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University Daily Kansan
Friday. April 14. 1961
The Third Camp
The world is now seeing the opening scenes in what promises to be the most terrifying, drawn-out tale of horror and bestiality since the Nuernberg trials.
This is more than Adolf Eichmann's trial. It is the deliberate reopening of an old wound that gave promise of healing after a time. It is the willful review of one of the most sordid chapters written in history. It has divided the watchers and the listeners of the world into opposing camps.
ON ONE SIDE IS THE ACCUSED HIMSELF, a sheeplike little man who admits to the slaughter of six million Jews—but explains that his honor as an officer of the Third Reich, with the utter subjugation to higher authority that position implies, gave him no choice in the matter.
He is not entirely alone in the witness box. On trial with him is the entire system that placed authority above morality as a guiding force, and with it, by an implication that they are uncomfortably aware of, the people who survived in Germany after the holocaust of World War II.
IN A SENSE, THE GERMAN PEOPLE CONSIDER themselves on trial too. They are acutely conscious that their fathers—and many of their contemporaries—must answer for Eichmann in that they looked the other way when the Third Reich issued the orders that activated this man. The trial, viewed in this way, resolves itself into an act of retribution by a race against the nation which tried to exterminate it. This is not the nation as we think of it today, but the living, world-historical nation of Hegel, the nation Hitler considered Germany to be.
In the opposing camp is Israel, now the legal
symbol of the persecuted race that marched into Eichmann's ovens. Behind the judges on the bench in Jerusalem stand the phantoms of six million dead that the Israelis say can never be forgotten. These too must be numbered in this camp, for they are the accusers.
BUT THERE IS YET A THIRD CAMP OF anxious watchers and listeners. These are the millions who are not directly or personally involved in moral issues underlying the Eichmann trial, but who retain an intense interest in the case because it involves such an enormous question of Right and Wrong in human relationships.
All but a handful of fanalict authoritarians dismiss Eichmann's dismal excuse for his deeds; but the people in the third camp, while they too discard this excuse, are worried about the benefit of trying Eichmann.
THERE ARE MANY SURFACE QUESTIONS: Is Eichmann getting a fair trial? Considering he was kidnapped, do his kidnapers have any right to try him? Should not the case be referred to the World Court?
These questions are merely symptoms of a deeper feeling. Beneath them lie more basic queries: If we parade before all the peoples of the world the bloody horror of past deeds, if we torture, imprison and kill the man who at the present happens to symbolize them—will we dispel the mass guilt complex of a nation, will we satisfy the vengeful urgings of an entire race? Will Hammurabi's ancient law of an eye for an eye operate to free us from a haunted past, or will it only serve to renew again a memory of terror that disrupts us?
Bill Blundell
NSA Slams Stanley Editor:
It is time, Mr. Stanley, to change your name-calling tactics to a more stable offensive drive. If you want to wage an open campaign against the National Student Association, fine; but make sure your "facts" are correct. I say this in reference to your article, "Right to Left" (UDK, April 10, 1961), in which you presented your "facts" as to why there is a "leftist in the NSA woodpile."
HERE, MR. STANLEY, is the truth that escaped your review of NSA policy. Here is proof that you were not quite objective in your analysis.
1. Mr. Stanley said, "... the NSA passed a resolution praising the Japanese students who rioted against President Eisenhower." FACT (From the NSA CODIFI-
"During Mey and June of 1960. student demonstrations occurred in Japan protesting the Japanese-American Security Treaty and the methods employed by the Kishi cabinet to obtain its ratification.
DECLARATION:
1. In accordance with its recognition of the right or students to move beyond academic areas which consider unjust or undemocratic, the USNSA upholds the expression "transfer."
2. USNSA deplores the fortunate in-
fidelity of our crew and the bruis-
tility and student violence.
MANDATE:
The 13th National Student Congress mandates the International Affairs Vice President to work for the attainment of greater understanding between UNSNA and the Japanese content community." (P. 106, CODIFICATION)
2. Mr. Stanley said, "The NSA plenary session passed a resolution praising the Castro government's Cuban Student Federation."
FACT (From the NSA CODIFI-
"Since January 1959 Cuba has been
affected by the war and was inflicted
on parts of Cuba. life
USNA has traditionally supported the Latin American students' struggle for university reform which essentially calls for the democratization of education, student participation in the administration, right of students to be enrolled elsewhere, the professors, and other measures directed at developing the social orientation of the university and making it an instrument of social change.
PRINCIPLE:
USNSA recognizes the right indeed the obligation, of students to work for educational reforms which they feel will advance the university community and improve their society while
funding fundamental principles of
a multicultural society.
...Letters ..
MANDATE:
uSNSA affirms its belief that there is a need for expanded communication with Cuban students in order that it be possible to come to a fuller under-study experience, provide university reform and to consider means of cooperation with Cuban students."
