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University Daily Kansan Friday, March 25, 1960
Legalized Killing
Legalized killing is having something of a heyday in Kansas this year. For a state which once abolished capital punishment, then reinstated it, but never used it much, Kansas has certainly pushed it to a high pitch recently.
In Wyandotte County alone, juries in the last nine months ordered the death penalty for three offenders. One was a former KU student, Lowell Lee Andrews, convicted of slaying his parents and sister last fall. Another was a 21-year-old, convicted of killing a widow.
THIS PAST WEEK another 21-year-old, a Kansas City Negro, was given the death sentence for kidnapping. Kidnapping has been a capital crime only since 1955. If this sentence is carried out, he will be the first Kansan in modern times to be executed for other than first degree murder.
We civilized people of today like to believe that our world is turning away from the barbarism of past ages — the barbarism which allowed people to kill those who got in their way, or those who upset the established way of living.
It is comfortable for us to think that we can learn to settle our differences around the conference table, and that violence can be exchanged for more understanding and awareness of the real problems of the world. But what happens to the individuals who, because of the pressures or inadequacies of society, find it impossible to behave in an accepted way. Where do our understanding and awareness of his problems go?
WE ALREADY HAVE FAILED once by not recognizing the extreme needs of these individuals before they committed these "capital" crimes. Does this give us the right to fail again — fail by not trying to make amends for the damage done, fail by not trying to rehabilitate three young men hardly old enough to be "hardened" criminals?
There are claims made that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. In the county where the hanging fever is highest we find the state's worst crime situation. Will Wyandotte county be a better and safer place to live after using the hangman's rope? Will refusing the right to live to three youths alleviate the real problem of crime in our state?
- Elva Lundry
K-State Comments
On Student Government
Student government at K-State can never be as strong as its fiercest proponents may visualize, but it need not be as weak as its critics would believe.
We therefore would offer to University party the self-styled liberal wing of the new Student Council a proposal see how much you can get away with.
It is generally conceded that the administration has control over such things as curriculums and courses. This leaves a broad area for Student Council proceedings.
Prohibit book salesmen from the campus. Get back student parking places from the faculty in the Student Union lot. Tell the Campus Construction and Development committee that you feel the next campus building should go to the aggies.
In short, pass anything you feel useful and constructive and benefiting students, regardless of whether you feel it is strictly within your power.
The merits of this proposal are obvious — if student government is a farce as many believe, it will be pointed out very clearly by administrative action. If however, it is not, there could then be much accomplished.
A policy of examining the power of SGA may prove to be useful, but only by putting out feelers in this manner can anything be proved — not what the administration will agree is SGA's power, but to what extent the administration will let student government operate.
— Kansas State Collegian
Editor:
An Annotation
In his letter of Monday, Mr. Larry Blickhan quoted the General Statutes of 1949, section 21-2401, regarding libel. He apparently overlooked an annotation referring to a case which was tried in 1900 before the Court of Appeals for the Northern Department of Kansas.
In his decision on this case, State vs. Grinstead, Presiding Judge Mahan stated: "If an officer is the servant of the people, his official conduct is a proper matter for criticism, within proper bounds; and a mere imputation of unfitness for the office is not libelous per se. . ."
I shall also quote section 3 of the bill of rights of the state constitution, which says, "The people have the right to assemble, in a peaceable manner. . . ." The first and fourteenth amendments to the
federal constitution grant this right to the people, as well as the right of free speech.
There has been no accusation by anyone present that the group on the Chancellor's lawn was not "peaceable" or that "improper" methods were used by them. It might serve Mr. Blickhan well to attempt to defend the governor and his policies (if this is possible), rather than to try to jail his opponents.
Fred L. Morrison Colbv. iunior
Editor:
Peter Block, Mission junior, in his vigorous defense of the All Student Council which you printed in Tuesday's "Letters" column, denounced you for berating the ASC.
His letter, I'm afraid, says little except that one Peter Block has a short memory.
Dailu hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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.
Telephone Viking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Last semester alone the Daily Kansas editors suggested the following bills or resolutions be drawn for the ASC's consideration:
"But not a one that I can remember has offered any constructive ideas for bills which would ... benefit as many students as possible."
