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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. March 18, 1959
Spring Cleaning Time
Gov. George Docking vetoed a bill yesterday that would have cut the budget for his office and the executive mansion by $17,914 for the current year.
He explained his action on the grounds that "this bill...drastically reduces the budget at the mansion in the item pertaining to entertainment ...that even with planned frugality in the three months remaining...Mrs. Docking could have a deficit as high as $1,600."
The bill would have cut the budget for the governor for fiscal 1958 from $155.10 to $137.187.
The governor's action and explanation calls to mind his stand upon state appropriation to the University and other state schools about this time last year or even last month.
There were too many "squeaking professors"
at the University, Gov. Docking said last year, to warrant any faculty pay raises. And again last month, he said that it would be necessary to study and investigate the faculty and courses at the University before he could favor salary increases.
Maybe someone should study the "squeaking" within the walls of the governor's mansion in Toneka.
A budget of $155,101 for the executive mansion and office is an exorbitant amount when it is compared to the $4,000 to $5,000 salary of the average faculty member.
if the governor is calling on the University to have a housecleaning, maybe the tax-paying citizens of Kansas had better call for a gubernatorial housecleaning.
Charity may begin at home, but frugality should also. —Pat Swanson
Only in a Democracy
In this day of democracy and free men, anyone can become a national legislator. The opportunities are there for even an average factory worker to become a legislator and raise his family's standing in society.
That is what burly, former-factory-worker Randall S. Harmon, Muncie, Ind., did.
He is a Democratic representative from Indiana. His salary as a representative is $22,500. This puts him in the top one per cent of the national income scale.
In addition to this fine wage for an ex-factory worker, Rep. Harmon took advantage of the opportunity of hiring his wife as an "administrative assistant" and putting her on the government payroll.
He was also able to remodel and enclose the front porch on his house. For this he receives the maximum allowance of $100 a month for upkeen for the porch's use as his office.
Indeed this is a democratic country when a tool-and-die worker can suddenly rise to such a position of political and financial opportunities.
Even more surprising is the fact that Rep.
Harmon has been called a "political accident" by his state's party leaders.
He began running for Congress 17 years ago, as a Republican. After five unsuccessful campaigns, Rep. Harmon switched to the Democratic party and ran twice more before his victory in the last election.
This is really perseverance.
The man knew what he wanted and kept after it until he got it. This could only happen in a democratic country.
His neighbors in Muncie call him a "character," but Rep. Harmon says:
"I don't care what they say about me, because I don't read the newspapers. I don't read anything but the funnies and The Saturday Evening Post."
He is truly a common man.
Yet Rep. Harmon realizes his true importance. He figures he's worth "three times" his salary as a Congressman. Only last week he admitted, "I'm a fantastic guy. I could be your next president."
This could only happen in a democracy.
Gary Settle
... Worth Repeating . . .
As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends. My old age judges more charitably and thinks better of mankind than my youth ever did.
beautiful, and swear eternal friendship with that."
George Santayana
I discount idealization, I forgive one-sidedness, I see that it is essential to perfection of any kind. And in each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something
from the Reader's Digest March, 1959
. . .
God made man frail as a bubble; God made love, love made trouble. God made the vine, was it a sin that man made wine to drown trouble in?—Oliver Herford
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
HEY SPONSOR—T HEAR YA FINALLY GAVE UP LEYTRING TO KEEP THE LIGHTS TURNED ON AT THE FRESHMAN DANCE LAST NITE.#
I write every paragraph four times: once to get my meaning down, once to put in everything I left out, once to take out everything that seems unnecessary and once to make the whole thing sound as if I had only just thought of it.
Margery Allingham, English novelist
from the Reader's Digest, March, 1959
\* \* \*
The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.—Maurice Maeterlinck
Ermined and minked and Persian lambed, B-puffed (be-painted too, alas) be-decked, be-diamonded—be damned! The women of the better class. Oliver Herford
***
A little 5-year-old boy, who had been bombed out of his home and evacuated to the country, said: "Now I'm nobody's nothing."—Rufus M. Jones
. . .
---
Gilbert White discovered the formula for complete happiness, but he died before making the announcement, leaving it for me to do so. It is to be very busy with the unimportant—A. E. Newton
. . .
Literature is not an abstract science to which exact definitions can be applied. It is an art, the success of which depends on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive.-Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
* *
A wise government knows now to enforce with temper or to conciliate with dignity.—George Grenville
***
One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.—Anne Morrow Lindbergh
By Rozanne Barry
REN-GURION, by Robert St. John, Doubleday, 1959, $3.95.
From his early days in Plonsk, a town in Russia where he was born David Green and where, as a young boy, he announced to his schoolmates, "One day I will be the leader of Israel," until May 14, 1948, when he mounted a podium in the Municipal Museum in Tel Aviv, Palestine, to announce to a crowd of Palestinian Jews and to the world, "The State of Israel has come into being," David Ben-Gurion's one mission in life had been that of bringing about the recreation of a Jewish state and fulfilling the dreams of 2,000 years of homeless wandering.
The author's subtitle, "The Biography of an Extraordinary Man," is most apt, for to his task Ben-Gurion brought a singleness of purpose: a steadfast faith, unswerving courage, and a sharp and probing intelligence.
Granting that David Ben-Gurion is one of the great figures of our times, and of this Robert St. John is obviously convinced, there surely must have been times when his decisions were less than absolutely right.
This is never admitted by the author, however, and an attitude of hero-worship on the part of the author for his subject is most apparent. The entire treatment lacks an atmosphere of objectivity that might have been, perhaps, more desirable.
St. John injects a homey quality into his descriptions of instances in Ben-Gurion's life that sometimes palls, and his sentence structure is at times distractingly naive.
These, however, are minor criticisms when viewing the work as a whole. St. John has obviously done much research on his subject, the man and the conditions surrounding him throughout his lifetime.
The details fill out the framework of the tale well, and the style is simple and uncomplicated.
The author's fondness for his subject cannot help but infuse the reader with a feeling of empathic excitement, a sense of being in some way present at the unfolding of some very significant events of contemporary history, for, forming a background to the story of the man, and interacting with it, is the story of the development of the state of Israel, its problems, its goals, the hopes and dreams of its people.
The book does not dwell on the ethics of the situation; justification is not its purpose, though of its very nature it is a one-sided account.
At book's end, the reader comes away with the picture of a man of firm purpose, of compelling personality, of a deep and abiding love for his people and for their land, to the creation of which he has contributed so greatly, a man whom, while one may not always agree with him, one cannot help but admire.
Book News
The tenth anniversary National Book Awards were presented to Bernard Malamud for his collection of short stories, "The Magic Barrel," to J. Christopher Herold for his non-fiction work, "Mistress to an Age." and to Theodore Roethke for his book of poetry, "Words for the Wind."
The awards, which are the only industry wide honors in the book publishing field, are given to the most distinguished American books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry published during the previous year.
The citation to Bernard Malamud, for his fiction winner, read: "...a work radiant with personal vision. Compassionate and profound in its wry humor, it captures the poetry of human relationship on the point where reality and imagination meet."
The citation of the non-fiction jury read: "This biography of Madame de Stael is a witty, beautifully controlled and highly entertaining account of one of the most remarkable women in history—an embattled liberal who amused, awed and sometimes frightened her contemporaries. She lived through the French Revolution and the age of Napoleon without being intimidated by either, and her vigorous life and time come alive in these pages."
In their citation to Theodore Roethke, the poetry judges say of "Words for the Wind" and of Mr. Roethke: "...poems of ranging energy, which, whether they appall or delight, show love at the center of his imaginative grasp of life."
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
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