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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. Oct. 26. 1960
Castro's Cross
Fidel Castro's recent bold seizure of almost all the remaining American assets in Cuba has built still higher the wall of hostility that has been raised, brick by brick, since we first began to realize that the 26th of July Movement was not the enlightened revolution that it appeared to be.
The seizure was expected, of course. Castro had already grabbed American land in Cuba and had assumed control and operation of the giant oil refineries there. We had no reason to think he would stop at that point.
But the move was none the less drastic for being expected. Thousands of American nationals who had staked their careers on opportunities in Cuba are at loose ends. They wonder where they can go from here, and thus far no one has been able to tell them.
THE UNITED STATES also suffered millions in economic loss as a result of the seizure. When the nationalization and land reform measures were first proposed, we were told that the Cuban government would guarantee any losses and make them good at a future date. The promise of these guarantees has been honored more in the breach than in the observance. Furthermore, it is difficult for those who have lost real property to have any faith in a currency that soon promises to be wildly inflated.
It can be logically argued that the United States itself has been in part responsible for the economic chaos that may soon overwhelm Cuba. Our economic blockade of the island, beginning with the restriction on sugar imports (Cuba's primary export and the base of her economy) and culminating in last week's ban on all exports to
Cuba except food and medicines, has certainly dealt a heavy blow to the Cuban economy.
BUT BY NO STRETCH of the imagination can it be said that the actions of the United States are directly responsible for the critical situation in the island nation. Credit for this goes to the Cuban government itself.
In deliberately alienating the United States, Castro may well have cut his own throat. He has already succeeded in emptying all the plush hotels and resorts that pumped American dollars into the economy. He is having trouble selling his sugar, and it is fairly certain that the Soviet Union, niggardly by legend where trade is concerned, will not pay him anything close to the premium subsidy price the United States has paid. He does not have the technical know-how available to run former American industries at a profit, and now he cannot get spare parts to repair his stolen machinery.
But if the Castro government is suffering, the people it governs will be suffering still more when the economic roof caves in. This is the shame Castro must bear — that in making an enemy of the United States, he has brought needless hardship to his people.
We are a proud nation. We will not tolerate aggressive acts against our interests by a foreign government. Because we are what we are, we cannot look beyond governments and deal directly with peoples. To our way of thinking, a government is the people it represents, and can never be anything else. If this were actually true of the Castro regime, none of the hostility that separates our nations would ever have existed.
— Bill Blundell
Seek Senate Seat
Women Dominate Maine Race
Bv Carol Heller
Pat Nixon and Jacqueline Kennedy are not the only women in the political spotlight this year.
For the first time in history, two women are matched in a senate race. The place is Maine, a traditionally Republican state which has not cast its electoral votes for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1912, but which has elected two Democratic governors and one Democratic senator in recent years.
Margaret Chase Smith is the Republican incumbent. Her rival is Democrat Lucia Cormier, minority leader of the state legislature.
Smith Still Leading
Many independents and even some Republicans will vote for Sen. John Kennedy because they are worried about areas of economic stagnation and unemployment in Maine. In recent years,
Dailu hansan UNI DEPTIT
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Maine has lost many textile mills to the South, and its canneries and fishing industries are having a hard time. But still it is predicted that Mrs. Smith will win the Senate race hands down.
The Maine race also is significant because it reflects the increased activity of women in politics. Another woman is running for the Senate this year. She is Maurine Neuberger, a Democrat from Oregon. Twenty-six women are running for the House of Representatives.
But the race between Margaret Chase Smith and Lucia Cormier is the only one on the national level between two women.
Strong Campaigner
Mrs. Smith has been active in politics for 23 years. In 1940, she succeeded her late husband, Clyde H. Smith, to the House. She won Smith's seat by a 25,000-vote margin in the regular election. In 1948 Mrs. Smith became the second woman ever elected to the Senate. She defeated three popular opponents.
Lucia Cormier is unmarried, a Catholic, a former school teacher and the proprietress of a gift shop. Her climb to the national political level has been swift. She started out as chairman of the Rumford County Democratic Committee and became president of the Maine Federation of Denococratic Women's Clubs. In 1946 she was elected to the House of Representatives in Augusta, and in 1950 she ran for Congress against incumbent Rep. Robert Hale. She lost by a narrow margin — 7,000 votes.
Miss Cormier climbed still higher in 1952 when she was elected vice chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee at the national convention. By 1959 she was the legislative minority leader, the first woman to hold the post.
Adheres to Platform
Miss Cormier follows the Democratic Party platform, especially emphasizing peace, security and aid to education. She uses "folksy" campaign methods and travels widely throughout Maine to meet the voters.
Mrs. Smith has followed the Eisenhower administration program, but she is not considered a party-liner. Although she is a slim, attractive person with a ladylike personality, Mrs. Smith has won the respect of her male colleagues as a meticulous, hard-working woman who asks no privileges because of her sex.
