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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. March 29, 1960
Man and Spring
Poets will tell you that the first breath of warm, fresh, spring air tenderly turns a young man's fancy to love. This philosophy might have proved all good and true for the fairer sex of the 19th century, but modern young ladies must face the inevitable reality: spring in 1960 turns many of their amorous admirers in only one direction—the golf course.
Gone are the days of the quiet afternoon walks through Fowler's Grove, hand-in-hand with your favorite beau, and the long, relaxing sessions on the sun-lit shores of Lone Star Lake. The beau is now holding hands with his golf club and only the fish are around to hear the lake water lap softly against the banks.
Spring used to be relished for the return of the sweetly singing birds and the bright new foliage sprouting gaily on every tree and bush. But to the modern young man, spring means only a flying distraction to the ball-following eye and added obstruction on the cherished course. To the modern miss, these signs of spring are merely by-gone symbols of well-spent dreams to be gazed at longingly from the window of her room.
The spring breezes used to ruffle the hair of young lovers as they made the most of Nature's contribution to the realm of romance. Now they only frustrate the golfer as they blow his shot off course and infuriate his best girl as they blow the tantalizing fragrance of the beautiful outdoors into her dismal domain.
Not too long ago, spring also was symbolized by softly spoken words of tenderness and affection. Now the young man bellows and howls in non-descriptive adjectives as his swing misses the ball or his put glides narrowly past the hole.
Meanwhile, his fairer friend is not speaking at all—she just sadly sighs as she picks up her book and resumes the tedious task of studying.
Which brings us to another problem. Classes and homework continue throughout April and May as usual—the University apparently does not recognize the great new pastime of the American man as an essential part of education. Does this bother our young enthusiast of the links? Not in the least. Classes were scheduled to be cut and any lesson can wait until it's too dark to see the little white ball or the first rainy day.
This situation proves to be a problem for our young lady, too. She finds herself wishing not only for brisk, cold days that will bring her man back off the golf course, but also that his professors would not assign so much homework—the homework she is doing for him in a desperate effort to assure his presence when Old Man Winter chases him back to her.
In the days of yore, when the bards were proclaiming spring as the flowering period of true love and tender romance, the male species of our race was the hero — the pursuer and ruler of romance.
Credit still must be given where credit is due, and our cheers go to the plucky, steadfast upholder of the world of romance today—the woman who cheerfully waves goodbye to her man, golf clubs slung across his shoulders and cap perched jauntily on his head, wishes him luck in the day's game without a word of complaint, and then faithfully, but sadly, turns to await the hours of darkness when she can claim him again — if she's lucky.
— Carolyn Frailey
Dark Continent Is Now The Land of Opportunity
(Editor's Note: Edwin S. Munger, a member of the American Universities Field Staff now visiting the campus, has spent the past 12 years studying the rapid political, economic and social development of Africa. Last fall he returned from his trip to Africa. He was the first Fulbright scholar sent to Africa, and for four years was an associate of the Institute of Current World Affairs.)
Bv Rael Amos
Africa, one of the last frontiers of the globe, presents the West with a series of challenges of unparalleled complexity and increasing urgency. It challenges Western concepts of national freedom and human liberty, of race, of religion, of culture, of economic development, and of peaceful progress. It challenges the inhabitants—Africans, Arabs, Asians, and Europeans—to find the will and the way to live together in harmony, for already they share a homeland there in association with one another.
Most Americans have no concept of Africa's richness. Lucile Carlson, of Western Reserve University, says that nearly one-half of the world's gold, one-third of the chrome, three-fourths of the cobalt, almost all of the industrial diamonds, and a large portion of the uranium lie beneath the surface of African soils. Further, nineteenth of the columbium (used for making high-temperature alloys important to jet engines, gas turbines, etc.) and one-fifth of the world's copper, tin and manganese come from African mines. The continent's iron ore exists in unsurveyed deposits.
West Africa is composed of the republics of Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Republic of the Upper Volta, Dahomey, Sudanese, Mauritanian Islamic and Niger. These seven republics boast a total population of a little over 16 million people—about double that of New York City. These 16 million people share an area of nearly 2 million square miles (Kansas has 82,000 square miles).
The heart of the continent is the former French Equatorial Africa with its seacoast on the South Atlantic Ocean between Spanish Guinea and the Belgian Congo.
Of West Africa's population, only about a million are Christians, with about nine million Moslems. The rest are pagan animists. The Negroes alone speak 20 different languages.
Just outside one of Africa's most modern cities, villagers still slaughter small children and toss their disemboweled bodies into the river to make sure of a good year's fishing. Until this year, Mauritania, whose Berber people call themselves "whites," felt itself too poor to have a capital of its own. Prior to this it shared Saint-Louis, which was the capital of black Senegal.
In Dahomey, which means "The Belly of Dan," after an ancient king who ate his victims, the fiercest warriors were once the Amazons.
To these oddly assorted lands, half the size of Europe, almost seven times the size of Texas, France clings tenaciously, even though much of the land is still poor and only 50,000 Frenchmen live there. Not for years will the $550 million poured in since 1948 begin to pay off—but there are riches to be found, and France seems determined not to let this vast remnant of its empire go by default, or to make the same mistakes that led to the Algerian problem.