These two examples, Mr. Stanley, point out the lack of objectivity in your analysis. If you wish to continue your campaign against the USNSA, I would advise you to get a copy of the NSA CODIFICATION OF POLICY.
What else, then, has the USNSA taken a stand on? What are some of its other "leftist" resolutions? The NSA is opposed to: (1) restriction or abuse of civil liberties; (2) continued racial, as well as social, discrimination; (3) totalitarian and dictatorial forms of government; (4) discrimination in educational facilities, employment, housing, and voting; and (5) the NSA encourages friendly relations with student organizations in all countries, democratic or non-democratic. (How else, Mr. Stanley, are we to "win friends and influence people" if we do not maintain contact with them?)
BUT NOW, LET us continue where Mr. Stanley left off. The National Student Association's National Congress passed resolutions ranging from local campus affairs to problems of national concern. Unfortunately, Mr. Stanley has overlooked this fact. He has presented only a few of the NSA resolutions — apparently those which conflict with his personal views. As for his statement that the NSA supports unilateral disarmament, I have found no such resolution in the CODIFICATION OF POLICY.
If protecting our liberties, as set forth in the Bill of Rights, means a person is a leftist, then I, too, will confess to being "one-of-them-things." No, Mr. Stanley, our concern should not rest with those searching for protection of our basic rights; our concern should be geared to helping those who have fallen into the "pit of imperialists"—those who chose territorial expansion and the turning back of time as the key to our preservation. And we should be concerned with those who search for truth from fascist organizations operating under the guise of "Americanism."
IT MIGHT be wise to note that Mr. Stanley never explained why the NSA resolutions he cited were "leftist," nor did he define his usage of the word. Perhaps Mr. Stanley feels that anything which is not conservative must necessarily be leftist.
Arthur Miller
NSA Committee Member
Pittsburg sophomore
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
John Peterson ... Managing Editor
Bill Blundell, Carrie Edwards, Lynn Cheatum and Ralph Wilson, Assistant Managing Editors; Tom Turner, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Sue Thieman, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
Waiting in the Wings
... Books in Review ...
By Harold Orel Department English Language and Literature
TOLSTOY OR DOSTOEVSKY, by George Steiner. (New York:
Vintage Books, 1959, 354 pp., $1.25.)
The Russian novel, which flourished in an incredible Golden Age between 1861 (the year in which the serfs were emancipated) and 1905 (the year of the first revolution), is surely one of the great achievements of Western culture. Gogol, Goncharov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky are names to conjure with. Novels like Dead Souls, Oblomov, Fathers and Sons, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, and Resurrection expose whatever is shallow or sentimental in the Victorian novel, French naturalism, and American romanticism.
Yet, dismayingly enough, the quality of critical writings in English about these Russian novels has not been high, partly because of the language barrier (Matthew Arnold, for example, knew Tolstoy through French translations); partly because many critics felt like Henry James, who threw up his hands in horror at these "loose and baggy monsters." Indeed, James's influence has prevented many of his admirers from looking more closely at the specific ways in which Tolstoy and Dostoevsky achieved their spectacular effects. If a Russian novel has no more form than a pudding, as James wrote on several different occasions, and as he was fond of saying in conversation, a "serious reader of fiction would satisfy himself with the calculated effects of Flaubert, a writer who, if he had nothing else, possessed a sense of form.
George Steiner has written an extended analysis of technique and subject-matter in the novels of two opposing geniuses: Tolstoy, "the foremost heir to the traditions of the epic," "the mind intoxicated with reason and fact," "the poet of the land, of the rural setting and the pastoral mood," "thirsting for the truth, destroying himself and those about him in excessive pursuit of it," "who saw the destinies of men historically and in the stream of time"; and Dostoevsky, "one of the major dramatic tempers after Shakespeare," "the contemner of rationalism, the great lover of paradox," "the arch-citizen, the master-builder of the modern metropolis in the province of language," "rather against the truth than against Christ, suspicious of total understanding and on the side of mystery," who saw men "contemporaneously and in the vibrant stasis of the dramatic moment." These are wild and whirling words indeed, and the opposition of spirits is not as extreme as the "or" of Mr. Steiner's title implies.
But it really doesn't matter. The book, after all, is an essay in the old tradition of criticism, and seeks to communicate to the reader a private enthusiasm for works that Mr. Steiner feels have been only partially understood. He admires; he loves; and he concerns himself with moral purpose. The mystery of God forces the supreme poets to acquiesce or to rebel, and the critic can only guess as to the reasons for their decisions. He can never know unless he himself is a master-spirit, and Mr. Steiner would readily admit that very few critics are master-spirits.
The book is gracefully written, and its insights, although not new, are based on solid scholarship and a wide reading in several literatures. The refusal to use Freudian short cuts to arrive at a "definitive" statement about Dostoevsky's secret thoughts is particularly attractive. It does not serve as an introduction, for some awareness of the major critical problems involved in Russian literature and in the novel as a literary genre is an essential prerequisite to full appreciation. It is very much worth recommending.