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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, April 17, 1968
Are negotiations lost?
The excitement and hope Americans felt when Hanoi announced its willingness to talk peace has been quelled by the quibbling between Washington and Hanoi as to where the talks will take place.
"We will hold peace talks at any place, any time," Lyndon Johnson once said.
Yet, Johnson rejected Hanoi's suggestion of either Phnom Penh, Cambodia, or Warsaw as the site for the initial contacts. The U.S. is now awaiting North Vietnam's official answer to its proposal that talks be held in Jakarta, Vientiane, Rangoon or New Delhi.
Hanoi charged that, "If the United States
really wants talks with the government of North Vietnam, it must stop creating difficulties in the choice of a place for preliminary contacts, which only delay the talks between the two sides."
Hanoi has a point. If Johnson is sincere in his peace efforts, relatively trivial things like choice of the talk site must be overlooked to consider more important things, like peace.
If Hanoi and Washington are unable to agree on such minor issues, the chances for real negotiation with give-and-take on both sides are slim.
— Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
Letters to the editor
Military has rights too!
To the Editor:
In reference to the recent articles in the UDK and to the editorial of April 4 concerning the protest of some individuals to military research projects, military recruiters, and the ROTC programs on campus.
In the first place, those military recruiters pose no threat to those who oppose violence. They are there to talk with students who desire to see them. Contact with them is purely voluntary.
Besides, you can't lean one way without leaning the other. If recruiters are to be banned, I feel the SDS and other "non-violent" left-wing organizations should follow them.
This would put the University in a truly "neutral" position.
As for the military research projects, I see no reason for this to be any concern of anyone but the administration's. If students would learn to study and let the people up in Strong run affairs, this school would be a lot better off.
And finally, we come to the abolishment of the ROTC programs. I am in the Army ROTC program and I find this "demand" particularly infuriating.
We hear so much in the world today about conscience and free moral choice.
They may feel they are doing what is just, but that gives them no right to tell me I can't do what I feel to be my duty.
Well, I feel it is my duty to serve my country in uniform. What I would like to know is what gives these people the right to tell me I can't wear that uniform.
ROTC, just like the military recruiters, is voluntary and if they don't want to take it, they don't have to. I only hope the University listens to more than some of the students, even if the editorials of the student paper do not.
—Dan Lyons Kansas City freshman
✩ ✩ ✩
To the Editor:
I was somewhat amazed to read the "UPI's seven bells" editorial, in which Don Walker analyzed the prospects of the presidential candidates in light of Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal. Walker dealt fairly and objectively with all the candidates until he arrived
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan encourages signed letters to the editor for publication. They should be typed and contain the writer's classification and home town. Letters are subject to conservative editing by the Kansan staff. Libelous statements will not be printed. Send letters to the editorial desk, 112 Flint Hall.
Please limit length to about 250 words.
at the name of Richard Nixon. Then, seemingly, he began to verbally annihilate Nixon, and, in the process, effectively squelched any thought the readers might have that the former vice-president was even a member of the human race.
To disagree with Mr. Nixon's policies is only using the editorial page for what it was intended, but to brand outright a "reactionary relic," and contend that he has no clear basis for his candidacy save the Vietnamese war issue reeks of a form of bigotry. If we must search for those single-issue candidates, who who "without a threat" are "without a voice," then let us not look beyond Senators McCarthy and Kennedy.
Senator McCarthy gave as his original (and single) purpose for entering the race his desire to give the people of the United States a reasonable alternative to the war in Vietnam. This has also been the only premise of Senator Kennedy's campaign, unless one considers his personal dislike for the President. Certainly Richard Nixon is not in the race solely on the issue of Vietnam. Naturally, he must present his views on it, because it is the overriding topic of argument today, but his campaign would fair as well, if not better, without it.
The truly astounding portion of the editorial, however, was the denunciation of Richard Nixon as a "reactionary relic." I do not personally agree with many of the things Nixon says, and I realize, that, to a number of people, he seems overly conservative.
Nevertheless, I do not feel that mudslinging (no matter in what terms it is couched) is part of the editorial code of ethics. This kind of prejudice should be the sole territory of children and various white supremists, not the Daily Kansan.
Monroe Dodd
Shreveport, La., freshman
Book review
Gregory by firelight
By Scott Nunley
Dick Gregory dropped into Hoch last year. The cops—the ones with those size 42 plain coats—made me a little nervous. (At least they didn't carry their riot guns upright in the front seats of their squad cars.) I hadn't noticed them there for "An Evening with Robert Frost."