French West Africa's most noted political leader is Felix Houphouet-Boigny, sophisticated mayor of the Ivory Coast's capital of Abidjan and a minister of state in French President De Gaulle's cabinet. He says:
"We don't want independence, and as a result must support an army which is very expensive. Who is really independent, anyway?"
"Our responsibility is to inform the African people of their responsibility in this matter," Houphouet-Beigny says.
The chief need of West Africa is capital-lots of it. To attract it, however, the area must inspire confidence in investors.
Unfortunately, only his Ivory Coast and Guinea have inspired much confidence so far.
Throughout these destitute lands, the French have made isolated but highly promising efforts at development. In the French Sudan, the TVA-like Office du Niger, located in a tree-shaped and prosperous town that was once just a cluster of huts, has built a $21 million dam across the Niger River. On top of this dam lie the tracks for the still nonexistent Trans-Saharan Railroad. The Office du Niger has reclaimed more than 108,000 acres of desert where cotton and rice can now grow. It hopes eventually to
have 2 million acres under cultivation.
The Ivory Coast is rich in comparison with most West African countries. It has had huge exports of cocoa-totaling $30 million a year—and coffee, which has totaled $60 million.
Guinea, the home of the headwaters of the Senegal and Niger Rivers, has plunged into the most ambitious industrial program in French West Africa. French, Swiss, Canadian and United States money is backing a $200 million bauxite development program.
Munger has had this to say about the Ivory Coast:
"Elephant tusks have long since been replaced by tree crops as a source of wealth. The territory is closely tied to France but has a growing world export market. Cocoa production has doubled in ten years to over 75,000 tons, and is sold to France, the United States, Holland, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union.
"Coffee exports are not over 119,000 tons for markets in France, the United States, Algeria and Italy. Timber is the greatest immediate source of potential expansion. Bananas have been cleverly advertised on the French home market. The overall industrial and commercial growth is suggested by the consumption of electricity in Abidjan which has risen sevenfold in five years—to 28,000 kilowatt-hours annually. A new hydroelectric dam is nearing completion and consumption is expected to surpass 35,000,000 kilowatt-hours."
The Ivory Coast has a favorable balance of trade overall and with the hard currency areas of the world, a fact which African politicians may well use in bargaining inside the community. Last year the value of exports totalled 26 billions in C.F.A. francs against 18 billions of imports—an impressive balance.
Although these figures touch on the better known and more prosperous areas of West Africa, there is still a large undeveloped area. Africa is the last great unexplored area of the world—with the possible exception of the polar zones—and provides a wealth of resources to those countries aiding in its exploration and exploitation.
Danger on the Doorstep
(This is the second of three parts of an article being reprinted from the March 14 issue of The New Leader.)
Such fears generate even more fears, creating the danger that a situation which would be difficult at best will blow up in the faces of all concerned. I share neither the American nor the Cuban stereotype described above, though either or both of these notions could become fact if the situation is allowed to become aggravated.
Let us begin by describing the issues as they seem to exist in the minds of the Cuban people and the Cuban Government, interested parties to the dispute whose point of view is too rarely stated fairly in our own land.
THE BASIC VIEW of the Castro regime is that for over half a century Cuba has been essentially an economic and political colony of the United States, its wealth exploited and drained off by American businessmen and investors aided by such corrupt governments as that of dictator Fulgencio Batista. It is on this alleged exploitation that the present rulers of the country blame all their nation's ills: the poverty and ignorance of most Cubans, the almost complete dependence of Cuba upon the rises and falls of the sugar market, their country's lack of industry, the ownership of much of Cuba's land and other resources by American and other foreign interests, and the like. In this view the Castro Revolution was a long overdue essential effort to give Cuba real sovereignty, to return ownership of Cuba's resources to the Cuban people, to bring the benefits of modern education, medical care and industrialization to the Cuban people, and to create a balanced economy to replace the dominant sugar mono-culture.
Merely to state the indictment is to make clear that in Cuba all the explosive forces of modern nationalism and all the vast energy of the revolution of rising anticipations are behind Castro. He is the product of many of the same forces which have created Indonesia's Sukarno, Iraq's Abdul Karim Kassem, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba.
SEEN FROM THE CUBAN point of view, the tension in Cuban-American relations is born primarily of U.S. opposition to the efforts to end Cuba's colonial status and exploitation. "You Americans want to continue being our masters," one Cuban told me directly. In the present obviously semiparanoid atmosphere of Cuba it is easy to build up a picture of an evil United States preparing to resubjugate its small neighbor.
Even the sharp drop in the number of American tourists visiting Cuba is seen as part of a vast planned plot and propaganda campaign. Into the same composite goes the refuge given here to Castro's opponents and the publicity given to their charges of Cuban Communism, the hostile statements of some American legislators and businessmen, and the raids of planes carrying incendiary bombs to Cuban territory. And, of course, when the United States Government protests against the means being used to seize American property in Cuba, the instinctive Cuban reaction is to interpret the protest as directed not at the manner of expropriation but at the fact of expropriation.
(Concluded tomorrow)
Dailu Hansan UNI DEPTT
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"WELL, LOOKS LIKE HE'S FINALLY GOT THAT "POP" QUIZ GRADED & READY TO HAND BACK."