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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 14. 1959
Same Old Song
"Bills Drag as Time Rolls On" was the headline for the article on the Missouri Legislature story in the April 5 edition of the Kansas City Star. A smaller headline read "With 60 per cent of Time Gone, Little Legislation Has Been Enacted."
The story says that most of the work is done on the "final stretch" but the lawmakers will have to bear down from now on if they want to make any reasonable record this time.
Story sound familiar? It should. This is about the same thing that happens this time of year to KU students, and students all over the country, for that matter.
"Studies Drag as Time Rolls On" could be the title of a story about the University. A smaller caption could also mention that over half the time in the second semester is gone and in a lot of cases little work has been done.
As for the "final stretch," that is something that is taken before one retires for the evening. The "stretch" is getting shorter and shorter and
work is piling up. But then there is reason for delay—the trip to Lone Star, rides in the country and tennis to build the body beautiful.
As for speed? Ah yes, speed in running to class at 8 a.m. after oversleeping. Why, some teachers actually believe that the students planned it this way, but it's just that the night before the morning after was sooo much fun.
No doubt the Missouri Legislature will settle down and get some important bills passed at the last of the session when they realize they must adjourn shortly, but they will leave some important legislation to die on the floor with adjournment.
In like manner KU students will probably get some important studying done before finals roll around in a few weeks, but there will be the class that will be neglected in the hurry of cramming studying and fun into the final week.
But there is one thing about it, we can say that we are typical human beings in "fighting" this thing called spring fever, even if we do flunk out. —Martha Fitch
By John Husar
theater
Children's theater is probably one of the more difficult forms of drama to produce. In it the director must satisfy, not only the dotard's censoring eye, but the stringently critical tastes of tykes too worldly for their ages.
Today's kids are inured to blood, sex, murder, hate, as normal courses of entertainment. And so, the director's problem multiplies by having to find a play which will hold a child's interest, and still be suitably moral.
Still yesterday's kid-packed audience liked it. The script held together, the players divested proper amounts of melodrama, and the Mother Goose set, eerie light-ing and jaunty elf-music lent a Disneyy mood of fantasy to the proceedings.
Well, director Bee Harvey would probably have to climb aboard a showboot in order to find a more scruppulously pure play than her current Children's Theatre attraction, "The Elves and the Shoemaker." It literally rang with man's honesty and goodness—a rather foreign image of our adored Homo sapiens.
What is more, the attentive kidsturned-autograph-hungry urchins, swarmed backstage after the show, thoughtfully armed with theater-provided scorecards. I guess it was a great success.
Of course the play did have a villain. It seems that a gold-hungry spinster (Jane Paramore) got wind of a secret hide-out full of elves and cached with gold. This wage-earner's dream happened to be under a poor shoemaker's (Karl Garrett) workshop, upon which the spinster held a mortgage.
While the shoemaker was off to the wars, his wife and daughter (Wendy Combes and Judy Satterfield) had no income, could not pay the mortgage, and thus were about to be extracted from the property. Then the spinster could dig for the gold.
This was sad and so three little elves (Don Plantz, Kittie Williams and Laura Mulally) decided to play good deeds and made huge amounts of shoes for the two women, who sold them and pocketed the proceeds to pay off the debt.
Meanwhile, the spinster parlayed a simple-minded, palsied, old ninny (Virginia Kane) into letting her "hold" the mortgage money sent from the shoemaker until the deadline for payment passed. But all worked out well. Just as she was about to claim the shop, one of the elves hexed her shoes, and she went flying off to heaven-knows-where. The kids were happy. I was happy. The show was over.
Although the children were more interested in the elves, all
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLER
"——YES, ED, I WISH I HAD BEEN ABLE TO GET A COLLEGE EDUCATION. IT GIVES A MAN THAT CERTAIN SOMETHING THAT SETS HIM ABOVE AND APART FROM THE AVERAGE ---"
of the players gave creditable performances. Miss Kane delivered an exciting character role, considering comparative displays of talent. Discounting Miss Paramore's garish makeup, her mighty personality also held the children's attention well.
I guess if you are a dyes-in-the-wool adult, you won't like this show. If you are a student of theater, you may find it interesting. But if you are a kid (at least at heart) . . . oboy! Go to it, man, 'cause it is the coolest ever!
Men
Aren't children what Children's Theatre is for?
