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Thursday, October 4, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commen Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Inoperative Language
At this point in time, the Watergate investigations have created as many bugs as they've uncovered.
Once a harmless hotel, Watergate has become embedded in the American vocabulary as a symbol of corruption or government scandal.
And the publicity televised in- investigations have injected other meaningful phrases and words into every-day speech.
in this time-frame, long standing definitions have become inoperative and words have taken on new, more intelligently better, meanings and uses.
senators and spies alike have been guilty of violating rules of case, tense, mood and agreement. Participies have dangled from almost every opened mouth. Houses have been unattached or redundant and sentence constructions have emerged that could rival even
those of Gen. Eisenhower at his best.
The Watergate investigations are an attempt to find out precisely what happened at the Democratic Party. It was responsible for the activities.
Writer Max Beerbohm once predicted that when words lost their precise meanings, imprecise or morally would follow close behind.
But how can a nation determine if its laws have been violated when the laws of its language are broken every day in the course of the investigation? When words of officialese are used to construct ambiguous sentences it is far too easy to drift from correct statements of thought into evasions.
Whatever else results from the investigations, Watergate has had a devastating effect on society's language.
—Linda Doherty
Guest Editorial
A Tragedy Revisited
I had thought that a year had passed in Kansas without any great tornado damage. The summer was being washed away by early fall rains that would make way for crisp, fall days. But I was wrong.
Tornadoes formed unexpectedly as masses of cold air followed hot, humid air across flat Kansas land. The storms aligned themselves in the northwest from the northeast to the southwest to the north. One tornado left a two-block path of rubble along a main thoroughfare in Clay Center.
I recalled the tornado I watched hit the southwest corner of my town, Topeka, in 1966. Water hung in the air early on a June evening and distorted the view of the landmark, Burnett's Mound, on Topeka's southwest corner. Indian legends, perhaps, Topeka and Burnett, regarded the divided hill as a deterrent to tornadoes. The storms had flirted with the outskirts, but no tornado had ever approached from Burnett's Mound and headed into the heart of the city.
The approaching storm was not easily identified. It was a black, rectangular mass without much resemblance to the expected funnel cloud. I sighted it due west of my house, the roof was bare. I sure was sure it was a tornado until a foot square piece of roofing panel dropped onto my front yard.
I emerged later from shelter in the basement and found a black wall of clouds diminishing to the northeast. The sky had become the intense blue you see from a 12,000-acre Colorado. The air felt cool and dry.
The tornado had missed my house by more than a half mile. Defying the legend of Chief Burnett, the storm descended the slope of the mound and skipped across the city. The mile-wide path of the drought to mind the strange rectangular shape I had seen earlier
I had neither heard a freight train raor nor found any pieces of straw embedded in treasured enough. It certainly was no fraud. —Pete Stauer
Rhetoric Won't Aid Development
By STEPHEN ROSENFELD
The War Machine Post
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—At the Egyptian town of Aswan on the upper Nile a few years ago, I found myself snoozing in a lawn chair, after an excellent lunch, in the garden of the New Cataract Hotel. The only other guests in the garden were two young Russian couples, evidently in Aswan to finish up the High in the day. I project I had inspected earlier in the day.
A waiter brought us, separately,
something cool. One of the Russian women
hunted for dance music on a transistor
radio. Lawn sprinklers played.
It was a tranquil scene except for one element: The Nile is quite narrow at the New Cataract, perhaps less than a few hundred yards wide. On the opposite bank, at eye level, a road crew of Egyptian men was pouring asphalt in the 8 p.m. sun.
They were breaking their backs. The boss's cris course occasionally pierced across the water. We Russian and American alike watched the Evvarians and lazily watched the Evvarians work.
THE UNITED NATIONS has a useful but modest role in development; the important forums in this enterprise are the World Bank and the United Nations whose annual meetings—attended by finance ministers—were held this week in Nairobi. Finance ministers tend to talk more sense about development than foreign policy, and even fewer, the political restures still are made.
