Page 2
University Daily Kansan Thursday. May 4. 1961
Guest Editorial
The Trial
Is there "fear" of the Eichmann trial?
There should be none on the part of anyone with enough regret for the horrors of the past to be willing to do his share to make sure that genocide, the wiping out of nation by nation, is a thing that cannot happen again while the world looks on. half unbelieving...
(Some of the Jews abroad) protest that the trial will embarrass the Western world and should therefore have been dropped. They need not fear for their full citizenship or status in the countries in which they live. In fact their compatriots who are not Jews are not troubled by the co-existence of a Jewish Israel and Jews living elsewhere, any more than the Americans are troubled by the co-existence of Ireland and Irish-Americans.
Yet the answer to these fears, both the honest ones and the less honest ones, is not to drop this black chapter of human history into oblivion, but to face its reality and recognize its sources. Only thus we hope that such things may not happen again, not to Jews and not to any other people.
There is one class of people who have a genuine reason to fear to remember what happened in the years between 1939 and 1946. They are those who passed through the Nazi horrors and by some lucky chance survived, though their relatives may all have been swallowed up by the Holocaust. They do not want these memories revived.
The source of genocide was the tragic combination of an age-old, widespread, widely accepted prejudice against Jews, who were "different," on which was superimposed the sudden, totalitarian lawlessness and ruthlessness of a defeated, demoralized and impoverished Germany. Without this prejudice, considered a harmless
foible and indulged in by tens of thousands of educated and responsible persons to this day, the millions could not have been slaughtered because the henchmen would have revolted. But once it had been proved that Jews could be destroyed by the townful, the massacre spread easily to Gypsies, to Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, and all others who stood in Hitler's way of domination.
The law that human life is sacred has since been restored, with the aid of the Allies, and reinforced by a deep feeling of guilt for the past among the leaders of Germany today. To uphold the principle of the law we put on trial a boy suspected of picking a pocket. To uphold the law we must try Eichmann, even if the crime with which he is charged is so great as almost to escape our concept of law. He must be tried, not for revenge, not for propaganda, not to show we can seek out an enemy wherever he hides, but because the principle of law requires that criminals should be brought to trial however arduous the process. He remained to be tried by an Israel court because no effort was made by the nations in whose territory the crimes were committed to find him and bring him to justice.
We cannot restore the dead to life, and we cannot prevent the tale of their death from being harrowing, or the paralyzed inaction of the world in 1940 from shaming us today. All we may hope is that the trial will incidentally set up as a monument to the dead the warning that when law disappears prejudice and race hatred can turn into massacre that in the end serves to destroy the haters with the hated.
— The Jerusalem Post Weekly April 14, 1961
Say It Isn't So
In the UDK, Apr. 25, you interviewed 11 students with respect to the "Peace Corps" . . . 9 said they would decline the call and 2 sand, "yes, they would go!"
If this is a representative cross-section of opinion on such a vital subject... this old world is going to be in a hell of predicament if we don't wake up soon and concern ourselves with thoughts other than — "how much beer can you drink in an evening?" or "who have you been dating these days ...?"
...Letters ...
O. K. . . maybe I'm a nut, but the answers to your questions were down-right nauseating. . . You asked, "If you had the chance, would you join the Peace Corps?" One guy said, "When I go abroad I want to go as a tourist — not a laborer." Another said, "No, I don't want to go to some steaming jungle." And still another one said, "I personally am interested in helping myself first of all."
At this point I stopped; offered a short prayer; and said to myself,
"Oh no, sait it isn't so" . . . "can't be" . . . "help me, I'm not one of them."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Jim McMullan Long Beach, N. Y. senior
And to you three and the others who tread that narrow road, I send my sympathies, and at the same time, think of the thousand unselfish individuals who realize that the fate of this world rests in the hands of those who care enough about "Peace" to offer their minds, their hearts, and if need be, their lives!... And at the same time remember that the man who lives his life for himself alone, lives not in light but dwells in darkness; feels no love and dies forgotten.
Opinion on Seating Plan
Editor:
An important question now confronts the All Student Council. Should we authorize the Student Athletic Seating Board to initiate sales this spring for a Reserved Seating Plan?
The proposed Reserved Seating Plan will cost each student $7.50 per semester (or $15.00 for the year) plus the $11.00 per year that now goes to the Athletic Dept. from our Student Activity Fee. Preference for the individually reserved seats will be held by class: Seniors, law students, graduate students, and medical students in the first group; juniors in the second group, etc. Also free ID exchange will be available.
I personally believe the extra cost per student may be too high to justify the Reserved Seating Plan. Even with free ID exchange, I wonder how convenient it would be to arrange a game date with someone not in your class.
Before we reach a final decision about this Reserved Seating Plan, it might prove helpful if student opinion could be expressed to the members of the Student Athletic Seating Board (Verne Gauby, Dick Harper, Mike Thomas, and Nancy DeFever) or to any member of the ASC.
Tom Kurt
Pratt first year graduate student ASC representative
"Rain, Rain . . . Go Away"
... Books in Review
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
GONE WITH THE WIND, by Margaret Mitchell. Permabooks (Pocket Book). 95 cents.
I read "Gone with the Wind" again, after 23 years. Why, I don't know, except that there was the paperback volume, with Clark Gable carrying Vivien Leigh and Atlanta burning in the background. And somehow, reading "Gone with the Wind" again seemed the thing to do.
Stylistically (or stylewise, as one of our Kansan editorial editors likes to say), this book is a loser. Clichewise it's a winner. Full of them. Plotwise it's loaded, and lengthwise it's long. Characterizationwise it comes off best.
Miss (or was it Mrs.?) Mitchell wasn't the least inspired as a writer, but she presented full-blown characters. Every person in this book is a fully described individual.
But a little suspense would have helped. Right on Page 1 we learn all about Scarlett O'Hara that we need to know in order to predict what will happen. "The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor."
We learn about Rhett Butler immediately, and he never changes. The first time Rhett and Scarlett meet, the whole pattern of their lives is foreordained. Ashley Wilkes never develops as a character, nor does Melanie.
Here Margaret Mitchell could have stood a little reading in Henry James and less in Sir Walter Scott, or whoever it was that inspired her. "Gone with the Wind" could be a suspense story, the gradual unfolding of the character of Scarlett fascinating us as does the unfolding of the character of Isabel in "The Portrait of a Lady."
But the plot's the thing. What's going to happen next—that's what we kept us reading "Gone with the Wind" back in the late thirties, when preoccupation over who would star in the Selznick film seemed far more important than what the Japanese were doing in China or the Fascists in Spain.
We didn't know that Scarlett would behave scandalously while still in mourning, but we could have predicted it. We didn't know that Melanie Wilkes would be the gracious lady throughout, but we could expect it. Here's where "Gone with the Wind" loses; it's somehow all too pat.
But it's still a tremendous novel, one that keeps you reading, one that will likely last for a good many years. It's best as a novel of Reconstruction, though we think of it as a novel of the Civil War. It's viciously biased, it's racist, it's over-loving in its interpretation of the antebellum South.
UNIVERSITY
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Faxline 325 business office
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa ... Business Manager
---