Page 2
Summer Session Kansan
Tuesday, July 24, 1962
A Golden Dream
A college degree is unbeatable and from KU it is as "good as gold."
There is a temptation among young people today to forego an education to work and make money. At present, the glitter of shiny automobiles and spending money in the pocket outweighs the prosperity that can come later with a college degree.
For some, just a degree will suffice. The quality of education that stands behind their degree doesn't matter.
Many high school seniors do not enroll at KU because it's "too tough." They seek easier schools, because there is not as much work required. That is fine, because they do not belong here anyway.
KU has a reputation all over the world. Its graduates are successes in many walks of life. Employers will usually hire a KU graduate over those of many other schools.
Fred Ellsworth, the KU Alumni Association director, can recall many examples of KU graduates who have excelled in their profession. Much can be attributed to their study at KU.
KU is a challenge. Its students face a hard discipline that they must master in order for them to meet better the challenges that life after college holds.
Its academic awards are enviod. Its athletic teams are nationally feared. Its campus is one of the most beautiful in the nation.
KU is a remarkable institution. Speak of a school that is everything and you speak of KU.
In today's modern world a woman needs an education just as much as a man. In past decades this was not true, but today it is becoming almost an absolute.
With the world becoming smaller and smaller with new developments such as the Telstar, a
person has to have a wide knowledge of the communities of the world.
Women today are leaders in the community. They work hard in civic groups to make their schools and communities better places in which to rear children.
Some women are faced with the task of supporting a family upon the sudden death of their husband. A college degree helps this cause. A KU degree is even a greater help.
College is a wonderful experience. It is an ecstatic experience in ones life when he meets new friends which will become life-long friends.
He is introduced to new fields of study which are not offered at the high school level. Oftentimes these new fields later become vocations.
Above all he discovers how to walk on his own two feet. No longer are his parents at his side telling him which turn to make. His decisions are his own. Sometimes they are wrong decisions, but this is a learning process that far excels anything that might be said in a textbook.
This fall KU will have another large freshman class. However, its graduates in June of 1966 will not equal that initial enrollment number. There will be those who drop out either voluntarily or involuntarily.
College—it's a big word that a lot of people like to use and say that they want to attend and earn a degree, but sticking with it is a big task.
For those who do not make it, it's tragic. They will miss an experience that will be unequaled in their lifetime. The experience of associating with extremely intelligent men and the experience of associating with intelligent people of their own age.
Above all they will miss being able to hold their head high with pride and saying, "I'm a KU graduate."
—Steve Clark
Congo Camp Being Cleared
By Justin Paine United Press International
ELISABETHVILLE, Katanga — (UPI)—Ane of the worst eyesores in the Congo is gradually being eradicated.
It is the huge disease and crime-ridden Baluba refugee camp established in Elisabethville by the United Nations in August, 1961, as a haven for frightened Baluba tribesmen.
THE BALUBAS, politically opposed to Katanga President Moise Tshombe's government and fearing reprisals in the then developing Katangese war against the U.N., came in such thousands from Kasai and South Kasai that their care, feeding and housing became a Herculean task.
and grew. No one is sure even now
how many refugees the camp eventually held. Generally the figure has been estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000.
In the crowded, unsanitary conditions, the camp became a hellhole where disease flourished, terror ruled and crime ran wild.
NOW THE CAMP'S inmates are being returned to Kasai and South Kasai at an average of about 1,000 a day. The evacuation began in May and no one is sure how long it will take because no one knows how many persons are involved.
By June 10, the number evacuated by train and plane had passed 20.000.
U. N. civilian chief in the Congo Robert Gardiner is given much of the credit for the evacuation. While others were procrastinating, he announced during a short visit to Elisabethville early in May that
the breakup of the camp must begin immediately.
"YOU HAVE four days to get the first trainload of refugees away," he told startled officials.
Evacuation plans, some of them three and four months old, were hurriedly re-examined.
Four days later, on May 8, the first trainload of 1,000 refugees pulled away from the siding beside the camp.
AT FIRST there were to be two trains a week, then this was reduced to one for transshipment reasons. Refugees were taken by train to Kamina, 350 miles away and roughly the halfway point, then airlifted to Luluabourg, capital of Kasai Province.
Worth Repeating
When I first went to study in the United States, after having studied in European and Canadian universities, the principal contrast which struck me was how much harder I had to work than ever before. Reading lists were gargantuan, assignments plethoric. I found the work for four courses per semester overwhelming, and considered that two courses would be a more reasonable load for a student who devoted all his time to his studies. My immediate reaction was to feel that the criticisms of American educational standards were sadly misplaced. But then I began to realize that in all my busy round of reading, lectures and paper-preparing I was failing to find time for the only really important activity I had gone there to do: thinking. Shockingly little of what I was reading was I making my own in any lasting or significant way. There was always another assignment waiting to be hurried through.—Paul Nash
So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.—Ernest Hemingway
NEXT MOVE was the introduction of two DC4 aircraft to fly refugees direct from Elisabethville to Bakwanga, capital of South Kasai. Again the U.N. struck unexpected trouble when it was found the refugees' huge piles of luggage limited the number per flight to about 60 instead of the planned 85.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
Steve Clark and Karl Koch Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bonnie McCullough and Bill Woodburn ... Co-Business Mgrs.
