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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, March 25, 1968
The Hill With It by john hill
Being King of the World would have some distinct advantages, according to a usually reliable day dream.
Problems of a complex nature would suddenly become quite simple due to the unlimited power.
The Gold Crisis could be solved easily enough. Simply have every bullet or bomb that would be manufactured from this point on be made out of pure gold, which would also cause a re-evaluation of current military tactics.
Racial problems would be quickly ended if everyone in the world were painted chartreuse, or sky-blue pink, or fire-engine blue, or some color, as long as it were all the same color.
Worrying about who your next door neighbor was would vanish when all doors were taken out. People would have to crawl in and out of their basement window, but the world would be a better place.
Overpopulation in India and other Asian countries could be assisted by simply moving spacious Australia back up against the mainland there where it probably belongs anyway.
World hunger would be taken care of by Bell Telephone. If everyone in the world had themselves a baby blue Princess Phone with a night
light, nobody would have to go hungry since they could send out for a pizza.
Disease and sickness would be taken care of by simply creating a Germs and Virus Local No. 78, with a union negotiator for the American Medical Association. Working conditions for germs are getting increasingly worse anyway, and it would just be a matter of time before a strike.
The combined problems of ignorance and poor education could be successfully dealt with by universally teaching ignorance. Simple courses, such as Introduction to the Television Set, Reading Only the Funnies IV, and Advanced Living in the Same Old Rut could pretty well take care of it.
Poverty could take care of itself by throwing open the doors of all the nations' bank vaults and having everybody suddenly help themselves, thus letting people start all over.
Except for the major problems, like whether or not doors should be allowed to be closed or partly closed during open houses at residence halls, this is a fairly complete summary of my platform, except to say that I am not actively seeking the position of King of the World, but would consider accepting a draft if I thought the call was strong enough.
Editorial essay
RFK's political puffery
By John Marshall
For those of you who care, Bobby Kennedy is at it "sub rosa" in California.
Yesterday, he campaigned in the South, taking a short break from the rigors of parliamentary hackling and 10 children. A few days ago, he launched his "campaign" in Kansas—despite constant mumblings from Jim Tolan, Kennedy's advance man at KU, that the speech and the trip were not politically oriented.
After Kennedy left, top University administrators expressed "displeasure" at Kennedy's political puffery.
That political puffery overflowed Allen Field House. That political puffery created one helluva image.
A most eloquent orator is in full swing—the latest evidences of which are indications that a dozen top Johnson delegates in California will have voiced public disapproval of the Johnson administration by the end of the week.
Nowadays, the image clouds a politician's qualifications like a fog—in the extreme, it covers like a soggy blanket.
There are some who say Kennedy's proposals, programs, and policies are just what the nation needs.
There are those who indicate the Kennedy visit to Kansas was pompous image-making, and
the New York senator handily voiced displeasure with the Johnson administration, but offered no specific suggestions for change.
Those are the people who should read.
Those are the people who may well be swayed by the candidate's smile, his wife's miniskirt, and a family portrait on a magazine cover—not by outlined proposals and clear suggestions for change.
It would probably involve a two-week oration for a candidate to outline, in detail, suggestions for change in American government.
That's why politicians write books. Books that should be read, regardless of authorship.
Books which may or may not provide an insight to a candidate's specific political suggestions.
It is asinine that the new voters of 1968—the most informed generation in the nation's history and yet the most apathetic and image-conscious—will be swayed by a picture, a sexy wife, and free drinks.
It may or may not be unfortunate that Lyndon Johnson faces elimination before the race begins. It is idiocy that this situation exists because LBJ does not have an eastern accent, a "mod" wife, and a face full of teeth.
And rare is the voter who scratches an "X", sloughing the pinstriped handshake, a free cigarette, and biting campaign sloganry.
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Paperbacks
If one book in recent years caused comment it was Robert Ardrey's THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE, now available in paperback (Delta, $2.45). It is a book that is big and controversial and the worth the attention of university students. What Ardrey is telling us is that territory—turf, land, space—the big thing for animals, that it is the powerful motivating force and that it is what the animal must protect. The scientist would have to rule on the authority of the Ardrey thesis, or perhaps more specifically the biologist or anthropologist, but the book presents an argument about the basic nature of man that is of extreme interest.
