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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, July 25, 1961
Kennedy's Wealth
I'm getting rather tired of the childish taunt that President Kennedy owes all his success to "papa Joe's money."
Critics who pursue this line of reasoning conclude that JFK knows nothing about the common man's problems. This is absurd. Sure, our President is a wealthy man, but so what? Franklin Roosevelt was a wealthy man too, but few Presidents have exceeded his zeal in improving the lot of the unemployed, the wandering farm worker, the crippled veteran, and the small businessman forced to operate on the slimmest of margins.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY, LIKEWISE, has introduced measure after measure to extend unemployment benefits, to give the elderly increased medical protection, and to provide decent housing for thousands of slum dwellers in our major cities.
If he isn't hep to the common man's problems, then I don't know who is.
Kennedy might have had some financial help in the last election, but what politician hasn't? If you care to look it up, you'll find in nine cases out of ten that the GOP has spent much more trying to get its man into the White House than has the Democratic Party. One obvious reason is that the Republicans normally have the support of big business, a mighty potent ally.
FURTHERMORE. IF YOU TALK TO ANY POLITICAL SCIENTIST or to any office holder who's played the rough and tumble game of
politics, you'll be told that the log cabin bit just don't hold true anymore.
In other words, a poor man, or even just an average middle class man, doesn't have much of a chance to become President, because the latter must have a certain amount of financial security before he can campaign in the first place.
SUPPORTERS OF RICHARD NIXON liked to brag about his alleged humble station in life. I doubt very much if Tricky Dick was as destitute as he was cracked up to be. That's one reason why his now-famous "Checkers" speech, in which he told TV audiences back in 1952 that he couldn't afford to buy Mrs. Nixon anything better than a cloth coat, proved to be such a tribute to political corn.
While we're on the subject, it might be interesting to point out that several recent GOP presidents and would-be presidents were not exactly down-and-out. Herbert Hoover, for instance, was a millionaire several times over. Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey had more modest means, but both were in the upper brackets. Then what about Nelson Rockefeller.
GETTING BACK TO PRESIDENT KENNEDY, he may have made some mistakes along the way, but that is inevitable. During his six months in office, he has tackled a bewildering variety of problems with intellectual—and physical—vigor.
That's the kind of man the American people wanted, and that's what they got. Period.
—Chuck Morelock
Washington Crime Rate Up Peace Corps
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — Sen. Karl E. Mundt, R-S.D., said the other day that Congress should look into the national crime situation with special attention to conditions in the capital of the United States.
Something special will have to happen to alert the citizens in other parts of the United States to crime in the capital of their country. Maybe something such as the incident during prohibition when a United States Senator was shot down on Pennsylvania Avenue in a cross fire between cops and bootleggers. That was a shocker.
IT SHOULD NOT BE MORE SHOCKING, however, than the simple statistical story of crime in Washington, D.C., as it is compiled by local and federal officials. The police reported this month that in the capital city of your nation, serious crime had increased by 8.8 per cent in the 12 months ended June 30.
Federal Bureau of Investigation records project a more startling crime rate comparison for the calendar years 1950, 1960. This was a period in which the population of the District of Columbia decreased by 4.8 per cent.
COMPARING THE 1950-1960 CRIME RATES, the FBI found increases in serious offenses per 100,000 population, as follows:
Murder ... 29 per cent
Robbery ... 58 per cent
Larcenies (more than $50) ... 38 per cent
Auto Theft ... 61 per cent
There was in this period a 2 per cent decline in forcible rape.
Another FBI tabulation reflects (A) the average number of serious crimes reported in Washington during the 1957-59 calendar years, (B) the number of same reported in the 1960 calendar year, and (C) the percentage change.
Type of Offense Average No. No. in Change 1957-59 1960
Murder 75 81 8 per cent increase
Auto Theft 1,813 2,003 11 per cent increase
Aggravated Assault 2,631 2,966 13 per cent increase
Burglary 3,521 4,587 30 per cent increase
Larceny over $50 1,776 2,314 30 per cent increase
Forcible Rape 75 111 48 per cent increase
Robbery 683 1,072 57 per cent increase
Total 10,574 13,134
From 1957 to 1960, the population of Washington decreased less than 2 per cent. The overall increase in the rate of serious crime per 100,000 of population in that period appears to have increased more than 28 per cent.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE might be expected to be alarmed and ashamed of the condition represented by these statistics. There is no evidence of alarm, shame or, even, interest.
The citizens like to vacation here, visit the White House, look at Congress. That is all.Mere curiosity.
Volunteers, who will receive allowances for food and clothing and get free medical care, will be paid $75 a month in a lump sum after they complete their service overseas.
Short Ones
What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve: The sure sweet cement, glue, and lime of love.—Robert Herrick
The agency plans to ask Congress for the money as part of legislation establishing the controversial program to send young Americans abroad to help raise living standards in have-not nations.
The Peace Corps already has spent nearly $2 million even though not one volunteer has left U.S. soil. Scores are in training, however, and the first group of 70 is scheduled to depart for Ghana early in September.
