Editorials
Predictions premature
Washington has been treated to what it considers free positive propaganda lately. The proadministration demonstrations are an unusual phenomenon, to say the least.
When the various pacifist organizations around the country began carrying pickets, marching, and burning draft cards, some pessimistic predictions were made. Many magazines and newspapers, including the Kansan, called the activities harmful to the United States image in Asia.
Many felt that the demonstrations were winning a propaganda war for communist forces in Viet Nam. Students were afraid the local draft boards would toughen up their considerations of students. Conscientious objectors feared their rights would be in jeopardy. Apparently the fears and predictions were a little premature.
DRAFT BOARDS HAVE not been flooded by conscientious objector pleas. There doesn't seem to be any more danger of students being drafted than before the demonstration first began.
The anti-Viet Nam policy activities seem to
have had the reverse effect of that expected. Instead of influencing the nation to rise en masse against President Johnson's position, larger demonstrations have shown a majority of the people of the United States to back this policy.
Rather than convincing the communist forces in Viet Nam that American feeling is against the United States effort there, the demonstrations served as a catalyst to pro-administration activities. The tables have been turned on everybody.
EVIDENTLY SOME PEOPLE were afraid that what they called a small minority would form the United States image in this particular situation. They took the opposition's tactics and greatly changed the color of things.
We hope Washington realizes the impact of this interesting reverse of affairs. The administration does not very often gain this kind of publicity from its own people. Let's just hope the sentiment does not get misconstrued somewhere in its transmission. We'd all like to see this war end, and soon.
Janet Hamilton
The People Say...
In reply
Dear Editor:
IN REFLY TO MR. KING'S letter of Oct. 26, 1965, may I be permitted a few lines in my defense? I realize full well that the communist countries are not quite so many gardens of Eden, though for those brought up in, for example, Russia or China, this may not be quite so obvious. The Chinese peasant is less likely to be interested in absactions like democracy than in whether he has enough rice to fill his belly. Brought up in a tradition of "slavery and tyranny" he is more likely to judge his new masters in terms of their contribution to his immediate needs than in the amount of freedom they allow him. Anyway, freedom is a rather vague term open to various interpretations. Would an anarchist consider the average Yeoman or Briton to be free?
Even hostile critics of communism, Mr. King excepted, concede that the lot of the common man in Russia and China has shown some improvement in material terms. These countries compare unfavourably with the West, but then the West has had a much greater headstart. And these countries, especially Russia, have achieved what they have by their own efforts, with virtually no foreign aid. Their methods have been harsh, at times barbarous, but then in the history of these countries human suffering has never counted for much. I do not condone the methods employed but I do wonder if the people involved considered them as much of a regression?
Starvation is not nearly as common in modern Russia or China as in pre-communist times. The harvest failures of the late 1550's in China would have led under the Kuomintang or the Imperial Government to millions of deaths from lack of food. Communist organizations largely averted this. Furthermore, in terms of medical aid, full employment, insurance, etc., the communist countries have enjoyed great advances. Huge achievements have been made in education, and only with literacy can people begin to grasp and discuss ideas like democracy. Remember too that during the first few months of the revolution in Russia the bolshsheviks were quite tolerant. Only with the attempted assassinations of their leaders and with civil war and foreign intervention did they begin to eliminate the opposition.
Daily Kansan Tuesday, November 2, 1965
2
MR. KING ASKS me why I am not studying in Moscow where I would find lots of adherents to my ideas. I could answer that, since I presumably want to change the attitude of the U.S.A. I can only hope to do so by coming to America. The honest answer is that my university does not have direct exchange scholarships with the U.S.S.R.
My point about the World's Fair was that I was surprised and dismayed about the existence of the shrine. I realize that communists are "ungodly," though considering some of the crimes perpetrated in the West in the name of religion this term is perhaps a compliment. More seriously though, I hardly think that the spirit of the Lithuanian shrine is conducive to better understanding between the West and the communist delegates meeting in the U.N. building a short distance away.
My political knowledge may be "hopelessly behind the times" but how well informed is Mr. King when he writes of "the Communist Empire?" Hasn't he heard of
the Sino-Soviet split? Perhaps the Scots have "unrealistic and whimsical political ideas" but these certainly are taken seriously by the English since the present British foreign secretary is a Scot. Furthermore having seen German political realism manifested in the policies of messrs. Bismarck, Kaiser William II, and Hitler, I prefer Scottish whimsy. I must concede that Mr. King has more authority than I have to discuss totalitarianism since his country has had rather more experience of this than has Great Britain. I also admit I have never seen a refugee bleeding to death on the barbed wire of a communist fence, but then I have likewise never seen a civil rights worker bleeding to death in a ditch in Alabama, though I understand this also happens.
THE HABIT OF writing the editor whenever one does not agree with certain opinions in a newspaper is one born of a long tradition of freedom of speech. Perhaps one day Germany will also ascribe to this tradition.
David Forbes
David Forbes Scotland graduate student
'Agent 83/4'Pokesfun
A funny bit of satire is now showing at the Varsity. "Agent 83/4" is a takeoff on the current motion picture trend of secret agents, private detectives, anti-crime organizations, etc.
