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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, March 29. 1961
Comes the Spring ...
7
Spring, to no one's surprise, has rolled around again this year, and everything seems to be pretty much the same. The robins are back, the buds are out, the kites are flying, the rains are raining . . . and the springtime "Ban the Bomb" marchers are out in force again.
Last year, it will be remembered, about 20,000 men, women and children marched from a British nuclear experimental site at Aldermaston to London, a distance of more than 50 miles, carrying "Ban the Bomb" banners. In Trafalgar Square the crowd swelled to about 75,000. Prime vocal targets were the atomic armament of British fighting forces, the existence of U.S. bases in Britain and the British membership in NATO, which possess nuclear capabilities. This year the Aldermaston group will also be demanding the withdrawal of the nuclear sub tender Proteus from Holy Loch, Scotland.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
THE BRITISH "PEACE MARCHERS" ARE scheduled to begin their protest march again two days from today on Good Friday. They have been joined by American comrades-in-the-field this year, however.
Early this week the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy started on a 100-mile
march from an Air Force base in New Jersey to New York. On Holy Saturday the march will end on the United Nations plaza with a rally. News of this eastern group of "bomb ban-ners" brings to mind the group with destination Moscow that passed through Lawrence earlier this semester.
WHILE IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE TO JOKE about the way the American group in the East is marching 100 miles in seven days while the British group is covering more than 50 in two—perhaps all Americans are "soft"—the fact still remains that "Ban the Bomb" marches are no laughing matter. The peace marchers' action would make us believe the free world exercises the prerogative of disarming. This is not true.
Of the nations possessing nuclear capabilities for war, only the Russians enjoy the privilege of initiating nuclear disarmament. They have not done so because the reduction of tensions is not part of their scheme for world domination. Setting a unilateral "good example" by giving up our arms is an invitation to slavery under the Communists. One thing the "Ban the Bomb" marchers fail to realize is that everyone would find the dictatorship of the proletariat equally oppressive.
Dan Felger
Again, the JFK's
Last week a wire story with a Memphis, Tenn., dateline told a sad tale of an eight-year-old boy and his pet fawn: Bobby Reed was forced to give up his pet, Susie, when the state began cracking down on persons illegally possessing deer.
BOBBY, WHO HAD RAISED SUSIE SINCE his daddy brought her home, a shivering and starving fawn he had found on a hunting trip eight months ago, loves his pet. Susie drinks soda pop from a bottle and often chews a cigarette or two before enjoying a breakfast of bacon and eggs. She also loves Bobby. Bobby is determined to get her back.
He plans on writing to Caroline Kennedy to see just what she can do about the whole affair.
For the blond scamp of the White House who has endeared herself to the nation—Republican or Democrat, who can resist the charms of a child?—this will be a new role. Formerly, the ultimate
jurisdiction in fish and wildlife affairs came under the province of Mr. Stewart Udall. Now Caroline will be attempting to carry out a juvenile extension of the New Frontier. Or, at least that's the way it looks. And, apparently she will be using the philosophy of personal diplomacy in talking to her daddy that is a trademark of the man before him.
this will be a new role. Formerly, the ultimate
LET'S HOPE THE GRAND SCHEME TO get Susie back to Bobby works. It is the only fitting ending. And by the way, aren't these kids grand?
In a way though, it's kind of a shame that Caroline is so young. She should be of college age. A lot of students in these parts are going to have trouble with their professors in two more months, and if the President of the United States can't help them on a plea from the White House darling, just who can?
Dan Felger
Birch Society Defended Editor
Today a friend sent me a copy of your March 15 article entitled "The Johnny Birchers."
The John Birch Society is dedicated to the goal of "less government, more individual responsibility and a better world." It welcomes well informed, dedicated men and women of good character and belief in God. It has no denominational or racial barriers. We are proud to count Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Negroes among our members. Will you please explain how people with such divergent backgrounds can be amenable to "spoon-feeding" of their convictions from one man?
THE TOPEKA Daily Capital, whom you accuse of "journalistic irresponsibility," had enough respect for truth and hearing both
... Letters ...