Griff and the Unicorn
This scene floated back to mind this week as the American and Soviet foreign ministers successively took the podium at the United Nations to make what have become ritualistic Great-Power gestures to the poor countries' development needs.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger offered a stunningly irrelevant proposal for
letters policy
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★ ★ ★
by Sokoloff
Contributions to The Other Page, a proposed new bivekley Kanasan offering, are strongly desired. The Other Page is intended as a compendium of information on better ways to do things and to get things done—a page of alternatives, if you will. Information submitted in writing should generally allow the presenter with written submissions exceeding 500 words in length will be considered for The Other Page. Art work is welcomed.
"a search—drawing on the world's best minds—for new and imaginative solutions to the problems of development." It is absurd to imagine there are "new and imaginative" solutions to the difficult, familiar and well-studied problems of global warming. The real breakouts be minds' that need to be enlisted for this purpose but the world's political will.
Speaking as though he were lazin in that garden by the门, Kissinger asked that the proposed development search "be free of preemptory demands, antagonistic propositions, ideological confrontation or propagandistic rhetoric." Isn't it just difficult to keep up with the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyky, did no better, advancing a headline-catching proposal for Moscow and Washington-and Peking, London and Paris—to their military budgets 10 per cent and devote part of the savings to a state slice from a propaganda landfoal the Russians have been cutting for years.
ESPECIALLY CYNICAL, in view of Moscow's persistent refrain to work inside the city.
that it does not control, was Gromyko's suggestion that a committee of donors and recipients be created to administer the new aid fund. Such a committee already exists; it's called the World Bank. If the Russians were serious, they'd join it.
At the recent conference of "nomalized" countries in Algiers, the principal new tendency, many observers thought, was that the United States is sharing with the Soviet Union as "haves" of the world's North, supposedly sharing more in common with each other than either does with the Soviet Union.
THE RUSSIANS' DEFENDERS at the conference, Cuba and India, protested this linkage, but it is bound to continue to be made. Soviet economic progress and Soviet-American detente almost ensure it, as does the common or parallel fatigue of the Great Powers at picking up heavy new development loads.
In fact, it was two other Americans this week who make the most sense on development issues. In Nairobi, World Bank President Robert McNamara delivered his usual impassioned and tightly reasoned appeal for a more efficient use of world
resources to help the world's poor. He has committed the Bank's growth means to the same people-oriented development strategy embodied in the Humphrey-Aiken F foreign Aid Bill which is about to reach the Senate floor.
Some found his approach tough and unsympathetic to the poor. But Shultz's statements go directly and perceptively to the problem. He said sometimes aid is not effectively applied and sometimes other American interests are not properly tended. No doubt such hardenedness can be carried too far but a more nuanced approach to shore up political support for aid at home.
Also in Nairobi, U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz made some extremely useful pronouncements on the need for aid recipients to demonstrate the "will and competence" to use aid effectively, and on their need to treat private capital hospitality if they expect to receive official government aid as well.
To hear the suggestive grumbles that occasionally come out of Moscow, one would not be surprised to learn that the Russians share this particular problem too.
"I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE A POEM LOVELY AS ALL THEM MARYMAKING BOARD!"
Readers Respond
To the Editor:
Portraval of Christ Challenged
I would like to comment on the recent review of the movie, "Jesus Christ, Superstar," written by Diane Yeamans. Referring to the portrayal of Jesus in the movie, Ms. Yeamans states that "the interpretation is valid." However, as believers in Jesus, we of the Lawrence Christian Liberation Front not only disagree that the portrayal of Jesus was valid, but we also reject it as a shabby, inaccurate representation of history; we are more interested in message that Jesus taught concerning himself and man's relation to God.
Did Jesus really doubt himself and God's plan for him as the title of the review says? Jesus at no time lost sight of his mission. He taught from the beginning that he had been sent by God to redeem man and saw us from destruction and that he was going to do so.
