10.2.3
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Summer Session Kansan Friday. July 21, 1961
Moral Obligation
Thousands of letter-writing Americans are on the verge of vetting a government program that has been largely responsible for the preservation of what shaky peace we have had since World War II.
Our massive foreign aid program has never earned congressmen much more than an occasional thanks from foreign leaders but has often meant defeat when the people back home learned that their representatives voted for one of the gigantic aid programs. Foreign aid programs have been particularly hard to sell during periods of domestic financial difficulty such as periods of recession or high unemployment.
In a statement adopted unanimously last year by representatives of its 34 constituent denominations, the National Council of Churches said:
But even with her constantly mounting farm surpluses and the economic ups and downs the United States remains the mightiest and most prosperous nation in the world. Not only does the foreign aid given less fortune help entrench our position against communism but it also helps fulfill a moral obligation as defined recently by various religious leaders.
"Impovements of the standards of life of our fellow men is a privilege which the United States shares, not a benefit it confers. Moral principles even more than concern for our own national welfare impel an abiding interest in our neighbors on this crowded planet."
The National Lutheran Council has urged
Lutheran churches across the nation to "point out to church members that economic and technical aid to less-developed countries is essentially a demand of justice, and in harmony with the Christian faith."
Pope John XXIII gave his views on the subject in an important new Encyclical issued by the Vatican last week. He called attention to the sharp contrast between the high living standards of "economically" advanced nations and the "extreme poverty" which exists in underdeveloped countries.
Because all human beings are "members of the same family," the Pope said, nations "enjoying abundance of material goods" have a plain moral duty to aid countries "whose citizens suffer from want, misery and hunger, and who lack even the elementary rights of the human person."
But selfish Americans, many of them church members, continue to burden their congressmen with thousands of pounds of mail demanding reduction and often curtailment of foreign aid pay to countries that do not show immediate gain in their economic position. Many Americans also seem to believe that our aid program should result in recasting the world in the image of the United States.
It is odd that the moral lessons learned by millions of Americans on Sunday are so soon forgotten when they sit down to write their congressman. — Ron Gallagher
Daily Crossword Puzzle
ACROSS
1 Play tricks.
5 Tilt, as knights.
10 Containers for liquids.
14 Greek hero.
15 Unit of "prevention."
16 Executive; Abbr.
17 Controlling groups in democracies.
19 High church tribunal.
20 U.S. Statesman.
21 Explosive.
22 Formerly; Poet.
23 Mire.
24 Discarded things.
26 Le Gallienne and Gabor.
28 Shocks.
29 Ransack.
30 Projecting part.
34 "So cares and __ abound . . ."
35 Laughed heartily
36 Click beetles.
38 Bantering.
39 Civility.
40 Color.
41 Summer; Fr.
42 Scene of famous
Council, 1545-63.
Rifles.
Ballplayer
Slaughter.
Whirl.
Days of yore.
McCrea of the films.
Entire.
Dress fabric.
Italian town.
Mistrustful feelings.
Jowl area.
"—— Laurie."
Put in the mail.
King.
Pluto's place.
Gulf of the Ionian Sea.
**DOWN**
1 Part of a door frame.
2 Out of harmony.
3 Broadway musical and movie.
4 Book of the Bible
5 Combine.
6 Aloud.
7 Joiners.
8 Odors.
9 Trials.
10 Book of the Bible.
11 Wife: Latin.
12 Arrives.
13 Go away!
14 Crimson.
14 Crows' relatives.
14 Originated.
14 Oust.
15 Gallantry.
16 Actor Victor.
16 More favorable.
16 Slows Music.
16 Rims.
17 Landing pier.
18 Curtain supports.
18 Prickly feeing.
18 Actress Russell.
18 Peninsula of Northern Europe.
18 Lead ore.
18 A name for Dido.
18 Indian prince.
18 __ de Cologne.
18 Actor Webb.
18 Holy Roman Emperor, 962-973.
18 Hibernia.
18 Antagonists.
18 Forty weekdays.
18 This thing: Sp.
18 Lodge.
Letters Women Really Better?
(Answer on page 8)
Well it's that time of the year again. The grade averages are out and to quote the Tuesday, July 18, 1961 issue of the Summer Session Kansan "the women as usual made the better grades—the all-women's average was 1.56." Incidentally, the all-men's average slid in with a weak 1.32. This hurts the male ego where it really counts—intellectual superiority.
Now who can deny facts? Like all good pragmatic Americans quantitative data does not lie. It's right in front of you, read it—all women's average 1.56; all-men's average 1.32.
I have only one question to raise. How does music, art, home economics, fine arts, and education (predominated by women) stack up with physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering (predominated by men). If we're going to draw the battle line between the sexes on academic ability lets don't make it inequitable. Lets at least put the averages in their proper perspective.