(1) Far from being "guilty of what can only be called terrorism" in Wichita, no one here even knows what businessman supposedly withdrew support from Wichita University because of alleged John Birch opposition; Mr. Lester Buck, the Time correspondent here, will not reveal this businessman's name.
sides to check out the Time's article by long distance telephone with my husband, the Wichita area coordinator for the John Birch Society. The following facts emerged:
(2) No one here knows of efforts to intimidate teachers, or to "spy" on them. By the way, how do you "spy" in a public school or college classroom? And what about the freedom, indeed duty, of parents, students and taxpayers-citizens to know what is being taught in our public schools and colleges? I for one should think that every teacher worth his salt should be glad and willing to have the public at large know every word of his classroom lectures.
(3) In what way is the Society "secret?" Its Blue Book, its literature is for sale to anyone who will order it from the Society's Home Office, Belmont 78, Mass. Since you quote from the Blue Book, you will find the names of the Society's national Council members listed at its end. I enclose the Society's brochure, and articles for and against the Society which have appeared in "Wichita This Week" magazine.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
THE SOCIETY'S only weapon in its fight against the international Communist-collectivist conspiracy is to bring as many facts to as many people as we can reach. It is a fact that since 1944 the Communists have engulfed almost one billion people, and that without a shooting war. They must be stopped and routed, for freedom and slavery, good and evil, cannot "co-exist." There is no middle road between truth and falsehood.
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.
Founded 1893, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
For the sake of our young people, will you investigate the Communist-collectivist conspiracy and its inroads upon our country, as exposed by hundreds of well-documented books such as J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit," Professor E. Merrill Root's "Collectivism on the Campus" or Father Richard Ginder's "Right or Wrong?" Will you truly welcome the Society if your study should convince you that it comes to you openly and in defense of truth?
Mrs. Kenneth L. Myers Wichita, Kansas
"SORKY, BROTHER HAMMON, WE JUST DON'T HAVE ROOM
AROHE-WEVER. IF THIS BOY IS AS GOOD AS YOU SAY—"
the took world
By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
THE WEB AND THE ROCK, by Thomas Wolfe. Dell Laurel Books, 95 cents.
YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, by Thomas Wolfe. Dell Laurel Books, 95 cents.
He loses Europe, in time, as he had lost parts of America. It was these to which he could not go home again. It is strange how in this title and this concept Thomas Wolfe said something that has come to have meaning for many of us. His home town rejects him (as Asheville rejected Wolfe) after publication of his first novel. He finds that it is no longer home, that he has lost something that cannot be regained.
Thomas Wolfe's last two novels disprove the assertion that all one can find in Wolfe is repetition. There are both new insights and new details in these books that Harper's put together after Wolfe had left Scribner's and died a tragic death.
EUGENE GANT BECOMES GEORGE WEBBER IN "THE Web and the Rock" and "You Can't Go Home Again." There also are changes in the hero's background, his growing up in Libya Hill, with people other than his parents, his being trained to hate his father, and so on. But like Eugene Gant the boy goes on to college; like Wolfe himself he goes to New York, teaches in Brooklyn, goes abroad, has an affair with a married woman of Jewish background, and eventually breaks with his publisher.
The obsessive love is a key aspect of these novels, published recently in the attractive Dell Laurel series, and worth considering together because of their close connection. Esther Jack is a woman of powerful emotions, and she becomes for George Webber both sweetheart and mother. She exerts a strong control over him, running his affairs, creating his chain of friends, making many of his decisions. It is as necessary that he break with her as that he break later with the publisher, Foxhall Edwards.
THESE NOVELS TAKE WEBBER TO EUROPE, AS WOLFE himself went to Europe in the mid-1930s. He finds Germany a spiritual home, in a sense; it is Germany, at least, that grants him what he considers to be his true recognition as a writer. But it is the Germany of Adolf Hitler, and Webber sees in Germany the same loss of decency and integrity whose loss he had bewailed in America.
THERE ARE EXCITEMENT AND ZEST IN THESE TWO books. Wolfe had planned to write one called "The October Fair"; his long section on the Oktoberfest in Munich is part of that work. It was there that Webber, caught up in the frenzy and excitement, gets drunk and gets into a fight and is brutally beaten. There also is excitement in the eventually futile love affair of Webber and Esther Jack, in their stormy fights, their word battles.
Much of "You Can't Go Home Again" becomes Wolfe's rationale for leaving Maxwell Perkins and Scribner's. Whether one accepts this depends on his attitude toward Wolfe, of course. It was a very Wolfeian action, but there is good reason to believe that these two books do not belong on quite the same level as "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Of Time and the River," that great works of literature cannot be put together by a good editor like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.