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University Daily Kansan Friday. Mar. 4. 1960
What Price Friendship?
A KU student from India has said that "Christian missionaries try to force religion," with the result of hostility and misunderstanding on both sides.
The student said that he discovered, on a weekend field trip by KU foreign students to a small Kansas town, that Christians and Hindus actually have much in common.
The international problem which he cites is not a new one. It shows up more strikingly in fields other than religion.
For years Americans have wondered why the rest of the world doesn't love this great, brotherly, free-spending nation.
Too many of our diplomat-politicians don't understand that money alone cannot buy friendship and good will. Perhaps in this country they have become accustomed to purchasing, with the proper amount of cold cash, anything or anyone they desire.
Missionaries trying to "force" religion are perhaps the greatest paradox of all. The Christian religion calls for self-denial and service to others, without regard for personal gain. A missionary is a person who supposedly is leaving his homeland to give his time and talents to aid less fortunate persons.
Trying to sell religion in the process is probably legitimate, but those who do it should not be
surprised if they are run out of town for meddling.
If one is selling something, he should make it plain that he expects some sort of payment in return. But when he gives something away, he must remember that a gift is a one-way transaction.
The United States makes a "gift" of a sum of money to Malaya for the construction of a road, and then requires that signs be placed at intervals along the road, announcing the generosity of the benefactor.
Are we trying to aid in the development of a "backward" country, or are we simply trying to buy friendship? The latter course is certain to fail. We Americans don't have all the pride in the world. We cannot praise ourselves to the corners of the earth without expecting some ill will to develop.
If the United States would do a good deed for the purpose of helping another nation, and not just itself, we at last would be boosting international relations.
We supply our allies with millions in near-obsolete arms, and do nothing about human suffering.
If we are trying to alienate ourselves from the good will of the rest of the world, we are on the right track.
Jack Harrison
A Right to Speak
Editor
Your article in the UDK on France's "Sahara poisoning" made interesting reading. I am adding that France's blantat disregard of protests by some nations of the world stems from (among others) President de Gaulle's ambition to make France great. But who doubts the greatness of France, anyway, remembering the long history of France as a champion and an ardent imperialist exploiter of Black Africa. There are some interesting side-lines to France's colonial imperialism.
Just for the fame of France, Africa — at least West Africa — has to suffer now. The West Africans cannot but inhale the death-dealing bits in the winds that blow over their heavens now; for the dreaded Harmattan winds sweep across the Sahara Desert, bringing what gifts the barren and fertile Sahara has to offer, create cold fronts and a tropical winter, as it were, that give the sun-baked African some idea — if any
at all — of how dreadful the temperate and the frigid zones can be. These cold Harmattan winds dry the skin and sometimes make ordinary breathing difficult. Besides, they are a harbinger of catarrh and cold of sorts and what have you.
As it stands now, the winds will bring along both those familiar unwanted gifts and also France's menace of radio-active fall-out. And yet the efforts of scientists have very well demonstrated the evil effects of strontium 90 on sheep in Wales. Not only that, but also the death-sounding booms of the atom bomb boomed very near an area that is among the most fertile oasis regions of the Sahara. Nearby are thickly inhabited villages called "ksours," at the southern limits of Touat, where the explosive inferno sounded.
If after knowing these few of numerous other facts France still went ahead with those diabolical plans, that is understandable, for it is apparent that she does not consider the inhabitants near that
region as human beings of any account. However, one may recall that there were the vehement protests that echoed from nations far and near. How reasonable is it to hazard millions of lives for the simple reason of prestige? If France, in her unfinching determination, went ahead with plans for reasons of prestige in the eyes of nations of human beings, it was some, if not all, of the same nations of human beings that raised a hue and cry and halting hands against her move. It cannot be overemphasized that it is towards international peace, cooperation, understanding and mutual respect that the U.N. has directed its efforts since the day it first came into being. And France is a vital member of that august body, too.
The bomb has already boomed. The desert now lies in additional charred wastes. Other humans who are the masters — primitive, savage, civilized or call them whatever you will — of their own God-given soil, have to suffer the aftermath of the "Sahara poisoning." Up there in Europe, the doer, France, sits, basking in prestige, fame and international renown, France, how about that! "Avikoo!"
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Biblèr
Augustine G. Kyei Ghana student
Dailu Hansan
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By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
A TALE OF TWO CITIES, by Charles Dickens. Signet Classics, 50 cents.
