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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1960
Division and Danger
Two weeks ago, 1,263 delegates of the British Labor party met at Scarborough in one the most rancorous party conferences ever held. From the bitter conflict at that conference there arose a policy fraught with danger for the West.
The very air was heavy with gloom and sullied resentment. There was the smell of defeat, and tension over the impending struggle between the deeply divided left and right wings of the party affected every delegate.
THERE WAS GOOD REASON FOR THE atmosphere prevailing at Scarborough. The Labor Party has lost the last three general elections, each time by a greater margin than the last. The left and right wings of the party are irreconcilable in many matters of importance, while their respective leaders, Hugh Gaitskell on the right and Frank Cousins on the left, have been jockeying for the party leadership, a leadership which can at best represent only one of the two warring factions.
To be sure, the conference ended with Gaitskell still in command. The delegates repudiated the left wing demand for extensive nationalization of industry and contented themselves with a moderate statement which endorsed "some expansion of common ownership" while hastily asserting that private enterprise definitely has a rightful place in the English system.
ON THE MATTER OF SETTING POLICY the conference was hopelessly muddled. The delegates endorsed a policy which established the conference rather than the parliamentary party as the instrument for policy guidance of Labor M.P.'s. The executive agreed, but stipulated that "the conference cannot instruct, control or dictate to" the Labor M.P.'s. This leaves us where we started.
But at the very beginning of the conference, Gaitskell and his moderates suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of the left wing, a defeat which implies the gravest threat to the security of the Western alliance.
Rallying around the slogan, "Ban the Bomb," two giant labor unions proposed extreme resolutions. In essence, the resolutions called for unilateral disarmament agreements, the cessation of manufacturing, stockpiling or basing nuclear weapons in England, withdrawal of U.S. forces
The conference followed through by voting not to endorse support of NATO. Resolutions asking support of the treaty organization were rejected by the union delegates, over the impassioned protests of the executive council which proposed them. This council is controlled by Gaitskell and his moderates.
now stationed there and adherence to a strict policy of neutrality.
Though Gaitskell retains his party leadership, he sits on a shaky throne indeed. The defeat he suffered may or may not alienate the voting public — only time and the development of the present situation can tell that — but it is probable that should the Labor Party again gain power the keystone of mutual defense in Europe will disintegrate, bringing the whole structure down with it. The only hope lies in the nebulous statements adopted by the conference regarding the obligation of Labor M.P.s to follow the party line set down by the conference. At best, the extremes of opinion that might be reflected by a Labor government would be seriously damaging to the defense of Europe; for the dissension and conflict that would ensue would strip England of the powerful center of action that her government has provided for centuries, leaving her — and the rest of NATO — naked and defenseless.
No sane man looks toward nuclear warfare with anything but horror and dread. Many brilliant and famous men, notably Bertrand Russell and Linus Pauling, are militant in their demands that man cast aside the bomb immediately or suffer extinction.
But the time cannot be now. Those who think we dare risk making ourselves defenseless while a coldly hostile ideology threatens us with our own weapons live in an unreal world where men love and trust each other to a degree history has never verified. We live in an era of hate and suspicion, made all the more terrifying by the awesome might a precocious technology has placed in our hands. We must learn to live with fear, to bed down with it at night and find it with us in the morning. And we must remain strong enough to live with it until the day the Paulings and Russells, fortified by a new world spirit of cooperation, can reasonably say: End this thing now and for all time.
Bill Blundell
From a Syracuse Graduate Editor:
I had the pleasure of attending the Syracuse-Kansas football game last Saturday. Those few of us in the stands that were Syracuse graduates (and rooters) were much impressed by the good sportsmanship evident not only on the field but, perhaps more important, in the spectator group. Those Kansas rooters around us were eager to win, but kept the game in perspective and retained their good humor and friendliness. We enjoyed ourselves — thank you.
Charles A. Slater
Prairie Village
* * *
Birth Control Again Editor:
I should like to refute Mr. Swanson's argument from two standpoints, moral and practical.
FIRST, from the moral standpoint. Mr. Swanson says that pleasure in itself is dangerous, i.e. sinful. But when the Divine purpose for sex intermingles with this pleasure, the sex act becomes moral. I should like to know Mr. Swanson's views on marriage of people who know they are sterile. And people who are past child-bearing age. And those who have as many children as economic conditions allow. And those who simply do not care for children or feel they would not make good parents? Are all these people to abstain from the rewarding relationships of marriage?
I believe that, while childbearing is the biological reason for sex, the highest kind of love between man and wife is manifested through the
sex act and that for that reason it is in itself moral. This holds, no matter what time of the month engaged in, and whether or not mechanical devices are used.