Jesus believed this to the time that the Romans crucified him; and, in fact, he
voluntarily went to the cross when he could have escaped. Therefore, to say that Jesus had become "disillusioned with the path God set for him," is historically inaccurate as well and grossly contrary to his own words and deeds, which were consistent throughout his ministry.
My Yeamans also points out that Jesus “has become tired,” Jesus did become tired; after all, he was a man. But to imply that Jesus has his mission to distort the historical facts.
Ms. Yeamans states that "he has seen more truth than he can stand." How can this interpretation be honestly believed when, rather than being an OBSERVER of truth, Jesus actually said that he himself was the John (14:6)? This statement is a logical consequence of Jesus' central teaching THAT HE IS GOD (John 10:38-39).
And Jesus did more than SAY he was God; he rose from the dead to prove it . . . a fact that he forrested many times. Could a man die and did these things be disbelieved?
Despite Mistakes. Army Doesn't Need Draft
By GEORGE F. WILL
Special to the Washington Post
WASHINGTON—Some people in our "Action Army"—the one that "wants to join you"—have swung into discredit the idea of an all-volunteer force. Spokesmen are saying the Army is having trouble attracting sufficient volunteers even when they have high standards. Actually, the Army, in spite of itself, is getting a little better.
Actually, the Army, in spite of itself, gets almost as many new male recruits
It does not need as many new male recruits as it saves it needs.
And it has not lowered its standards.
Many months ago the Army said it needed 181,000 new male recruits this year. Last year it got 167,000, including 140,000 "true" recruits who were not held up. It is reasonable to expect that 140,000 a yearly attainable minimum. Moreover, the Army can reduce the number of 181,000 recruits it needs while also enlarging the number of eligible recruits. Thus the "problem" 41,000 evaporates.
And it has not lowered its standards
The Senate Armed Services Committee has ordered a 158,000 cut of total Defense Department manpower. This probably will be compromised to a 70,000 cut, and probably will mean a minimum of 15,000 fewer Army recruits needed.
WOMEN ARE 2 PER CENT of the Army and are supposed to be 4 per cent by 1978. The Army plans to recruit 12,000 women this year. Of course not all Army jobs can be filled by women, but 89 per cent of the kinds of Army job can. (Only 30 per cent of all
Army jobs are combat jobs. It would be daup soup increase women recruits 30 per month.
Between 80,000 and 100,000 military jobs could be filled by civilians. At least 10,000 of them could be in the army.
In August the Army acted to get all authorized recruiters on station, but it will take until February for all of them to be found, trained, moved, settled and acquainted with the high school counselors essential to a good recruiting program.
Every month since January the Army has failed to use its authorized number of recruiters. It is authorized to have 4,725 "production" recruiters—those who actually talk to potential recruits. It was short 54 in February and 870 by July. In July, a good recruitment month, recruiters averaged 3.4 enlistments. Extrapolating from that, it became possible for an army authorized, but not on station, cost the Army. 2,968 enlistments in July alone.
The Army is turning away men with prior service who want back in. The Air Force will meet 9 per cent of its new manpower needs this year from such men. The Army says it will take around 5 per cent of its manpower needs this year to meet those percentages, the Army could reduce its needs for new male recruits by a minimum of 2,000.
LACKADISICAL RECRUITING probably cost the Army 5,000 recruits in the six-month February-July period. If it recruits vigorously for the remainder of the
1974 fiscal year, it should get a minimum of 8,000 unanticipated recruits.
Ms. Yeamans states that "he (Jesus) can see no hope of changing (human nature)." This is more than erroneous; it is absurd. Jesus did recognize that human nature is evil as the reviewer points out. But
But what is "too large"? The Army doesn't know how many "category fours" it can absorb because it has not graded the performance demands of its various jobs. So it will be that category fours year will be "category fours," up slightly from 16.3 per cent last year but down from the 20-25 per cent during the last five years of conscription. The Army is not taking as many "category fours" as it could get, and that's because that it is taking as many as it could use.
