Daily Hansan
58th Year, No. 100
Friday, March 10, 1961
LAWRENCE. KANSAS
Anti-Red Society Organizing Here
By Ron Gallagher
An anti-communist organization using the John Birch Society as a rough model is being organized at KU.
William F. Gibbs, Wichita freshman, said today, "We are just organizing now. I have talked to several graduate students who are willing to go along if we get this thing started."
This is the second time Gibbs has announced his intention of starting such an organization. Last November he and Rae Ann Davis and Ronald J. Reed, also Wichita freshmen, said they thought there was a need for a group like this at KU.
Robert Welch, of the candy-making James O. Welch Co., founded the society in 1958. Welch had become a student of communist literature after the war. He soon decided that social security and
of the communist plan to infiltrate the United States.
The Society was named in honor of Capt. John Birch, a young Baptist missionary in China who won the Legion of Merit. Birch was murdered by Communist guerrillas a few days after the Japanese surrender of World War II.
This week Time magazine came out with an article on the Birch Society focusing on some of its activities in Wichita.
TIME SAID the society is a secret organization whose members take orders from a leader who estimates that the U.S. is 40 to 60 per cent communist controlled. According to Time, Birch Society leader Welch has tacked the communist label to government leaders ranging from ex-President Eisenhower to CIA director Allen Dulles.
WHEN QUESTIONED on his reaction to the article, Gibbs said, "I had to laugh out loud when I read it. Time is just twisting everything, coloring it to look bad."
Gibbs attended meetings of the society last summer in Wichita.
He said in November, "One of the most effective ways to combat communism is to do it on the local level by having groups study the communist theories and ideologies. In this way the individuals will gain a better understanding of what the United States is up against in its fight against communism."
Gibbs said this morning, "We want to get this organization on campus but we do not want to affiliate with the John Birch Society. We are following along the same lines, except it is not going to be as strict as some people believe the John Birch Society is."
Time said local groups of the Birch Society do not usually use the John Birch name. The news magazine said "front organizations" are often used to carry on the society's business.
Gibbs said he is anxious to see the films "Operation Abolition" and "Communism on the Map" come to KU.
Time quotes Welch as having called Dulles, "The most protected and untouchable supporter of Communism, next to Eisenhower himself, in Washington."
The activities of the Birch Society in Wichita were described by Time. According to their report, a Wichita businessman who planned to make a contribution to a University of Wichita fund was dissuaded by society members who claimed certain professors there were communist-oriented.
The businessman complained that his business would be wrecked by society members claiming that he is a communist because he supported the university.
(See page 8 for Washington story.)
Young GOP to Reconsider Position
The KU Young Republicans sat today they will reconsider devoting their April 11 meeting to the John Birch Society.
The group announced Tuesday that a speaker from the John Birch Society would explain the organization at the meeting April 11.
The group also planned to show "Communism on the Map," a film distributed by the Birch Society.
Charles McIlwaine, Wichita senior and chairman of the Young Republican, said in a prepared statement:
"The recent and hitherto unknown secretive and reactionary characteristics of the Birch organization were as startling to us as to the entire country. (Mclwaine was referring to Time's story of the group, March 10.)
"Since the benefit to the student body to be derived by the continuation of the April meeting is uncertain as of the present time, this matter will be taken under advisement by the executive committee this weekend, and their decision will be announced next week."
McIlwaine said, "The meeting scheduling discussion of the Birch Society was planned because of requests by students who desired to learn about the professed purposes of the group. They would appear to have been uninformed of the seeming true nature of the society."
Fair and warmer this afternoon,
with strong southerly winds.
Partly cloudy tonight and Saturday.
A little warmer east tonight.
Colder Saturday. Low tonight 30 to
35. High Saturday in the 50s.
Weather
CAMPUS POLITICOS—The University Party's student body presidential and vice presidential candidates are Alan Reed, Leavenworth, and Phyllis Wertzberger, Lawrence, both juniors.
Reed to Head UP Election Campaign
The University Party candidate for student body president said last night that Vox Populi intends to campaign "by subterfuge and lies."
Alan Reed, Leavenworth junior, whose candidacy for president was unanimously approved last night, made the charge in a meeting of the UP general assembly. The assembly selected Phyllis Wertzberger, Lawrence junior, as Reed's running mate for vice president.
REED'S ATTACK was directed at Max Eberhart, Great Bend junior and Vox presidential nominee, who said last week that UP was forced to replace two ASC representatives because of bad grades.
Reed declared:
"Mr. Eberhart should get his facts straight before speaking. Those two people were replaced because one moved to another district, and the other left school for personal reasons. Vox's attempt to say otherwise seems to be the only way it can find issue to take against the University Party."