Dirk Bogarde stars in this English-built comic meledrama and plays the part of an unemployed writer who finds himself behind the Iron Curtain visiting a glass factory. He doesn't know he is a spy, but we do. With this situation almost anything can happen and does.
Begade plays a smooth role and he is really very good as a comedian. He is remembered for his previous roles in low grade adventure movies and a few comedies.
Rosy pink Robert Morley ("Topkapi") is a rely-poly boss in the British secret service who believes his job is very important. He is so anxious to better the Secret Service he talks shop with the Czech secret police boss, played admirably by Leo McKern. The two, when together, play some of the funniest scenes in this picture.
THE SEX IN THE picture is entirely in the shape of Sylva Kescina who plays the part of Agent 8 3/4's chauffeur and, eventually, his lover. Sylva is a shapely miss and all eyes should be on her whenever she flickers onto the screen.
"Agent 8 3 4" is good for one evening's relaxation. It isn't the finest comedy out this year, but it does have its moments. The actors and script keep the movie alive from start to finish.
It Used to Be...
The Campus Highway on Oread Avenue from 13th to 14th St. is now undergoing a much needed improvement. Two men with a span of bays and an old rusty plow have set out to convert this block of winding road with its numéroous chuck holes into a real thoroughfare.
Nov. 2, 1915
Books run gamut Of history, affairs
There probably are no better purchases in paperbacks these days then the many books about history and public affairs. They range from a notable work on the Revolutionary War period to a methodical and detailed analysis of what has been happening in the United States since the end of World War II.
The book on the Revolution is Arthur M. Schlesinger's Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain 1764-1776 (Vintage, $2.45). This one is an absolute standard for anyone working on the press and propaganda of the revolutionary era. The reader is taken inside those primitive country offices where the likes of Isaiah Thomas and Samuel Adams labored with their binned treatments of the British. Here is a truly tremendous contribution to scholarship, and like other books by the elder Schlesinger it makes for good reading.
Frederick Rudolph's The American College and University (Vintage, $2.95) is an impressive volume on a subject that seldom is treated. To Rudolph the American college and university is something unique. He begins with those colonial institutions that were designed largely for the aristocrat—Harvard, Yale, Princeton—and gives us some exciting intellectual history as he proceeds to the developments in education of the late 19th century. There are mentions of the University of Kansas. Nothing dull or pedantic about this book; the life of the undergraduate is detailed along with that of the institutions themselves.
In Oscar T. Baack Jr.'s A History of the United States Since 1945 (Dell Laurel, 95 cents) we get a paperback original that treats the age that has had more sweep and excitement than any comparable time in history. It also is about the friendliest history, as far as Eisenhower is concerned, now available. Basically it is a factual and informative account, with few perceptions that will surprise the reader. But it is a needed story, especially for the university student whose knowledge of history comes up as far as his high school teacher would let it—usually about 1920. We get special attention here on foreign developments, atomic power, the cold war, civil rights, and the four men who have occupied the White House since the death of Roosevelt.
Two scholars, Seymour Martin Lipset and Sheldon S. Wolin, have prepared a book called The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations (Anchor, $1.95). This one is almost contemporary history, and it should have wide readership among students at the University of Kansas. Seldom has there been anything on our campuses quite like the California Free Speech Movement, which began a year ago and whose repercussions continue. Student movements have been of great force elsewhere in the world; here we saw an American demonstration of student potential. It is a big and detailed book which the editors have prepared, and they show us the meaning of the California events as they let others describe and interpret.
Of all the reporters covering the national scene few have been as wise and entertaining in their writing as Douglass Cater, author of Power in Washington (Vintage, $1.65). This new paperback is a kind of companion volume to the brilliant "Fourth Branch of Government" which appeared several years ago. Cater worked for years for The Reporter; here he analyzes what has been going on in government in recent years. Besides looking into Congress and the White House he gives another glance to the "news managers," part of the theme of the earlier work. Here is a dramatic and vigorous work that will set the student to thinking about political processes.
Literary criticism of topical interest also is part of the current fare in books. Philip Rahv's hardback volume is entitled The Myth and the Powerhouse (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $4.95). Symbolism and Freud run wild through these writings, but Rahv is a writer of somewhat more sanity than many. He treats the theme of sex in the contemporary novel (what else?) and deals with such current figures as Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer, as well as taking a look at such figures as Dostoevsky and Hemingway. Even the recent "Herzog" is treated in this sometimes complex volume.
A final theme available in new volumes is that of civil rights—James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (Dell, 60 cents), and Warren Miller's The Siege of Harlem (Crest, 60 cents). These are novels, of course. Baldwin offers a beautiful story of a young boy growing up in a repressively religious household. Miller tells about the day Harlem seceded from the Union. Theme and mood are greatly different, but each book has much to say about the Negro in America.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
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MANAGING EDITOR Judy Farrell
BUSINESS MANAGER Ed Vaughn
EDITORIAL EDITORS Janet Hamilton, Karen Lambert