The Army has five aptitude categories. Categories one and two are "college material," three is average, five is well below average and unacceptable. Category four—"below average" but trainable—is the Army does not want to be too large.
If you are counting, we have just eliminated the so-called 'problem' of 41,000 users.
Army standards regarding aptitude and motivation are arbitrary and unnecessarily
IN ADDITION, the Army overemphasizes the importance of a high school diploma. The fact is that 19 of 20 high school students are enrolled in two or 20 nongraduates. Because of this small differential the Army, in February, imposed an arbitrary limit of 30 per cent on non-graduate enlistments. The Army wisely decided to abandon the abandonment was accomplished by a lot of
Rather, it was adopting a more sensible way of enforcing standards. As a result, it is now a function of trainers to screen out unsuitable recruits for honorable discharges. In addition, to help keep standards high, recruiters are warned they will not get credit against their quotas for recruiting staff. To mitigate this,训师 and recruiters are required to be discriminatory without being dogmatic about diplomas.
misleading Army talk (by Army Secretary Howard Caloway, among others) about how the Army was lowering its standards. "The Army you know no such thing."
So the facts reveal that enlistment number does not be a problem. But one question is whether a job
THE CONSTITUTION will not permit the racial "mix" of recruits to be treated as a "problem." The percentage of black recruits in August (29.7), as in other months, was higher than the percentage of blacks in the population. But so what? Anyway, the Fetterman case forbids doing something about the recruits. And civil rights organizations should be watchful the Army try an end run around the Constitution by, say, imposing regional quotas on the South or overspending for recruiting in white areas.
There have been too many Army words and deeds this year designed to complicate, sabotage or misrepresent the transition to an all-volunteer force. Current Army talk about recruits being 'too few' or "inferior" or "to black" is devious and corrupt
recognizing this, Jesus also proclaimed a way of change. He said that, by coming to believing in him, and following him, we could find peace with God and with ourselves and that we would be totally changed as a result. Jesus taught that, when we come to him, he changes us from evil to good in God's sight and that this change lasts into eternity.
nonsense designed either to get conscription reinstated or to justify a massive budget shift among the services in favor of the Army to help the Army cope with its impracticalness. But not even the Army can be dumb enough to think Congress will rescurse conscription, and Congress certainly is not dumb enough to reward the Army for its failures, losses, cynicism—no performance of its duty—make the voluntary Army a success.
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Finally, Ms. Yeanmans states that the film's interpretation "is one many people have been looking for in recent years." Indeed, "Superstar's" portrayal of Jesus allows one who wants to avoid the claims of the real, historical Jesus to legitimately dismiss the gospel. After all, who would want to follow a disillusioned man, treet of life and his misfortune, those whose faith was for peace with God, Jesus says, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly," "and him who come to me I will not cast out."
we urge the viewers of "Jesus Christ, Superstar" to seek an objective view of the person of Jesus, the Christ, Intellectualism and fair consideration of all sides of an issue.
J. D. Stewart
Lawrence Christian
Liberation Front
Fight Hunger
To the Editor:
In Sahaleen West Africa, there will be no harvest. Six countries (Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Upper Volta and Mauritania) are receiving the worst drought of this century.
nere has been little or no rain in West Africa for the last five years. There is no prospect of rain in West Africa this year. Because there is no food, many of the farmers have had to eat their crop seed, the source of next year's food. As a result of the drought, six to ten million people face starvation in the coming months.
This information is provided by Project Relief, in., in its advertisements encouraging people to help avert what might become the worst disaster of this century. Rather than asking just for donations, Project Relief suggests that a person skip a meal and send the money that would have been spent for the meal as a donation.
If any individual, club or organization, student residence hall, sorority or fraternity is interested in participating in a program with Hunger + day, please call 642-8906.
Stephen Buser
Belleville, Ill. Junior