I suppose that each of us, at some time or other, but usually in adolescence, reads that last chapter of "A Tale of Two Cities" and is overwhelmed by admiration for that noble sot, Sydney Carton. For Carton makes the supreme sacrifice and goes to the guillotine for a one-time rival, all because he loves a girl named Lucie Manette.
It's like the heroism of that girl of the Foreign Legion, Cigarette, in "Under Two Flags," or that of the dashing Legionnaire brothers of "Beau Geste." People who give their lives that others might live — that's the stuff of romantic literature.
To me, Sydney Carton will always look like Ronald Coleman, the Marquis de Evremonde like Basil Rathbone, and Miss Pross like Edna May Oliver. It will be impossible to envision the Reign of Terror without seeing Madame Defarge, with her knitting, or the death cart bearing Sydney Carton and the little seamstress who knows Carton is doing such a magnificent thing.
"A Tale of Two Cities," I am told, has been specially prepared for the young reader. No longer, then, does it begin with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." No longer, probably, does it end with the classic "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;..." Signet Classics, happily, has not abridged what after all is not a very long novel. It's all here.
All of it is here — the panorama of these two cities, one the city of Dickens that we knew from so many other novels; the other the then infamous Paris, where heads were dropping and blood was flowing. The characters, too, caricatures sometimes, but also some of the most vivid figures in fiction — old Dr. Manette, making shoes; Jerry Cruncher, assisting Tellson's Bank and robbing graves as a good tradesman's sideline; the road worker in the blue cap; the thin-nosed aristocrats who treat the peasants like cattle, or like mongrels; Barsad, the professional spy.
Of course it's full of contrivances, but so are "War and Peace" and "Huckleberry Finn." It is not a coincidence that Dr. Manette's daughter should fall in love with the nephew of the man who had been responsible for sending the doctor to the Bastille many years before? Is it not coincidence that Madame Defarge should make her fatal visit to the apartment of the Manettes just after those poor souls had fled the bloody city?
"A Tale of Two Cities" has that special knack of drawing the reader into the action. For 25 years I have known every twist and turn of the plot; yet I find myself hoping that Charles Darnay will not return to Paris (as I read Bruce Catton's histories of the Civil War and keep hoping that McClellan will advance and not let Lee escape once again). I find myself hoping that Carton will be able to pull off his great stunt and take the place of Darnay at the guillotine.
Is it a true story of the Revolution? Many say no, carpingly, I feel. It isn't history; it isn't even a historical novel. But it has the spirit of the period, and it's full of action, and it's memorable prose. Madame Defarge knits on, and Manette makes his shoes, and Carton goes to his doom, to "a far, far better rest . . . than I have ever known."
From the Magazine Rack
DeGaulle and France
"It is probably too early to assess the full implications of the French crisis in Algeria. The total effect of President Charles de Gaulle's impassioned radio-television address to France, to the Army and to the Algerian Moslems will not be known for some time. But it is not too early to measure the significance of a situation in which the security of a nation against civil strife rests upon the prestige of one man and the loyalty of the Army to him, and, by implication, to the nation. This situation proves that France is still in crisis and may be for some time. One can only be thankful that, if the unity of the nation depends upon one man, that man should be of the stature of General de Gaulle, who had the courage to defy the Right which brought him into power, because he saw no hope of solving the Algerian problem except by proposing the formula of 'self-determination' for Algeria...
"It is one of De Gaulle's achievements that, on the basis of his manifestly honest devotion to the Republic, he was able to persuade the Left to accept his new constitution, giving him potentially dangerous dictatorial powers. The only strong dissenting voice was that of the redoubtable former Premier Pierre Mendes-France. Incidentally, he created a Presidency, not of the French nation, but of the French Community. Probably no one after De Gaulle will have sufficient prestige to achieve election to his office...
"The semi-dictatorial constitution of the Fifth Republic, De Gaulle's personal prestige and the fact that he has the only feasible policy for Algeria, place his success in the category of a 'last chance' for France. He may fail, but if he does, the prospects for France are dim indeed. Perhaps he will fail. The costs of lifting Arab education and economy to the French level have not been estimated and may prove beyond the capacity of the nation. This hazard means that even if he succeeds now, he may fail in the end.
"It is sad to see a great nation in such a sorry plight, but comforting to find a man of courage and insight try to solve the nation's problems. The sympathetic world will have to regard his rather extravagant nationalism and egotism as a price which must be paid for such a boon."
(Excerpted from "France's Fifth Republic and its General" by Reinhold Niebuhr, New Leader, Feb. 15, 1950.)