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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, May 18, 1965
The New Theatre
One would think that a newspaper in Lawrence, Kans., merely by virtue of proximity to a sophisticated university community, would not be shackled by provincialism and narrow attitudes. Obviously, this is not the case, as was revealed in an incredibly obtuse editorial titled "Theater Dirt" appearing in last Tuesday's Journal-World.
The editorial proclaimed shock, nay, horror, at the fact that Edward Albee's drama, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," is scheduled as one of five major productions for the 1965 KU theatre season.
"IF KU THEATERGOERS THINK THEY have been shocked in recent years at some of the goings-on in Murphy Hall," the editorial read, "just wait until next year when "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is presented by the boys and girls at the University. This one will almost blow the roof off the drama building. . . (The Play) is without doubt the dirtiest play on Broadway, in many years, and any production has a lot of competition when it comes to being acclaimed as the dirtiest. . . Obviously the youngsters at KU cannot forever be sheltered in loving peace and tranquility. . . but why is it necessary to dish up pure manure on a KU stage?"
Petty editorial attitudes like this are reasons why Kansas remains the buckle in the Midwestern Bible belt rather than a spearhead in the burgeoning U.S. cultural expansion.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" was not intended to be smutty drama. It is rather, as distinguished critic Marya Mannes writes, "the study of a man and wife who need each other to destroy each other. . . . There is a certain vision of the human condition. It is a vision in which contempt for woman is only slightly greater than contempt for man, in which one destroys the other, in which their common frustrations preclude either hope or heroism.
IT IS ESSENTIAL TO THE SUBJECT OF "Who's Afraid" that a man like George (an innocuous history professor and impotent husband) and a woman like Martha (his bitter wife) be locked in hopelessness, for they both share the cause and burden of his impotence and her despair.
"What might otherwise be an overpreoccupation with this sexual core is given broader range by Albee's compassionate intuition into the complexities of marital interdependence. And those who find the play sordid or revolting miss precisely the point: somewhere in all this carnage there is love. Or if not love, then its close cousin, need."
Another essay by an informed critic scolds those who reject the play on its face, without bothering to examine Albee's message.
DIANA TRILLING, writing in Esquire magazine, says, "Now, to reserve judgment on Mr. Albee's play because its characters are not representative is, of course, to expose oneself to the charge of a particularly old-fashioned and even vulgar limitation of the imagination, since we all know that the modern in art is precisely defined by its refusal to be representational.
"To refuse Mr. Albee's view of how life is or how people are is . . . to oppose the whole tendency of contemporary literary thought. To deplore the unfamiliarity or the unreality of Mr. Albee's characters is to deny what the literature of our time has made familiar and insisted is real."
THE "BOYS AND GIRLS" WHO ARE AMBITIOUS enough to produce this play and the youngsters" who will be the audience possess attitudes decidedly more perceptive and broadminded than the views expressed in the editorial. The record of performances in the University Theatre during the past year reveals that the student body is eager to examine modern movements in drama and is, in the main, receptive to them.
Kudos to the KU theatre department for stimulating interest in contemporary drama. It is a difficult undertaking, and the department's willingness to deal with the new theatre is commendable.
The theatre department has received scant praise for its effort, and we can only hope that ridiculous editorial attitudes will spur the department toward even worthier achievement in an attempt to destroy backward notions that still permeate too much of America.
— Karen Lambert
'Faceless' Viet Cong Fight
By Phil Newsom
UPI Foreign News Analyst
By Phil Newsom
UPI Foreign News Analyst SAIGON—The Communist Viet Cong is a faceless man. He hurls a bomb in a busy Saigon street or crowded restaurant. He fights from ambush in the swamps of the Mekong River Delta, in the jungled highlands or from the shoulder-high grasses of the coastal plain.
But he is no mere terrorist. At his highest level he is a master of both psychological and military warfare, working under a table of organization perhaps even more efficient than the governments own. Each province has its commissar whose duties are the same as the government-appointed provincial chief.
in provinces under Communist control, notably in the heavily populated delta, the Viet Cong collect the taxes, supervise the schools and function as an organized government.
AND DESPITE massive United States aid to the South Vietnamese government, now running at $1.5 billion a year, he has shown steady gains.
Seek Peoples' Loyalty
U. S. military advisors emphasize this this is a war more for the loyalty and control of people than it is for geography. But by any measurement, the Communists have been winning.
For example, some 8 million of South Viet Nam's 14 million population live in the delta. U.S. military advisors figure that as of Jan. 1, 1963, the Viet Cong controlled 21 per cent of the population. By Jan. 1, 1964, that figure had risen to 23 per cent. And by January, 1964, to 24 per cent.
In the coastal plain, with a population of some 3 million, the Viet Cong were estimated to control 19 per cent of the population at the
beginning of 1963. Within the next year that figure increased to 20 per cent and was estimated at 21 per cent at the beginning of this year.
