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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 17, 1950
We Learn Facts of Life
The attitude of some officials here at the University never ceases to amaze us. We suspect that this amazement is a by-product of our awakening from dogmatic slumbers in the never-never land of naiveness.
Being a representative of the official publication of the University of Kansas, we mistakenly assumed that we could expect a certain amount of co-operation from all University officials in regard to obtaining information of interest to students. Ignorance was bliss.
Most officials are very co-operative and are ever ready to help us inform our readers. We say most because, we have learned, there are "others."
From these others we learned through experience the meaning of such terms as "hedging," "beating around the bush," "passing the buck," "the run-around," "off the cuff," "confidential," and "no comment."
Bewildered, frustrated, disillusioned, we at first attempted to rationalize the situation. We are able to sympathize with the reluctance on the part of some sources to divulge information. But, we are left with a small minority who withhold information for no apparent reason.
We try not to believe they think the student body as being so insignificant as to not warrant consideration. Notice we said consideration, not preferential consideration or treatment.
However, we are amazed to find there apparently are people in the administration of a large, modern and progressive public institution who view the very people who make their jobs possible as being beneath their consideration, or secondary to other individuals.
So, faced with the realities of life framed in the reference of personalities and individuals, we emerge from our land of "doxa," shaken, but wiser.
Bits of advice given us by our instructors, old hands at the newspaper game, begin to take on significance. We begin to understand the looks of amusement on their faces as we "griped" about the hardships of news gathering.
We remember the old newspaper man who, when told by a source that a story is off the record, would reply "Nuts to you, brother—you talk to me and you get quoted."
We begin to understand what is meant by "cultivating" sources. And above all we learn the meaning of the word "dig."
So, in the last analysis, we find ourselves indebted to that small minority which makes the job a little harder for us. They have created competition among newspaper men, and competition is the foundation of a quality product. We are only sorry that our readers must suffer as we go about the process of learning to be competitors. But we're learning. —Ray Miller
Eisenhower Rebuffs Herter on Bohlen Job
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — President Eisenhower appears to have pulled the rug out from under Secretary of State Christian A. Herter on the question of bringing Charles E. Bohlen back into the State Department as special adviser on Russian matters.
The President said Herter had assured him that no consideration was being given to the idea of bringing Bohlen back from Manila, where he
is U.S. ambassador, and installing him as special adviser to the secretary on Soviet affairs.
This flatly contradicted Herters news conference statement of last week that he had discussed the matter with Bohlen. Herter said then that he was not certain, however, whether the government could "induce him to stay on" because Bohlen was nearing the time when he could retire at full pay.
Daily Crossword
ACROSS
1 Add a finishing touch; 2 words.
2 Quick kiss.
12 It forms on ship's bottom.
14 Stage; 2 words.
15 Short operatic melodies.
16 Cottonwoods.
18 Red —— of Boston.
19 Spear-shaped.
21 Greek letter.
22 Levantine ketch.
24 Arab lateen-ringed vessel.
25 Algerian cavalryman.
27 Mountain nymph.
29 Most celebrated of the Hebrides.
31 What hookey players are.
32 City of Moravia.
33 Mental status, in regard to confidence, etc.
36 Thing or affair: Shang.
39 Wandered.
40 State in W. Mexico.
41 Grounded.
42 Handle; French.
43 Come ___ (meet by accident).
45 Apply one's self to as work: 2 words.
49 Equanimity.
51 Attaches.
53 Capital of Latvia.
54 Sea eagle.
55 Custodian, as of a school.
58 Rummy game.
59 Hickory cured.
61 Warships.
63 City in Chile.
64 From a certain direction.
65 Woven in meshes.
65 Asparagus tips.
DOWN
1 Star of the past, ___ Friganza.
2 Person.
3 Trodden way.
4 Series of eight.
5 Sparkling.
6 Curved hanging garland.
7 Ouarrel.
8 Lounging slippers
9 ___ loss 2 words
10 Part or separate 2 words.
| | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 12 | 13 | | | | | | | 14 | | | | |
| 15 | | | | | | | | 16 | | | | 17 |
| 18 | | | | 19 | | | | 20 | | | 21 | |
| 22 | | | 23 | | 24 | | | | 25 | 26 | | |
| 27 | | | | 28 | | 29 | | | 30 | 31 | | |
| | | 32 | | 33 | | | 34 | 35 | | | |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | | | | | 39 | | | | | |
| 40 | | | | | | 41 | | | | | | |
| 42 | | | | 43 | 44 | | | 45 | | 46 | 47 | 48 |
| 49 | | | 50 | 51 | | | 52 | 53 | | | |
| 54 | | | 55 | 56 | | | 57 | 58 | | | |
| 59 | | 60 | | | 61 | | | 62 | | | | |
| | 63 | | | | 64 | | | | | | | |
| | 65 | | | | 86 | | | | | | | |
11 Cavity in wood.
12 Deep voice.
13 Booming.
14 Left port.
20 Bristle on barley.
23 Taxi drivers.
26 Cadet on review.
28 Small quantity.
30 Amounts: Abbr.
32 Two-toed sloth.
35 Oregon: Abbr.
36 Flower stalks.
37 Outstanding college student: 2 words.
38 Castle of "Hamlet."
39 Links hazard.
41 Upper parts of dresses.
44 Spider.
46 Striped cats.
47 "It's ___!"; 2 words.
48 Strong-smelling plant.
50 Cast out.
52 Steep in pickle.
56 "What is so rare as ___ in June?";
2 words.