She is quiet, efficient and sharply witty. When she was once asked what she would do if she woke up in the White House, Mrs. Smith replied, "First I'd apologize to Mrs. Truman. Then I'd go home."
She was the first senator to ophly criticize Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his "witch hunt" tactics. She makes up her own mind on issues and votes on every bill in the Senate.
"I consider women are people and that the record they make is a matter of ability and desire rather than of sex," she said. "I came here as a U.S. senator, not as a woman."
Mrs. Smith is confident of women's abilities in politics.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
'-AN' JUST WHO WAS LOOKING AROUND FOR HELP ON THAT WESTERN CIV, TEST?
From the Magazine Rack
Did They Know?
"Germans in every walk of life began declaring that they had not known about the atrocities of the Nazi régime. 'We did not know what was going on. No one told us about Dachau, Belsen, or Auschwitz. How should we have found out? Don't blame us.' It is ol niously difficult to disprove such a claim to ignorance. There were numerous Germans who had only a dim notion of what might be happening outside their own backyard. Rural districts and the smaller, more remote communities were made aware of reality only in the last months of the war, when battle actually drew near them. But an immense number did know. Wiechert describes his long journey to Buchenwald in the comparatively idyllic days of 1938. He tells how crowds gathered at various stops to jeer and spit at the Jews and political prisoners chained inside the Gestapo van. When the death trains started rolling across Germany during the war, the air grew thick with the sound and stench of agony. The trains waited on sidings at Munich before heading for Dachau, a short distance away. Inside the sealed cars, men, women, and children were going mad with fear and thirst. They screamed for air and water. They screamed all night. People in Munich heard them and told others. On the way to Belsen, a train was halted somewhere in southern Germany. The prisoners were made to run up and down the platform and a Gestapo man loosed his dog on them with the cry: 'Man, get those dogs!' A crowd of Germans stood by watching the sport. Countless such cases are on record.
"Most Germans probably did not know the actual details of liquidation. They may not have known about the mechanics of the gas ovens (one official Nazi historian called them 'the anus of the world'). But when the house next door was emptied over night of its tenants, or when Jews, with their yellow star sewn on their coats, were barred from the air-raid shelters and made to cower in the open, burning streets, only a blind cretin could not have known."
(Excerpted from an article, "The Hollow Miracle," by George Steiner in The Reporter, Feb. 18, 1960.)
"TEA AND SYMPATHY"
The Theater Corner
Experimental Theatre, Murphy Hall October 24-29
I HEREBY PROPOSE a campaign be initiated and be known as: "Let's Stop Calling it 'Experimental' Theater."
This is the finest type theater there is and the term "experimental" anachronistically detracts from its quality. It has arrived.
In no other type drama is the audience so involved or wrapped-up in what is going on than when plays are presented in this, up until now, irregular form.
Perhaps it is just the setting or Robert Anderson's play as presented by the University Players or the small Theatre itself, but once there, the audience steps into another world.
The cast handles this sensitive and beautiful drama with all the warmth and feeling possible. It is the story of the search for maturity and understanding in a world devoid of both and each role is therefore exacting and difficult.
THE BODY OF THE PLAY is so delicately involved and moving that to attempt to relate this story in words does it harm. A vague description, however, is necessary.
Bill Reynolds, a teacher at a New England boy's school and master of one of the dormitories, his wife, Laura, and Tom Lee, a student, are the central characters.
In the hale and hearty world of virile activities which are the hallmark of the school, Tom, age 18, doesn't fit in. He plays tennis, not baseball; prefers music and reading to dancing and dating, and his own companionship.
Ann Runge, Higginsville, Mo. senior, as Laura performs the role with deep understanding and is
Because of his isolation and her loneliness, Laura befriends the outcast and a close friendship develops.
But an innocent incident involving Tom looses the scorn of the school on him and his every tragic effort to re-establish himself ends in disaster.
handicapped only by the age requirement — it's hard to find a 35-year-old undergraduate these days. Robert Moberly, Excelsior Springs, Mo., senior, is Tom Lee from the first to last act.
Ronnie S. Trent, Lawrence graduate student, as Bill Reynolds occasionally goes beyond what is called for in presenting the harsh, bigoted schoolmaster but just as often carries it off deftly.
Daryl Patten, Hitchcock, S. D., graduate student, as Tom's father; Terry Kovacs, Wichita sophomore, as Tom's roommate, and Linda Eberly, Olathe sophomore, as Laura's channel to community gossip, all lend fine support.
THE PLAY IS THE THING. It is the type that is rewarding to see regardless of the quality of the cast.
But in the hands of the University Players and with the excellent staging by director Sidney Berger, it makes for a very worthwhile evening in "experimental" theater.
— Frank Morgan