Gregory began that KU evening with nightclub patter and college-oriented jokes that immediately had the audience loudly laughing and applauding. By the close of his long, hot performance, though, Gregory was telling it from the shoulder:
"America is the most racist nation in the world."
A lot of local listeners were upset, a lot of local talk kept up the Loyal Defense for a week. But if the audience first had read Gregory's collection of nightclub jokes, "From the Back of the Bus," they wouldn't have heard anything startling at Hoch.
Dick Gregory's new publication, "The Shadow that Scares Me," makes good reading by area firelight—if smoke or water damage doesn't obscure the text.
Neither a sense of humor nor a depth of passion are facades with Gregory. In "From the Back of the Bus," he laughed the sting from his racial honesty. In his autobiography "Nigger," he easily evoked empathy for this slum-end kid made good.
Gregory is a complex young Negro who is yet, perhaps, in the process of defining his role in the emerging united front of Black Power leadership.
Certainly his evocation of emotion—charged names—such as Dr. Charles Drew, the Negro who died because a Georgia hospital would not admit him to the plasma he had helped make possible—is a step closer to demagoguery.
Is it patronizing to comment that the simple arguments of many of his collected sermons seem to indicate an unsophisticated audience?
"The strange truth in America today is that the Negro has become the psychological master and the white man the psychological slave . . . The master has no fears. The slave runs and hides . . . Who is free?"
Yet when Gregory reiterates one of his constant themes, as in his sermon "The White Man's Slavery," his total immersion in the racial situation gives his thought a great credibility:
After last week, we might ask.
Gregory's thoughts, of course, are not shaping the Negro movement in America. At best, they reflect that movement. At worst, they have been overworked and transported repeatedly from one arena of his oratory to another.
But "The Shadow that Scares Me" is a book too relevant to April-in-Kansas City and Summer-in-Lawrence not to be read.
Free at Last, Free at Last . . .
Record review
BS&T is good; Flag is better
By Will Hardesty
Columbia Records has two new albums out with the same general flavor. They are CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN by Blood, Sweat and Tears and A LONG TIME COMIN' by The Electric Flag.
BS&T is one of Columbia's new groups. This is an eight-piece band which uses a lot of brass, reeds and strings. The group is very jazz-oriented. Musically, it is very correct and very good. At times, BS&T sounds almost "big band." While at times, the group uses "hard rock electronic guitar," it is always countered immediately by a strong jazz melody line to remind the listener the group is primarily jazzy. All this jazz background is applied to a primarily rhythm-and-blues format to produce a good sound.
Highlights of the album are: "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know"—a blend of the big band jazzy sound with a choral background, good lyrics and some electronic guitar; "Without Her"—a kind of Stan Getz-ish bossa nova sound; "Meagan's Gypsy Eyes"—a completely different style than the rest of the album—light, ethereal, with a touch of a French instrument called an ondioline; and "Somethin' Goin' On"—heavy rhythm and a touch of electric guitar.
This is a good album, and if you figure an album's worth by the amount of music on it, you get your money's worth with this one. Total time is 47:29.
What CHILD IS A FATHER TO THE MAN lacks, A LONG TIME COMIN' has.
BS&T seems to play music which is sterile. It is technically correct and well played, but it is jazz-oriented. Jazz is kind of music for the mind. The Electric Flag is not jazz-oriented. It plays a foot-tapping, finger-snapping, danceable brand of music. The group is from San Francisco while BS&T is from New York. The Flag has two Negroes in it, and this may be the reason it is the better group. They bring a touch of soul and blues which makes The Electric Flag an earthy, go-nutter group. BS&T is too pure.
The album starts with a tape of a very famous voice saying, "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of the nation." His speech is interrupted by a burst of laughter and a song called "Killing Floor." This song sets the pace for the whole album. The driving beat is accented by a tambourine. It moves!
The front side of the album is fast hard-driving music. The last song on side one is "Wine"—an old song which was popular as far back as 1949, and was then re-arranged and brought out by The Astronauts. The Flag arrangement is a new one in the tradition of the old arrangement and is a booie-woogie swinger.
The Electric Flag uses more brass and sax and less "formal" strings (violin, violin, etc.) than BS&T.
Side two of the album is slower. The songs are very soulish, crying, tear-ierkers.
"Sittin' in Circles" is the "different" song of the album. It makes use of rain and thunder sound effects, violins and bells.
If you are a rhythm-and-blues fan, you'll like either of these albums. BS&T is good, but The Flag is better. If you are going to buy both of the albums, buy BS&T first.
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