57 Miss Hayworth.
58 Carson of the old West.
62 Series: Abbr.
Steel Basic To Life Today
WASHINGTON—Steel, once an expensive rarity, is now the basic metal of modern life.
World steel production last year was 301 million tons. The United States held its position as the leading producer by turning out 85 million tons. The record year was 1955 when 117 million tons were produced.
There are more than 300 steel-making companies in the United States with a total capacity of 148 million tons a year, the National Geographic Society says. Surprisingly, the world's largest steel plant is not in Pittsburgh, but at Sparrows Point, Md. It can manufacture 8,200,000 tons a year.
The Sparrows Point mill produces in one hour almost three times the annual output of the first successful American ironworks at Saugus, Mass. The Saugus plant initiated the domestic iron and steel industry in 1644 by pouring iron to cast small cooking pots.
The Sausau ironworks employed 50 full-time workers, who were excused from taxes, military service, and "watching for Indians." Today Sparrows Point alone employs 27,000.
Production and use of iron and steel grew slowly in the United States. Steel, relatively rare and costly, was used for the finest tools and instruments. Only 1,000 tons were made in 1810. In the early part of the 19th century, steel cost about $500 a ton. The price now ranges from $135 to $150 a ton.
Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse—W. S. Gilbert
Life's perhaps the only riddle that we shrink from giving up. —W. S. Gilbert
Daily Hansam
(Published Tuesdays and Fridays
NEWS DEPARTMENT
News Room Phone 711
Baker Janet Jireau
Associate Editor Milly Milly
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager 3187
Business Manager Bill Kane
By Alexandra Mason Watson Library
KING OF PONTUS, by Alfred Duggan. Coward-McCann, 1959.
$3.95.
There was a king reigned in the East;
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared agast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their sh
Them it was their poison hurt.
Mithridates, he died old.
The Mithridates of Housman's poem was Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus, who lived from 132 to 63 B.C. Mr. Duggan gives us a full and detailed account of the life of this extraordinary man.
In the second and first centuries B.C., Rome was so torn by civil wars that her hold on the client-kings of the eastern Mediterranean was weak to the point of non-existence. The pirate fleets were out in such strength that communications with Egypt and the East were quite hit-or-miss. The Senate even turned down Egypt as a gift, largely because of the difficulty of getting to it through the pirates, who seem to have been standing beam to beam across the sea. The tax-collecting system was, as usual with Rome, farmed out to private agents who did their best to feather their own nests before their appointments were up. The eastern kingdoms were seriously disaffected.
At this time, 111 B.C., there came to the throne of the immensely and mysteriously rich kingdom of Pontus (in what is now northern Turkey) a young king determined to be no Roman's vassal. Mithridates VI Eupator was extremely proud of his royal Persian heritage and proved himself nearly worthy of it. He spent almost his entire life trying to throw the Romans out of Asia Minor, and repeatedly, coming within a hair's breadth of doing it.
and. Repeatedly, coming within arm's reach, his power at one time held almost all of Asia Minor and Northern Greece. It took Sulla and finally Pompey, in a long and terrible series of wars, to drive him back to his own strongholds, then to his son-in-law, Tigranes of Armenia, and finally, to the Crimea at the innermost reaches of the Black Sea. There he died, betrayed by his own son, having held out longer against Rome than any other single leader of a people, and, even in the hour of his death, planning one last daring strike at Rome.
Mr. Duggan's treatment of Mithridates' career is a sound, straight-forward, historical account, enlivened by flashes of a dry academic humour. His observation that "Mithradates Eupator deserves to be remembered as that freak of nature, an absolute monarch who improved with age" demonstrates his penetration, and his statement that Mithridates "lived in honour and died with pride" his sympathy. All in all, it is a very competent and interesting book on a most interesting and largely neglected figure.
By James F. Scott
TWO GREAT PLAYS. by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Modern Library Paperbacks, Random House, 95 cents.
The republication of "The Dog Beneath the Skin" and "The Ascent of F6" by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood provides the reader of Modern Library paperbacks with a glimpse of the dramatic work of two of England's most interesting men of letters. Although the two plays do not make first-rate drama, they catch much of the temper of English life during the troubled 1930's and embody most of the basic ideas one associates with Auden and Isherwood.
isherwood.
"The Dog Beneath the Skin" maintains the rhythms of comedy in spite of an occasional turn toward a darker mood, while "The Ascent of F6" is properly titled "a tragedy." Each of the plays, however, develops a similar theme: the revulsion of the noble spirit at the spectacle of greed, insensitivity, and mechanical superficiality which has woven itself into the texture of modern civilization.
The thematic import of the plays derives chiefly. I would suggest, from Auden and accords well with the mood one finds this poet describing in such lyrics as "September, 1339" and "Under Which Lyre." Isherwood, a more accomplished dramatist, has supplied the sense of the stage and some of the techniques of impressionism which help the works succeed as theater.
"The Dog Beneath the Skin," a satire upon the stodginess and bogus respectability of the English bourgeoisie, succeeds imperfectly in spite of its occasionally brilliant sallies of wit. The difficulty of the play lies in its episodic character which never allows all the elements to fuse into an artistic whole. But "The Ascent of F6," because of its controlling symbol (the climbing of a mountain which represents sham idealism), achieves a more consistent, coherent, and artistically satisfying commentary upon the failures of English civilization. In fact, it even rises out of the particular and renders a judgment upon man himself—a creature eternally deceived by the "demon" of his own pride and ambition.
It is something of a misnomer to term these two plays "great," because in the last analysis they probably won't stand high among the dramatic works of the twentieth century.