THREE BY GRAHAM GREENE (Viking Compass, $2.45)
One volume that gives the reader three of Greene's great entertainments, as he called them, from the thirties and forties. They are "This Gun for Hire," "The Confidential Agent" and "The Ministry of Fear." They cannot be faulted, and they seem far superior today to the tiny little sex thrillers that have been coming out one a day. Greene was more than "entertainer" in these, and the reader can expect a considerable load of comment on the rise of fascism (we weren't so aware of communism at that time).
...quotes..
"Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."
Henry L. Mencken * * *
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
* * *
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
George Santayana (1863-1952)
* * *
"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow * * *
"When angry, count four! When very angry, swear."
Mark Twain
* * *
"I am a member of the rabble in good standing."
Westbrook Pegler
Kansan book review
Village of Ben Suc' is classic war narrative
By Scott Nunley
"Now we know that you can't go in and then just abandon the people to the V.C. This time we're going to do a thorough job of it; we're going to clean out the place completely. The people are all going to be resettled . . . then we're going to move everything out . . . The purpose here is to deprive the V.C. of this area for good."
The massive American assault of January, 1967 on the Saigon River's "Iron Triangle" and in passing on the village of Ben Suc—was codenamed Cedar Falls.
"After the jungle had been heavily shelled and bombed, the 1st Division troops were to flatten the jungle in fifty-yard swaths on both sides of the road, using sixty bulldozers airlifted in . . . "
"The Village of Ben Sue," recently reprinted in paperback by Vintage from the July 15, 1967 New Yorker, reports this drastic action of the Vietnamese War with fast and humane prose. Reporter Jonathan Schel's voice moves like a flat whisper behind the acutely visual narrative of his story.
But that whisper is never entirely without its subtle intonations. An American officer is quoted—“I think this really ought to be quite fascinating... Anyway, it ought to be something to see.”—and the irony, however unemphasized, blasts savagely upon the reader. Or Schell's own words pick their way about the crater of absurdity beneath the preparation for battle:
"This time, unless the entire village sneaked off into the forest, the objective of the operation could not wholly elude the troops, as it had in previous campaigns."
The delicate mice of "sneaked," "wholly," and that final damnable "as . . . in" gnaw any fought for sanity from the mind of the poor reader of "The Village of Ben Suc." The comforting calm of Schell's reportorial voice hides the most deadly bite of insight.
Here is a perspective on America's most unpopular war that focuses the Stateside observer's encyclopedia of facts into an animated picture of the GI presence in Southeast Asia;
"Most of the transporting of American troops in Vietnam is done by helicopter or plane. So the men, hopping from American base to American base, view rural Vietnam only from the air until they see it through gunsights on a patrol or a search-and-destroy mission."
"After the area is secure, we're lifting a crew of ARVN soldiers into the center of the village to help us with the work there. We want to get the Vietnamese dealing with their own people as much as we can here."
And yet the Army of the Republic of Vietnam is such an ally that no GI strategist dared allow it to know that Operation Cedar Falls—the largest military envelopment to that time—was being launched within 30 miles of its capital.
Occasionally Schell's datedness, the lapse of a germinal year since the Vietnam experience he describes, rings like an eerie prophecy into the ears of today's worried American:
"Because artillery fire is a routine occurrence at night on almost every American base in Vietnam, and because everyone knows that it is all American or Allied, it arouses no alarm, and no curiosity."
Unintentionally, even the most comforting of Schell's comments have become bitter ironies on a frustrated theme.
Yet Schell's flat writing is not unbeautiful, frequently creating imagery of battle that transmits nightmare allurement—“Do not run away or you will be shot as V.C. Stay in your homes and wait for further instructions.’ The metallic voice, floating down over the fields, huts, and trees, was as calm as if it were announcing a flight departure at an air terminal. It was gone in ten seconds, and the soldiers again moved on in silence.”
The events of Cedar Falls are stale now, superceded by the February, 1968 urban offensive and by the appearance of conventional armor and rocketry on the enemy's side. They never were unique or crucial in themselves. But Jonathan Schell's journalism—perhaps, almost, his novel—has transmuted the fate of "The Village of Ben Suc" into a classic narrative of this new age of America's military life.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
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