Mr. Swanson's main objection to mechanical methods of birth control refutes the one method which he endorses. Why does not the rhythm method also go against God's purposes for sex, since intercourse is engaged in by its proponents with the express intention that no children be born?
EITHER SEX SHOULD never be engaged in except for bearing children (at "unsafe" times only!), or you must admit that this relationship has moral value in addition to childbearing and that intercourse is
Daily Hansan
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.J. news service; Uped Press International 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 an adjunct faculty Sept. 9, 1635, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
not sinful in marriage at any time that both partners desire it and neither will be harmed by it. There is no defensible in-between stand.
Telephone Viking 32-7000 Extension 711. news room Extension 376. business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller Managing Editor
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Founded 1888, became biweekly 1904,
trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Now to the practical aspects. How is Mr. Swanson to teach 300 million illiterate Indians how to use the rhythm method? A case was cited in the TV documentary The Population Explosion wherein beads were used to keep track of days. A simple enough process, you say. But if either partner desired intercourse during the "unsafe" period, they simply scooted all the beads to one side. So enter another starving Indian. Mechanical methods are becoming more reliable and simpler. It was indicated that perhaps soon a pill will be made to produce sterility for one month. This is easy, safe, and cheap to administer.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Blanket and - Co-Editorial Editors
Bil Blunted
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Mark Dull Business Manager
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
THESE PEOPLE are starving and dying in poverty and filth, and shall continue doing so unless their birth rate diminishes. Not a ray of hope exists that their economic production can overtake the number of new mouths. Shall we let false ethics be responsible for countless deaths and untold human misery?
Mr. Swanson's self-deprivation is simply not possible from the standpoint of human nature. Admitted that he is an idealist and good Christian. However, "It just ain't so" that the rest of the world is. Over half the world does not even recognize our God. How can these people be expected to understand our ethical arguments? The objects of sense experience they do understand, however, and world population continues to explode.
Robert Hodgdon Merriam senior
"BOY, I LIKE COLLEGE!—I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO PLAY 'FOOTBALL IN HIGH SCHOOL AN MY GRADES WERE LOUIS'"
By Kenneth C. King
THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS, translated by Arthur Waley, Modern Library, 95 cents.
Whether we are motivated simply by an urge to understand China or the desire to study the teachings of her greatest sage in hopes of discovering a deeper significance, our attention is invariably drawn to some translation of The Analects.
As there are many translations on the market, one wonders if they are equally good I prefer this translation to others I've read previously (James R. Ware's, and James' Legge's). I have on hand the Mentor series book of James R. Ware's and would like to give a few examples to illustrate.
From I-6 (Lun Yu- As One Learns) we get these two versions: Waley: "The Master said, A young man's duty is to behave well to his parents at home and to his elders abroad, to be cautious in giving promises and punctual in keeping them, to have kindly feelings towards everyone but to seek the intimacy of the Good. If, when all that is done, he has any energy to spare, then let him study the polite arts. (i.e; to recite Songs, practice archery deportment, and the like)."
Ware: "Let youth practice filial duty; let it practice fraternal duty; let it earnestly give itself to being reliable. As it feels an affection for all let it be particularly fond of manhood-at-its-best. Any surplus energy may be used for booklearning."
And in IV-25 we read:
And in IV-20 we read:
Waley: "The Master said, Moral force (té) never dwells in solitude; it will always bring neighbors."
Ware: "Excellence does not remain alone; it is sure to attract neighbors."
For me, Waley's translations seem to have a deeper feeling than Ware's. I prefer moral force rather than excellence as a translation of te. "Booklearning" here is offensive, and seems a shallow substitute for "study of the polite arts." Of course if space allowed I would point out other examples, but these two are symptomatic.
With the roar of awakening and increasing interest in oriental wisdom that the West is experiencing, many will want to have a copy of the Analects. As for my choice, I know none better than Waley's book.
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By Calder M. Pickett
Acting Dean, School of Journalism
THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, by Stendhal. Bantam Classies, 75 cents.
Here is a paperback edition of the famous French romantic novel, set in a principality in Italy in Napoleonic times and commenting on manners and morals of the era. Not as famous as "The Red and the Black," it is plugged by both publishers and Harry Levin (KU Humanities speaker of 1959-60 who wrote the introduction) as Stendhal's greatest work.
Briefly speaking, "The Charterhouse of Parma" is a drama full of escapes and adventure and skullduggery and almost as involved as a Renaissance tale. Its hero is Fabrizio, a young man who goes to Paris to join the forces of Napoleon. An almost Candide-like figure (though much more sophisticated, of course), he is arrested as a spy, flees in the retreat of Waterloo, studies theology at Naples, lives and loves a worldly life, gets in a jam, is condemned to die, is freed, becomes an archbishop, and eventually retires to the monastery of Parma to lead a life of meditation.