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University Daily Kansan Monday, May 18, 1959
Leaders Lack Courage
Ominous signs of our times...
It appears that students of today who may soon inherit a troubled world, haven't the courage to face even minor issues squarely without demanding guarantees that all will end well.
The action of the All Student Council Friday night in voting down the proposed Sigma Delta Chi "ideas magazine" is discouraging.
The Council showed a lack of courage in its unwarranted conservatism that shamefully reflects on a modern University.
Granted, several arguments presented against the magazine had some basis. Perhaps the sponsors advanced their bill before all the financial details were worked out to perfection. However, it should have been apparent to the ASC that it is impossible for any potential publisher, collegiate or otherwise, to guarantee the financial success of his work before it begins.
The ASC also objected because it was not stated in the SDX proposal exactly how the editors would be selected, or how many members would be on the editorial board. But the sponsors planned to work these details out after getting approval from the Council.
There is some evidence of haste in the sponsors' attempt to get official sanction for their publication. This is the only logical argument against the proposal.
This haste was due, in part, to a desire by an organization of sincere individuals who saw a need for a worthwhile magazine and came forward to fill this need.
On the other hand, the illogical and reactionary arguments raised by those members who voted against the magazine are numerous.
Members of the Quill Club objected to the magazine on grounds that it might possibly duplicate their magazine. If this did happen, why should Quill object to competition? No publication is worth the paper it is printed on if it must be given a monopoly to guarantee its readership.
Another argument used successfully to defeat the bill was based on fear. The opponents warned the Council that the magazine might turn into another Squat, Fowl or Sour Owl. These members asked for reassurance that the SDX magazine would not become a humor magazine.
These conservatives went so far as to suggest that the ASC should be shown advanced proofs so that lawsuits could be avoided.
It is deplorable to see intelligent, thinking University people backing this type of fear-based censorship. Is the gamble so great that the ASC must resort to methods that are contrary to the traditions of a free American press and the Bill of Rights?
The ASC has taken a giant step—backwards. The killing of the magazine is relatively unimportant when compared to the reactionary ideas which led to its downfall. This is the kind of thinking that has led this nation to the brink of war on several occasions in recent years.
It shows the fear that dominates our society. If men and women who are leaders on the campus today must have absolute guarantees that every minor proposal will turn out successfully before they will approve it, what will they do in the future when they are faced with major decisions that must be decided in minutes?
They will react in the same way they did Friday night. They will act cautiously and seek assurance. This is not the stuff of which a nation of leaders is made. This fear is the undermining influence which gnaws at the foundations of a declining nation. —George DeBord
No More States
With the addition of Alaska and Hawaii as states there has been additional legislation introduced to admit Peurto Rico as the 51st state of the Union. The first thing we know the nation will be a "mother country" having to arrange her affairs all over the globe.
A legislator said the Carribbean island's admission is justified by its economic growth, adequacy of population...and increasing trade with the United States. If this is all that justifies admission then several other islands and small countries could qualify in the race for admission. We help them out economically and then annex them while Russia has to fight for them. Or at least that is one way of looking at it.
Surely there is more constructive legislation that could be introduced into Congress than that of adding more states. We have to clean up what we have first, before we get to the other countries.
Martha Fitch
Editor:
... Letters ...
Morse vs. Horse
I note with ever-increasing consternation the fracas between that most excellent and distinguished lady, former Sen. Clare Boothie Luce (R-Mass), Sen. Wayne Morse
(D-Ore), and a horse (party affiliation undetermined) reported to have kicked the latter in the head.
In the furor over censure proceedings in the Senate, one glaring mistake bitherto escaped notice; the blame is being placed on the wrong participant.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
the PROFESSORS
Clearly, the Senate should censure the horse. The animal should have been more careful.
His aim was terrible.
the TIRED STUDENT
Richard Garnett Mission sophomore
However, upon further reflection, it becomes evident that one should not be too severe with the beast. The inexcusable lack of gallantry displayed by certain of our lawmakers sometimes makes it quite difficult to distinguish between the face and the seat of the pants.
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
baccalaureate, became biweekly, 1904,
triweekly, 1908.
Member Inland Daily Press Association Associated Collegiate Press. Renamed by National Advertising Service Avenue, New York, N.Y. News service location. National Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays, University holidays, and examinations. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 190, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Douglas Parker ... Managing Editor
Al Jones, John Husar, Jack Harrison,
Ivie Cable, Assistant Managing Editors,
Michael Allen, Co-City Editors, George Dioronzo,
Doug Yocom, Co-Sports Editors;
Saundra Hayn, Society Editor
NEWS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager Robert Lida, Advertising Manager; Howard Young, Classified Advertising Manager; William F. Kane, Promotion Manager; Paul Nielsen, Circulation Manager.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosser, Co-
essential for Robert Harwi,
assoc. for editorial
By Calder M. Pickett
Assistant Professor of Journalism
TROUBLE IN THE FLESH, by Max Wylie. Doubledav. $4.50.
