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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Dec. 10. 1958
Harry Does It Again
Former President Harry Truman, long a favorite of those who appreciate a worthwhile chuckle, let loose with a laugh-provoking reminiscence early this week.
He explained that in 1952 he felt General Eisenhower had failed to show a proper amount of spirit in defending fellow old-soldier George C. Marshall from the attacks of Senator William Jenner.
"I raised Hell with Eisenhower in that campaign, and he's been mad at me ever since," Mr. Truman confided. Then, after a pause:
"And I don't give a damn."
Somehow, these moments of crisp frankness add spice to the routine rounds of post-election politics. Maybe Mr. Truman's whacks at music critics, Marines, and Presidential hopefuls are damaging to Democratic dignity.
But they do make the day interesting for the working press. —Jim Cable
Asian Support for Dulles
During the Communist shelling, the Administration refused to consider recognition of Red China as a solution. Many Americans were critical, holding that non-recognition is unrealistic; and their claims were loudest during the barrage.
The visit of Mom Rajawongse Kukrit Pramoj, Thailand editor, to KU Monday emphasized one angle of United States policy in the recent Formosa-Quemoy crisis.
Mr. Pramoj in effect strengthened the Administration's position when he said American recognition of the Communist Chinese would require Asian nations to do the same.
This, of course, does not affect the realism of our policy. It simply bears out one contention for
the American stand. Recognition of the Reds would mean a loss of U.S. strength in Asia and a corresponding increase in Red China's influence.
Other considerations aside, that is something we cannot afford to do. American foreign policy (of both political parties) is committed to containment of Communism. If Mr. Pramoj's statements are correct, recognition of the Reds would mean much more than loss of face. It would mean loss of power in Asia, and in time perhaps a wholly Communist Asia.
Eventually, we will probably recognize Mao's government. That time should be delayed until, as Mr. Pramoj puts it, Asia learns how to assimilate the Chinese. -A. J.
Bikes, Anyone?
We have been asked by an underground group to write something in favor of bicycles on campus. Okay.
We think everyone should give up decadent Western warmongering automobiles and take up healthful proletarian people's-republic style bi-cycles. The health benefits alone should make the two-wheelers the heart's desire of every right-minded student.
Everybody knows the Netherlanders, or Dutch, ride bicycles by the millions. And look at them blond-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked paragons of physical fitness, and they owe it all to the bicycle.
And the Japanese, sturdy fisher folk who ride
bicycles to keep in good condition and awaken their senses to the joy of living.
Imagine the fun of riding your own bike to classes on a cool December morning. The exhilaration that comes with conquering time and space through your own effort. The glow that will come over you when you have mastered the art and can pedal with the best.
Obstacles? Bosh! Just as soon as Buildings and Grounds: 1. Undercuts Mount Oread to the Lawrence level, and 2. Encloses Jayhawk Boulevard and pipes in steam heat—we intend to jump right on the bandwagon and buy a bike.
Only it's terribly hard to ride a bike on a bandwagon. —Alan Jones
Editor:
Quiet, Please
Some two weeks ago there was an editorial in The Kansan regarding the KU whistle. On the
... Letters ...
day after Thanksgiving, KLWN asked the "Party Liners" what they thought of that hourly blast. The ones giving opinions remarked: "I like to have it to set my clock by," "I have a blind
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"THE VERY SAME STUDENTS FLUNKING MY CLASS ARE OUT THERE FOOLING AWAY THEIR TIME ON THE ARCHER FIELD!"
friend who keeps track of the time by it", etc.
The whistle has outlived its usefulness, Lawrence and the University have both grown past the boundaries of the colossal blast if they are upwind.
The students to whom I have taken consider it a necessary nuisance, but some added that an electric chime in the buildings would be more in keeping with our modern age and much more pleasing to the ear. Not so the alumni; they had to take it for four years or more and now class it as a tradition along with Sarge, Potter Lake, and the Javhawk.
Now let me speak my piece. If any of the above had to lie in Watkins Hospital and were forced to defy the laws of gravity once each hour when that infernal bedlam breaks loose, I'm sure they would demand that the steam monstrosity be silenced for all time, except perhaps in emergencies.