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — The Peace Corps figures it will cost $40 million for this country to have 3,000 volunteers overseas or ready for assignment by next July.
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War is transfer of property from nation to nation—Leon Samson
It estimates that an average of $9,180 will be needed to train and maintain a volunteer abroad for one year.
The vagabond, when rich, is called a tourist—Paul Richard
Peace Corps officials say they are prepared for a "hard look" from a skeptical Congress at their fund requests.
There is nothing new except what is forgotten—Mademoiselle Bertin.
The agency, which is authorized to accept contributions from public spirited citizens, may face some very real money problems if Congress decides to be stingy. For so far, only $34 has been donated. It came from a group in El Paso, Texas.
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SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Morelock and
Ron Gallagher ... Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Martinache ... Business Mgr.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
THE NEW MEN, by C. P. Snow. Scribner, $1.45.
It seems significant that no American novel has treated with such scope the moral implications of atomic power. Perhaps this is because our novelists have busied themselves with sex and immorality in the deep South and New England.
"The New Men" is an impressive piece of work, right down the line. It appeared seven years ago, and already has achieved a strong position in English literature. It is almost dispassionate in its dissection of men and their motives.
One can recall on reading this novel the late months of 1945 and early months of 1946 when a new kind of debate was beginning, the debate over the wisdom and the decency of Hiroshima. (It is of interest that a concurrent debate concerned our right to try the German leaders at Nuremberg.) C. P. Snow's scientists debate atomic power in "The New Men." From the very beginning of their experimentation they ask the question, "Will we use such a bomb?"
And then America drops first a bomb on Hiroshima, then another on Nagasaki. It is the second bombing that shocks Snow's scientists most. Their conclusion is that it must have been a different kind of bomb, else why drop it?
One of the most telling paragraphs in the novel is a statement not by a scientist but by a journalist who otherwise seems little concerned with the morality of things:
"The chief virtue of this promising new age, and perhaps the only one so far as I can tell, is that from here on we needn't pretend to be any better than anyone else. For hundreds of years we've told ourselves in the west, with that particular brand of severity which ends up in paying yourself a handsome compliment, that of course we cannot live up to our moral pretensions, that of course we've established ethical standards which are too high for men.
"We've always assumed, all the people of whom you...and I are the ragtag and bobtail, all the camp followers of Western civilization, we have taken it for granted that, even if we did not live up to those exalted ethical standards, we did a great deal better than anyone else. Well, anyone who says that today isn't a fool, because no one could be so foolish. He isn't a liar, because no one could tell such lies. He's just a singer of comic songs."
Central to the theme of "The New Men" is the moral question of Martin Eliot, a scientist who is willing to climb to power by wrecking the careers of others. His moral recovery, his decision not to accept the position he has been struggling for, provides a moving climax to an engrossing story.
*****
SENATOR JOE McCARTHY, by Richard H. Rovere. Meridian Books. 81.25.
Here is perhaps the best-rounded writing yet on the late senator from Wisconsin. Rovere is unable to answer all the questions about McCarthy, but he does present conclusions and insights not found elsewhere.
His tone is sane and reasonable, and understanding. As a Washington reporter for Harper's and the New Yorker he had frequent opportunities to observe McCarthy in action. He himself succumbed to a familiar McCarthy trick, early in the game, when McCarthy was more concerned with the Malmedy Massacre incident than with Communists in the State Department.
Rovere reveals in McCarthy one of the more accomplished of 20th century American demagogues, and one of only two achieved power on the national scene, the other being Huey Long. To Rovere, McCarthy was a nihilist, a man who, contrary to obituaries written in 1957, did not believe in what he was doing.
Morality was foreign to McCarthy, says Rovere. The senator might have made a cause out of another issue after the 1954 condemnation hearings—out of the farm issue, for example. He might have bounced back, but he didn't. His followers awaited his return to power, but they were disappointed.
This is a typical western thriller from the Kansas novelist, the story of three Texas Rangers and their search for 1,000 Comanches and the wild Indians of the plains known as the Comancheiros. The hero is a playboy gambler from New Orleans; the thrills are conventional and all very movie-bound.
Was McCarthyism an isolated American phenomenon? No, not really. There were the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Know-Nothing movement, and the Civil War congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. McCarthy proved more adept than J. Parnell Thomas and Martin Dies, and he added refinements to their techniques. And did McCarthyism die in 1954? Once again, no.
This paperback, first published in hardback in 1959, will not appeal to the current collegiate pack following Buckley and Goldwater. This is too bad. In a few years it will become necessary to identify McCarthy in class, and students will conclude that he got a bad press and a bad deal and suggest that we need a guy like McCarthy to keep us on the ball.
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*****
THE COMANCHEROS, by Paul I. Wellman. Permabooks, 35 cents.
THE YOUNG TITAN, by F. van Wyck Mason. Cardinal Giants, 75 cents.
Here is a blockbuster, a long, wild adventure yarn set in the mid-18th century. It's about a man who loses his family holdings, goes to the Penobscot area to set up a ship-building firm, refuses to accept the Indians and is defeated. The French and Indian Wars enter the story, and much of it concerns the long siege of Louisburg.