THE UP GENERAL assembly ratified last night its election slate of ASC candidates. The UP candidates for the ASC school districts are:
John McFarlane, Newton junior, School of Business; John Randall, Aberdeen, S. Dak., junior, School of Education; Bill Rothenberger, Hays freshman, School of Engineering; Sharon Tebbenkamp, Salisbury, Mo., junior, School of Fine Arts; Otis Mitchell, Parsons graduate student, Graduate School.
Tom Turner, Montgomery, Ala., junior, School of Journalism; Gene Gaines, Joplin, Mo., sophomore, men's representative from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Constance Hunter, Hutchinson sophomore, women's representative from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
(Continued on page 8)
Wichita U. Tiff Continuing; Austin Scored
TOPEKA — (UPI) State takeover of the University of Wichita was hailed as "good business" in a hearing before the House State Affairs Committee yesterday on the Senate-passed measure.
MEMBERS of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committee also sat in on the session—which produced a heated blast at state Regents Chairman Whitley Austin by Wichita University President Harry F. Corbin, and a dispute over finances between Corbin and the chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Sen. August Lauierbach, R-Colby.
Supporters of the bill said the state should assume control of the school to assure students who must work to pay for their education that they will get a good education.
Speaking in support of turning over the municipal school to the state were a member of the Wichita regents and two students of the University, in addition to Dr. Corbin.
The supporters attacked a resolution introduced in the house by 74 members which would refer the bill to a two-year study. Ten of the 19 members of the committee were listed as authors.
Wichita Regent Robert Morton said that nearly 25 per cent of the state's school children now live in Sedgwick County and that many of them, and Kansas pupils elsewhere, will be able to attend college only in a city which can provide them jobs.
Morton said the people of Wichita are paying more than $2 million to support their university, in addition to paying for support of the state institutions.
CORBIN LASHED out at Austin during the session, calling an editorial by Austin in the Salina Journal "Horrendous."
He said Austin had claimed the state would have to pay $4.5 million at the outset to take over the University.
"This just isn't so," Corbin said. "He should be a better bookkeeper than that."
Corbin also said he was "appalled" at charges that Wichita uses tax money to provide athletic scholarships. "I should like to lay that ghost to rest once and for all," he declared. "We do not use tax funds for athletic scholarships."
Menton on Costa Rica
Social Reform Could Stop Latin Revolts
Widespread social reform is necessary in order for Latin America to avoid a Castro-type revolution, a Costa Rican expresident has told Seymour Menton, associate professor of Romance languages.
Ex-President Jose Figueres of Costa Rica made this point while explaining Costa Rican and Latin American politics to Prof. Menton and 11 KU students during their nine month stay in Costa Rica.
The KU group was in Senor Figueres' home in San Jose. They went to Costa Rica on the Junior Year Abroad Program.
Social reform, according to Figueres, includes land reform, a raise in wages, more social security and housing.
Prof. Menton reflected upon his Latin American stay.
"Costa Rica has the least number of reform problems in Latin America because of the country's traditional democracy and political stability," he said.
"The Society of the Friends of the Cuban Revolution, a proCastro organization, had no great support in Costa Rica. It was made up mostly of poor workers and not of students, as has been said. The leader was a woman who was sometimes a poet, sometimes an actress."
The pro-Castro society was to demonstrate against the United States at the Organization of American States meeting held in San Jose Aug. 16.
"But," Prof. Menton said, "there were few protests. In the OAS
meeting, the Cuban delegation felt they were getting a raw deal and left. They ran into the streets shouting 'Down with Yankee Imperialism,' but there were no rioters in the streets to support them, only a few newspapermen watching."
"The most important Costa Rican novelists are Communists," he said.
Prof. Menton's teaching and study and research work in Costa Rica brought him into contact with Latin American authors, many of whom were Communists.
"In fact," he asserted, "many Latin American intellectuals are Communists. As intellectuals, they realize the need for reform. They are dissatisfied with what they call the 'democratic' form of government. They see communism as
a way of relieving problems and improving conditions.
"This does not mean, however, that the novelists are not conscious of their duties as artists," he said. "They realize that any injection of propaganda in their material would ruin their art."
Prof. Menton said that it is perhaps a coincidence, but the Latin American short story writer is not a Communist.
"The short story has come into its own as Latin America's best representative of literary form," said Prof. Menton.
Prof. Menton is doing research work on the Latin American short story and will publish a book in Costa Rica next year on his study. He is slated to address the Faculty Club this Sunday on the topic "The United States of Brazil."