Bruce Lewellyn ... Business Manager
3. Take action to begin a new humor magazine.
That the ASC;
2. Give more than lip service to the chancellor's budget fight.
"In the two and one-half years that I have been here, almost all editorials about the ASC have criticized and condemned it."
1. Draft a bill clarifying the discipline problem.
I refer to that part of the letter which says:
4. Take the initiative in forming a new campus political party.
5. Check into the budget and needs of AWS.
6. Investigate Homecoming to assure its continuation.
No significant action by the ASC was ever taken on any of these suggestions.
Mr. Block further suggests that the editorial editors "take an active part in the ASC." To me it appears that the editorial editors are among the very few on this campus who actually do take part in ASC affairs. Much more so, at least, than do 99 per cent of the ASC members.
To quote Jim Austin, student body president, the ASC spends too much time "Piddling around asking questions on insignificant details instead of discussing basic issues."
This, I think, was best illustrated in the recent NSA fasco.
George DeBord
Kansas City, Kan., senior
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
GRANT MOVES SOUTH, by Bruce Catton. Little Brown. $6.50.
Good news for those who love Civil War history could lie in a possible subtitle for this thorough new history — "Catton Moves West." Bruce Catton gave us the memorable trilogy of the Army of the Potomac, and his over-all history, "This Hallowed Ground." Now he offers the story of the military and business failure who was winning battles in the West while McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker were losing battles in the East.
This portrait of Ulysses S. Grant is not that of the drunken butcher who pushed his men relentlessly through the Wilderness and south to Cold Harbor and Petersburg and finally Appomattox. We see here a different Grant — the Grant he probably always was, the man who believed in action and in winning battles, the general who, perhaps like McClellan, hated the sight of blood but unlike McClellan knew that blood had to be spilled.
"Grant Moves South" is largely the story of delay, and military politics, the story of failures and prima donnas. Only three major battles make up the period encompassed — mid-1861 to July 1863, when Grant's forces captured Vicksburg as Meade's Army of the Potomac was winding up the Battle of Gettysburg. The other major battles are those of Ft. Donelson and Shiloh, the first a clear victory for the Union, the second a standoff a little like Antietam, one side emerging as the victor, but not really able to do much boasting about it.
Where and why was Grant delayed? He was delayed after each action, and he was delayed because of timidity, stupidity, jealousy and politics. There was timidity in Halleck—"Old Brains," as he was called — a man almost as cautious as McClellan. There was jealousy in Halleck, too; and in McClernand, that Illinois politician-turned-general, there were stupidity, jealousy and politics. Banks was another prima donna, demanding that Grant Join him in the action at Port Hudson instead of fighting the great siege at Vicksburg.
McClernand had big ambitions for himself, and he found it hard to accept that he — a favorite of both Lincoln and Stanton — could be relegated to obscurity while the Galena harness-maker became a hero. Sherman, the great Sherman of the March to the Sea, is not blameless in this story; he was highly emotional in this early period and suffered a nervous breakdown that could have knocked out a lesser man for the entire war.
There was sniping at Grant from Washington, and Lincoln finally sent a spy to the West, ostensibly to report on logistics but really to see if it were true that Grant was constantly drunk. The spy was Charles A. Dana, late of the New York Tribune, and he found that Grant was far from being a drunk, that he was temperate, even.
One almost feels that Grant's greatest vice was a kind of tolerance that no man should have to have. He was too tolerant toward Halleck, who was embarrassed by the successes of Grant, and who taxed the patience of the tough little cigar-chewing general, sending testy communiques to Washington, insulting Grant at every turn, ignoring Grant's demands for exoneration.
If "Grant Moves South" lacks anything, it is that majestic feeling for campaigns and the little man inside those campaigns that one finds in Catton's other books. There is too much detail. But occasionally Catton grasps that fine mood of what the war was all about, that "War was the one real enemy — war, and much of the time officers; and the desperate killing that took place was accomplished by men who had a working but unvoiced knowledge of the real inwardness of the brotherhood of man."
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