The radio gives the time frequently during the day, and the whistle does not say whether it is 9:50 or 11:50 - it just blasts the hospital patients out of bed. I have been a patient there. That whistle is the most barbaric instrument of torture that anyone from the depths of Hell could devise.
For those nostalgic groups to whom the KU whistle is part and parcel of a proper education, I suggest they tune in KFKU and KANU and the "University of the Air" and listen six times a week to that damn whistle blow.
B. C. Mitchell
Research assistant petroleum engineering
It Looks This Way . . .
By Donna Nelson
After the confirmed bachelor announced his engagement, one of his playboy bachelor friends sent this telegram to the happy couple: Congratulations from the land of the free to the home of the brave.
Remember—only 17 more hinting days till Christmas!
Overheard in Strong basement: "I can't spell English proficiency, let alone pass it."
During Thanksgiving vacation, the local piano students gave their first recital and the lady next to us was especially thrilled. "I wanted my son to learn to play the piano very badly," she told us—he did.
"Ih, how are you?" is no longer an appropriate greeting for parties where everyone is drinking. It makes more sense if you ask, "How high are you?"
Fear not, KU males. There are many of us who consider you neither average nor disappointing. Rather we think you are below average. But we're not registering any complaints because we didn't expect much in the first place.
Some senior girls were making over their old formals in preparation for the coming Christmas parties and they agreed it was a good thing they're graduating in June because they finally got the bodices back on the original skirts.
Nobody has any individuality anymore. Last week we saw three snowmen holding hula hoops.
"It's absolutely no fun at all to have sharp dates during vacation," the freshman girl said. "None of my college friends are there to envy me."
The little boy next door thinks it would be the most wonderful thing in the world if they would have Santa Claus on "This is Your Life."
By Frances Grinstead Associate Professor of Journalism
ANATOMY OF ME, Fannie Hurst. Doubleday & Co., $5.
The chief and most interesting character in Miss Hurst's autobiography is not the author herself but her mother, to whom Fannie was always a puzzle and a problem. The parents, in their turn, were a puzzle and problem, in her girlhood, to the author-to-be. The middle-class Jewish mother, in "her world of minutiae," could not comprehend the need of her daughter to achieve than a good steady marriage, bulwarked with this world's goods—and preferably centered on a home in St. Louis.
Fannie went to New York, over the dramatic protests of her parents, especially her volatile mother. The father was more patient, if also less forgiving. When Fannie married a musician and lived the now-famous "two apartments" life with him, in which she had all the best and none of the sordid part of marriage—as she innocently told sensation hungry newspapers—it was her quiet, enduring father who would never consent to speak the man's name. The mother came, visited the pair in the great city, loved the opulence of the city while she found fault with it. Fannie and her sensitive husband visited in St. Louis; the visits were not very successful.
Miss Hurst's many short stories and her strong novels, notably "Lummox" and "Back Street," reflect the life of average people, especially immigrants, whom she began to study in St. Louis and who in New York continued to be absorbed into her very lifestream. She tells us a great deal about these people, whom she studied not coldly as an analytical novelist might, but with warmth and excitement, because she loved plain people.
One who expects to learn about the editors, writers and publishers Miss Hurst knew will be disappointed. She says she had little in common with other writers. The pertinent aspects of her dealings with publishers, such things as Thomas Wolfe told frankly, as Mary Roberts Rinehart exposed with canny charm, are kept secret by Miss Hurst.
She is to be commended for absolute honesty about her own motives and character, however—in so far as these can be assessed by the subject of an autobiography. If anything, she is harder on herself than others who knew the facts about her life can have been. She seems surprised when honors and admiration are won by her work. She seems lonely when she tells of her relations to others, even the beloved mother and the thoughtful husband. The deaths of these two and the never quite understood father are recorded; at the book's end. Miss Hurst is seeking—and not finding—a religion, a philosophy, anything—which may replace these loves.
Dailu hansan
University of Kansas Student Newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
Telephone Viking 3-2700
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Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
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