Norris in the movement of literary naturalism, but he probably has been read by far more readers. He especially remains popular in the Soviet Union, where Russians read "The Iron Heel" as an indictment of American capitalism.
"The Call of the Wild" is basically just a good story, of interest either as an adventure story appealing to all ages or as a novel that expounds the doctrines of both Nietzsche and Darwin. London's great dog hero, Buck, who pulls sleds during the Gold Rush of '98 and finally yields to the instincts of the "primordial beast," is a clear demonstration of the author's acceptance of the idea of the survival of the fittest.
AS BUCK LEARNS the "law of club and fang," as he sees the naked brutality of man and animal in the northland, "long dead instincts become alive again." Then, as London puts it, "The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap."
The shorter stories in this volume also contain the primitivism that dominated London. Especially memorable is "To Build a Fire," a realistic horror tale that will cling for years in the memories of those who read it.
A Conception of Being
William G. Wright Jr.
St. Joseph, Mo., senior
A complicated world full of many ills,
A complexing way of living in our day.
Lying insecure as boulders on a hill,
We go on unknowing at our play.
A timely reminesence of a year or two ago,
Reveals what a futile chase this can be.
We ever search for knowledge and never really know,
At just what point two men can agree.
We are childless children wishing And conceding not a thing. Like the summer winds swishing And the ever pounding rain.
So shy away from pains of life,
And revel when they come.
And search for any killers knife,
In hopes of finding none.
Again, again we go around Our head up in a haze. And only tumble to the ground, When we fall upon our grave.
Forget the wondrous natures word,
And interpret as we please.
To only be a simple bird,
Would bring us to our knees.
To better to worse, to one to two. Patterns revealing ignored. Seemingly destined to nothing new, We fall by man's own sword.
Slick and slime started a thing,
And around and around it goes.
And who should say if we really gain,
I wonder who really knows.
Daily Hansan
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 756, 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
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bruce Lewellyn Business Manager