"He's clumsy. Real clumsy. But it doesn't seem to matter somehow. He mislays characters. A lot of his speech is forced, even archaic. His people move around badly too. But God, Arleigh, think of what's at the core! Of every one of them, too! What do you see there?"
The writer being described is Seton Farrier, protagonist of Max Wylie's excellent novel. "Trouble in the Flesh." Wylie's Farrier is obviously Eugene O'Neill, the customary "All of the characters in this book are fictitious, ..." notwithstanding. It is a brilliant, disturbing, frightening portrait. It is full of penetrating insights into the human condition, as are the plays of Eugene O'Neill, and presumably the plays of the fictional Seton Farrier.
The Farrier-O'Neill parallels are numerous. Farrier, like O'Neill, is the son of a great actor who was famous for only one portrayal (with James O'Neill it was Dantes in "The Count of Monte Cristo." Both Farrier and O'Neill are members of quarrelsome, hard-drinking, emotional families; the book has much in common with the stormy scenes of "Long Day's Journey into Night."
The mother of Farrier, like the mother of O'Neill, is a morphine addict, and in the case of Farrier the addiction was transmitted to the infant while he was still in the womb.
There also are parallels in the plays. Farrier's first notable success deals with emotional turmoil within a farm family (as in "Desire Under the Elms"). Farrier later writes epic tragedies four hours long (like "Strange Interlude" and "Mourning Becomes Electra"). Like O'Neill, Farrier leans greatly upon Strindberg. Like O'Neill, his wife is a writer. Like O'Neill, he rejects his children.
Like O'Neill he is the greatest playwright of his time.
Seton Farrier is a coward, a drunk, an emotional child. He is unable to face reality. As his wife undergoes the pangs preceding childbirth, Farrier skips out of the house and goes on a binge. When his father dies, Farrier leaves all funeral arrangements to his wife and friends. He accuses his wife of having alliances with other men, always to cover up his own liaisons with prostitutes, shopgirls and ladies of the theater and the world of literature.
It is a rich portrait, and a disturbing one. It is the now-familiar artist vs. society theme—Strickland, Gulley Jimson—the embattled nonconformist. To this reader, this particular aspect of literature is becoming quite tiresome. The embattled genius who is a craven liar, a degenerate, a trouble-maker, but who must be understood because he is turning out enduring works in a literary stereotype
But Max Wylie, one may contend, is not on the side of Seton Farrier. He is on the side of Jill, Farrier's wife, the tower of strength who keeps home and family together while the great man goes on his binges. He is on the side of the patient producers and directors who work to make sense out of a four-hour tragedy, who deal with the man of 35 who has the emotions of a boy of 15, who loses his temper and smashes things and flees from situations that might call for the slightest courage.
It is Seton's wife who best sums up her genius husband: "He had never brightened or invigorated the language... there was never a line that was remembered, never a philosophical truth that would go on living. It came to her that the great dramatist had never said one thing in his whole life that was quotable."
The incidental characters come through as powerfully as does Seton Farrier. The best is Patrick, his Rabelaisian brother, a combination of George M. Cohan and Don Birnam of "The Lost Weekend." Patrick is exciting, incredible, unlovable yet full of stock Irish charm. He is one of several characters that, along with a gripping story and dramatic scenes, may make "Trouble in the Flesh" what Doubleday says it is, "a major novel."
***
By Jerry Knudson Instructor of Journalism
THE SYMPOSIUM by Plato. Penguin, 65 cents.
This famous classic dialogue or "Dinner-party" which supposedly took place in 416 B.C. is here translated by W. Hamilton. The discourses between nine prominent Greeks, including Aristophanes and Socrates, were reported by Plato.
The topic of conversation is Love, which in Greece meant homosexual love. However, the highest form of this love reaches a level of Platonic love which is "a common search for truth and beauty by two persons of the same sex inspired by mutual affection," the author says in the introduction.
Thus, the sexual impulse transcends physical gratification to the union of two noble minds. A brilliant series of speeches by a master philosopher, Plato. The author says, "It is the least technical of the great works of his maturity; the philosopher in Plato has not yet banished the artist and the poet."
\* \* \*
LOVE AGAINST HATE by Karl Menninger, M. D. Harvest Books,
$1.95.
Topekan Karl Menninger speaks so he is understandable, but he goes to the opposite extreme of popular condescension. He offers an all-too-pat solution for the world's ills: "... love is the medicine for the sickness of the world, a prescription often given, too rarely taken."
Dr. Menninger maintains it is the war of good and evil, love and hate within each of us that causes the wars between individuals, groups, and nations. He prescribes a glowing regimen of work, play, faith, hope, and love to "break the vicious circle."
Psychiatrists should, in my opinion, spend more time in amassing reliable case histories and less time in placing society itself on the couch.
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