The number of aircraft, each making two flights daily, was doubled.
COMBINED WITH train transport, the number of refugees leaving Elisabethville jumped to 7,000 a week.
In June, the evacuation again was intensified, with seven aircraft making 14 flights daily.
With the movement of the refugees from Elisabethville, the U.N.'s troubles could still be far from over. So far there has been little information on the reception the refugees have received in the villages. In Luluabourg, they aroused some initial distrust among the local population and this feeling may spread to the villages. In Bakwanga the first arrival received a more friendly welcome and seem to have a better chance of being absorbed back into the population.
Food may be a difficult problem as present supplies dwindle. U.N. chiefs in Elisabethville are considering diverting some of the food for the steadily decreasing population of the refugee camp to Kasai and South Kasai.
THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE, by Arthur Mizener (Vintage,
$1.45).
Appearing about a decade ago, this biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald received wide—and deserved—recognition. It is a bit better as a literary appraisal than the recent biography of Fitzgerald by Andrew Turnbull; it is a bit worse as an evaluation of the man.
It is a thorough and interesting treatment. Mizener captures the essence of Fitzgerald, and like Turnbull relates events in the author's life to events and characterizations in the novels and short stories. He never manages the frenzied side of Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda as well as does Turnbull, and he does not relate these people and their associates to their times quite as well.
But all in all he misses little, though he himself admits to certain gaps that were called to his attention after publication of the book—such as failing to write about the tragic death of Zelda in a fire. The St. Paul days are here, and so are the days in Princeton, in Paris, in Hollywood (the grim story Budd Schulberg told so well in "The Disenchanted"), the days of the big slide from literary success and so on.—CMP
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NATIVE SON, by Richard Wright (Signet Classics, 75 cents).
Whether "Native Son" is a classic is debatable. It looked a lot better in 1940 than it looks today—in 1940 when proletarian sympathies still ran high and we had not become disenchanted by the Russians and postwar events in America.
It was quite a piece of propaganda in 1940, and a greatly discussed novel which went on to become a greatly discussed Broadway play. Briefly it is the story of a Chicago Negro named Bigger Thomas who, in his blind search for identity, murders first a rich girl who is flirting with communism and then his Negro sweetheart. A Communist lawyer takes his defense, but uses the courtroom chiefly as a podium, and Bigger is condemned to die.
What Wright thought of "Native Son" in later days is unrecorded; he told of his own latter-day disgust with communism in "The God That Failed." "Native Son" has great power and vigor, and it is a truly shocking story. As a story of the American Negro it is weaker than Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," for Wright fails, as Ellison did not fail, to place the Negro within the greater context of world humanity.—CMP
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THE INFLUENCE OF SEAPOWER UPON HISTORY, by A. T. Mahan (American Century, $1.95).
Some books attain significance beyond their literary quality (or lack of it). "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was such a book; so was "The Origin of Species." So is Mahan's "The Influence of Seapower upon History." If the book is read much today it is chiefly because it was the book that provided the background and the rationale for the expansionists of the 1890s and for latter-day Americans who saw the possibility of making the United States as great a sea power as even England had been at one time.
Mahan's book is a history itself, a military history of close and incredible detail. His chief concerns are with modern times, though he does point to such episodes as Hannibal's failure as being due to the greater power on the sea of the Romans. He gives a long discussion of the elements of sea power—geographical, physical conformation, extent of territory, population, national character, and governmental character.
Then follows a description of sea engagements from the second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-1667 down through the sea battles of the American Revolution. Maps are included. And a good introduction by Louis Hacker tells, once again, why this book is such an important one.
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IN OUR TIME, by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner Library, $1.25). GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA, by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner Library, $1.45).
The earthy, masculine, rough-tough Hemingway who became almost an American legend is perhaps better represented in these books than in some of his novels. Neither of these works qualifies as great Hemingway, but each has authenticity—if we accept the legend.
"In Our Time" is a collection of somewhat minor-league short stories from the 1920s. These are the Nick Adams stories, interspersed with brief, photographic glimpses of Hemingway in Italy during World War I. This is the boy fishing in the north woods with his doctor-father, canoeeing, communing with nature, meeting Indians, running into an old prizefighter who has turned hobo in his punchy old age. The book also has the famous story of a boy and his jockey father, "My Old Man."
"GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA" may appeal to those, like this reviewer, who are left completely cold by the notion of killing big game in Kenya. It is a fascinating story of a safari, not at all the kind of safari we know from the movies and more popular literature. Hemingway's search is for a kudu, and on the way he shoots a little of everything else, does a lot of drinking and a lot of talking and a lot of reminiscing, and gives his very biased literary judgments.
Hemingway thought "Huck Finn" the great American novel, admired Mark Twain, Henry James and Stephen Crane, couldn't read Thoreau, and thought Wolfe needed some time in the African wilds to get rid of his verbosity.
The book has excellent woodcut illustrations. Though secondrate Hemingway, it is still better than first-rate almost-anythingelse from our literature.-CMP
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