Poetry Corner
By Geneva Mendenhall
There are differences in men.
An occasional young man will
check a sleek, powerful car to let
you pass in front of him.
He makes you think of Sir Walter and his cape.
Another will hold the door and even urge you to precede him. Except that you wish not to embarrass him, you would like to say.
"Let me congratulate you for learned the gentle art of courtesy. Courtesy is a rare and beautiful thing."
And then there are the others.
There are great differences in men.
Dailu Hansan
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Allen-Lentz
By Alexandra Mason
THE TRIAL OF DR. ADAMS, by Sybille Bedford. Simon and Schuster. $3.75.
On November 13, 1950, a certain Mrs. Morell, a rich and invalid widow, died at Eastbourne in Kent. Her doctor signed the proper papers and Mrs. Morell's body was cremated.
Six years later, on March 18, 1957, her doctor, John Bodkin Adams, stood in the Old Bailey on trial for her murder. The prosecution attempted to prove, by the testimony of medical experts, that the course of medication pursued by Dr. Adams in treating his patient's cerebral arteriosclerosis was deliberately intended to put a stop to that patient's life, and in fact did so.
Over the course of the trial, the defense attempted to demonstrate to the jury that the prosecution could prove no such thing, and they succeeded in doing so. The verdict was "Not Guilty." On April 18, 1957, Dr. Adams left the Old Bailey, a free man.
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The trial was extraordinary in many ways. It was the longest murder trial ever held in this venerable court. It was the first trial in nearly one hundred years at which it was alleged that a physician had employed his art to murder his patient.
Death had taken place six years before, and the body had been cremated. Prosecution had to prove, not just that Dr. Adams had done murder, but that murder had been done. But perhaps the most extraordinary thing was that, beyond his initial plea ("I am not guilty, my Lord.") the defendant never spoke, never gave testimony.
Dr. Adams' silence remains mysterious, tantalizing, ambiguous, after all the rest has faded from the mind. His silence, and the fact that he was a doctor. What would he have said? What could he have said?
The question is left in the reader's mind, as it must remain with the jurors: was murder done? The verdict was correct. Under our law a man is presumed innocent unless proved guilty. John Bodkin Adams was most emphatically not proved guilty; therefore he was not guilty.
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At the conclusion of some cases, it is obvious that the verdict is not only true and correct within the great framework of the law, as this one was, but is also true and correct on all levels of reality. This is not obvious here. Enough was not known to leave the doctor white or black. His actual deeds remain as shadowy a speculation as his unuttered testimony.
Beyond this there is the question of the special responsibility of a doctor. Of the three medical experts summoned, one was violently certain that the heavy use of morphine, heroin, and paraldehyde in this case could be explained only by "intention... to terminate life."
The second expert felt that the treatment would "have pretty certain effects... Instructions to keep her under would be almost certain to accelerate death."
The third expert was unperturbed beyond a mild "one might say there was rather a large dose of hypnotics." Knowledge, intention, and responsibility seem so inextricably knotted.
It is ridiculous that a doctor should stand trial for treating the victim of an inoperable condition with a drug which relieves the severe pain but which accelerates the already inevitable death
But where in the unknown rank of unbearable pain and certain death common to all men is this extra-legal point attained? What is the tie between knowledge and intention, and where does responsibility for the decision shift from the doctor's private mind to the court and the 12 jurymen?
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The trial of Dr. Adams is certainly a most thought-provoking one. Miss Bedford is to be congratulated for placing it before us.
I could wish that she had included the name of the judge, the full name of the victim, and the exact dates of the trial. However, the publisher has taken pity on us to the extent of including the names of counsel and a note on the later life of Dr. Adams in a short appendix.
Worth Repeating
Cutting down, not cutting out, is the secret of proper dieting.— Fredrick J. Stare
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Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. A. Whitney Griswold
If a society conscious of its medical needs cannot afford a decent medical system, what can it afford?—Harry H. Eckstein
I would certainly warn anyone not to enter teaching if he plans to do so because he thinks the people in it are so nice.—David Riesman
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What kind of security is found on a seesaw? Is this not precisely the posture of maximum instability?—Barbara Ward Jackson
...
I have never subscribed to the proposition once debated in the Oxford Union that in the opinion of this house Columbus went too far.-Robert M. Hutchins
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.—Mark Twain
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He is a fool and ever shall, who writes his name upon a wall.—John Ray