To avoid further tensions (and inferiorities) why not just come out with the school average. Certain individuals and publications continually play up those disturbances (race against race; nation against nation; men vs. women) all in the interest of news. Why not come out with more of the harmonies of life? It could be that better relations all around will be effected.
Now I do not wish to imply that home economics, music, or art are pat courses. Certainly this is not the case as those majors have to take the same required courses at the University as the rest of us. But is there a real comparison of academic achievement when one major field requires that its students whittle figurines out of soap for some kiddie class and another to conduct an experiment in nuclear radiation?
James Galvin, Senior School of Business University of Kansas
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Morelock and
Ron Gallagher ... Co-Editors
1.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Martinache ... Business Mgr.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
THE UNITED STATES IN 1800, by Henry Adams. Great Seal (Cornell Press). $1.25.
From the "History of the United States of America" in the administrations of Jefferson and Madison these six superlative chapters have been extracted. They constitute a matchless essay on American life in the year Henry Adams' great-grandfather was about to leave the White House.
The chapters stand up particularly well when viewed alongside other histories of the United States. Adams was extraordinarily perceptive about civilizations, as his "Mont-St. Michel and Chartres" and the "Education" demonstrate. From the vantage point of 75 years he saw what the thinly populated states of 1800—and their people—were like.
He has somewhat of a bias toward Jefferson, as the later chapters from the History would continue to reveal, and as one might expect of the increasingly cynical Adams. There is doubt about the great democratic experiment, but on the other hand Adams is no staunch admirer of the anti-democrats of 1800—Hamilton, Fisher Ames, and Burke.
The world could expect little of the America of 1800, but then Europe itself still had far to go. Transportation and communications were tiny. The America that later would venerate its inventors had scorned John Fitch, and was not making life simple for Fulton.
There were three pronounced societies, if one ignores the growing West, as Adams tends to do. These were New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the South. These had widely different cultures, though Adams points out how Charleston, in the deep South, had characteristics of Puritan New England.
There was no literature to speak of (save Brown, Brackenridge and Freneau, scarcely major figures). There was little cosmopolitanism, save for Philadelphia. Jeffersonian democracy lay ahead, and the fight over the Alien and Sedition Acts had just passed. In 1800, the prospects were not great, one is forced to admit.
IMMIGRATION AS A FACTOR IN AMERICAN HISTORY, edited by Oscar Handlin. Prentice-Hall. $1.95.
It seems to me that the Spectrum series of Prentice-Hall, if it continues in its recent vein, may surpass the much-touted Amherst series. Prentice-Hall provides in such volumes as this one by the reputable Oscar Handlin numerous significant primary documents, and through these tells the story of the immigrant in this country.
The university student should welcome such a volume. Most of the accounts are not those of famous persons. Immigrants, political leaders, labor leaders, persons who made the crossing in steerage, students of noted immigrants—these are the writers of the sections, all of which have been tightly edited.
The aspects of immigration which Handlin, through his sources, presents are many. He deals with the problem of immigration and its tremendous scope, with the factors that drove persons out of the old world, with the adjustment to American life that became necessary — economically, organizationally, politically, and culturally.
He provides an excellent section that treats three theories of Americanization—the melting pot idea, cultural pluralism, and assimilation. Then he deals with restriction, with the special problem of the oriental, with racism, with the literacy test and with the quota system. All add up to an amazing and important part of our history.
EYELESS IN GAZA, by Aldous Huxley. Bantam Classics, 75 cents.
Huxley wrote this frequently puzzling novel in the mid-thirties, when communism, fascism, pacifism and the New Deal were kicking up intellectual currents. One may assume that the title refers to man himself, a blind giant, a Samson stumbling about in an increasingly complex civilization.
The author ranges back and forth in time, much as Faulkner does in "The Sound and the Fury," with the chief focal points being the years 1902, 1914, 1928, 1933 and 1934. These are the times of crisis for the hero, Anthony Beavis—the death of his mother, his school years, his affair with an older woman and the death of a boyhood friend, and the confused years of adulthood when he and others are seeking the meanings of life.
A revolver in the hand of a drunken Mexican, an accident on a South American trail, a shattered body on the beach, a schoolboy caught in an excessively private moment, a dead dog hurtling from a plane onto two persons making love—these are some of the violent and memorable images created by Huxley. As memorable is the running philosophy, for almost every sentence in this amazing work is an epigram from one of the superior novelists of our time.
THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO AND OTHER STORIES, by Ernest Hemingway. Scribner Library, $1.25.
Scribner's may be the best of all paperback lines. The covers are strong, the paper is good, the printing is clear. And the books, of course, are the best Scribner's has published in hardback form. In this volume are several of Hemingway's greatest short stories. The cover story, its hero being eaten up by gangrene at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, is deservedly famous. Some tastes run to "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," that grim story of an African safari, and others to "The Killers." still one of our finest short stories. The university student who is just discovering Hemingway would do well to acquire this fine new paperback.
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