In the highlands, Communist control is estimated at 50 per cent, a figure which has remained stable.
Had Fought French
In the beginning, they were the people who fought the French colonialists. When the Geneva conference of 1954 divided the country at the 17th parallel between North and South, 90,000 who had been fighting in the South went to the North.
OTHERS REMAINED IN THE South but their loyalties remained with Ho Chi Minh, the wispy Communist leader whom they regarded as the father of Viet Nam.
Who are the Viet Cong?
Daili'i Hänsan
111 Flint Hall
UUniversity 4-3646, newsroom
UUniversity 4-3198, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triviseek 1905
Member Ireland 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. Accommodations, goods, services, and employment advertised in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed, or national origin.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Leta Roth and Gary Noland ... Co-Editorial Editors
DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Don Black ... Managing Editor
Bobbie Bartelt, Clare Casey, Marshall Caskey, Fred Frailey, Assistant
Managing Editors; Judy Farrell, City Editor; Karen Lambert, Feature-
Society Editor; Glen Phillips, Sports Editor; Janet Chartier, Telegraph
Editor; Harry Krause, Picture Editor.
These were the hard core who continued to fight the South Vietnamese government in guerrilla attacks from 1954 onward.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Fisher ... Business Manager
Nancy Holland, Advertising Manager; Ed Vaughn, National Advertising Manager; Dale Reinecker, Classified Advertising Manager; Russ Calkins, Merchandising Manager; Bob Monk, Promotion Manager; Gary Grazda, Circulation Manager.
In the North, the 90,000 Southerners became the manpower pool from which to replace the Viet Cong losses. They also were hard core, trained in the arts of subversion and sabotage as well as in the use of weaponry and military tactics.
The men infiltrating from the North enabled the Viet Cong to maintain and even increase their strength despite heavy losses.
Three Military Units
The Viet Cong are divided into three types of military units. At the top are the main forces, crack troops infiltrated from Communist North Vietnam. Next to them are the militia under the command of province commissars. The forces total up to 45,000, about equally divided between main and militia forces. Below them are the guerrillas estimated to number 80,000 to 100,000.
The fact that main and militia forces have increased by at least 10,000 in the last year is further evidence of Communist determination and success.
"How About Old-Fashioned Open Space?"
Intervention On College Campuses
United States foreign policy is going through its most difficult phase. Not only are we having trouble convincing our western allies and our South American friends that we are doing the right thing, but we're having a heck of a time persuading our own university students and professors.
The President has ordered truth squads sent out to American college campuses, and it is only the first of many plans in the works to get the students and professors back on our side.
The Under Secretary of State in charge of University Relations recently made his report to the cabinet. I managed to get hold of a transcript.
HE SAID, "GENTLEMEN, I am happy to report that West Point and the Colorado School of Mines are supporting our action in the Dominican Republic."
"What are we going to do about it?"
"They're still holding out, as is the University of Michigan."
"What about the University of Wisconsin?" someone asked.
"The Air Force is planning to drop 80,000 leaflets on their campuses this morning. Radio Free America has gone on a 24-hour schedule and the psychological warfare people are now on the scene stirring up rumors about a left-wing takeover of the schools."
"THAT'S ALL WELL and good," someone said, "but it seems to me we should bomb the schools with more than leaflets just to show them we mean business."
"We've thought about it, but don't forget we have our own truth squad people there, and besides we have to think of public reaction from Harvard, Yale and Princeton."
"Couldn't we have the U.S. Marines occupy the campuses under the guise of protecting American lives and property?"
"That's been discussed, but if the other universities revolt, we'll run out of Marines in no time."
"SUPPOSE WE BROKE off diplomatic relations with Wisconsin and Michigan?"
"The CIA is against it. If we recalled our people, they would have to pull out and it would interfere with their plans."
"What plans?"
"They are planning to put in military juntas at Wisconsin and Michigan, made up of cadet colonels from the ROTC."
"Say, that's a good idea," someone said.
"If it works. If it doesn't work, we're going to have to deny we had anything to do with it."
"DON'T YOU THINK the overthrowing of student governments is a dangerous business?" one of the Doves said.
"Not if we have proof that they're left-wing controlled. I'd rather have an ROTC junta than a rabble of leftists running the school."
"Will we notify the American Association of University Professors of our plans?"
"We don't have time. Once the juntas are in, we'll ask the professors to come in and help us. But if we ask them first, they'll debate the question to kingdom come."
"HOW CAN WE persuade the schools that supporting our policies is to their first interests?"
"By giving each university a billion dollars if they go along with us."
"And if they don't?"
"Then we escalate. We will start by bombing the football stadiums and the highways leading to the schools."
— Reprinted from Wichita Eagle-Beacon