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Summer Session Kansan
Friday, June 15, 1962
Power of the Military
The Senate yesterday approved a $48,500,000,- 000 defense spending bill, 88-0. The bill now goes back to the House with nearly 590 million dollars in Senate increases.
The approval of the spending bill has a new twist this year. President Kennedy and Robert McNamara, secretary of defense, had sought only $171 million for developing the high-flying, 2,000 mile-an-hour Air Force RS-70. They said equipment for the plane was not far enough advanced to justify further spending.
IT APPEARS that the military and the legislative branch of the government have combined to run things pretty much their own way. It represents a new plateau for military prominence in the United States.
But the Air Force pleaded that the RS-70 project be speeded up. Then the House raised the total to $224 million, and the Senate committee later raised it to $491 million, the amount wanted by the Air Force.
Kennedy has been quoted as saying that he won't spend the extra funds. This then is the picture. The administration is hesitant about the
RS-70. The Air Force, Senate, and the House want it now, especially the Air Force. The fact that the latter won causes grounds for concern.
The administration looks at the defense budget from all angles. It is staffed by experts, both military and civilian. They didn't see a need for the RS-70. But the Air Force pressured the House and Senate and got the appropriation anyway.
Fred J. Cook in "Juggernaut: The Warfare State" (The Nation, Oct. 28, 1961) warned about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. The latest turn of events gives ample truth to his prediction.
BUT THE Air Force still doesn't have the $491 million appropriation. The money has to filter down to operating units through the Bureau of the Budget, which has the power to cut where they see fit. Perhaps here the administration will achieve success.
If not, the increasing power of the military complex will be vividly illustrated to the people of the United States. Assuming this fact, it will be interesting to see the developments arising from the political implications of this defense bill.
—Karl Koch
Peace Corps-One Wild Year Later
WASHINGTON—(UPI) This, a remarkable year later, is the Peace Corps:
- Road builders in Tanganyika, want-ads for basketball coaches and midwives.
- A marriage in Ghana and two tragic deaths in Colombia. Margery Michelmore and Mrs. Janie Fletcher. And the ultimate accolade from the communist world—a denunciation by Nikita Khrushchev.
- Volunteers in 16 countries;
some 1,100 corpsmen now working or in training. An additional 4,000 going into training this summer.
It was just a year ago this month that the Corps, an experiment in grass roots, people-to-people assistance, accepted its first volunteers. These were 35 young men who now are on duty in the newly independent African nation of Tanganyika.
In the 12 months that have passed since that milestone, the corps has grown both in size and prestige. Overcoming initial skepticism, it has now reached the point where Khrushechev has denounced it as an "imperialist" organization.
THE CORPS' African contingent survived the uproar caused by Margery Michelmore's "lost" postcard. And its Washington contingent avoided settling in a tangle with Congress over the case of Mrs. Janie Fletcher of Panhandle, Tex.
It was Mrs. Fletcher who complained that—as a 65-year-old—she was dropped as a Corps recruit because she refused to run a mile before breakfast, swim fully clothed with her feet tied, or cover the full obstacle course.
Throughout the world men and women—some old, some young—have been exposed to primitive living conditions and awkward environments.
Two have died—Lawrence M. Radley, 22, of Chicago, and David L. Crozier, 23, of West Plains, Mo. They were killed in a plane crash in the Colombian mountains while enroute back to their assignments in small villages.
There has been the first marriage in the corps' young history—that of Roger Hamilton, a 21-year old from Arlington, Va., and Carol Armstrong, 24, of Bala-Cynwyd. Pa. Having first met while training for their assignment, they became man and wife in Ghana, where both are teachers.
A LIST of countries to which the Corps is sending volunteers reads like a catalogue of exotic places. Volunteers already are at
work in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanganyika, Colombia, Chile, St. Lucia, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Brazil, El Salvador, Venezuela, Jamaica and Malaya.
Volunteers are soon to be dispatched to Iran, Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Ceylon, Tunisia, Somalia, Afghanistan, British Honduras, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Nepal, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Turkey, the Cameroons, and the Ivory Coast.
By next September, Shriver said, the Corps hopes to have 5,000 volunteers in training or on the job overseas. By one year later the total should be about 10,000.
ACCORDING to Corps officials, the biggest problem is getting enough volunteers with the right kinds of skills. Needed are 350 combinations of the right skills for the right country. Examples: mechanics and metal workers for Peru; Gym teachers for Thailand; a cost accountant for Malaya, and architects for Peru.
The Corps' personnel selection specialists must take into account such diverse considerations as when the volunteers will be available, his age, his specific skills, his foreign language ability, the country or continent he prefers, and other projects for which he qualifies.
Letters
I disagree with Mr. Koch's opinion expressed in Tuesday's Kansan that the Girls Staters will not get the best of treatment from the residents of Carruth-O'Leary Hall. As a counter-example I point with pride to the informal review given each morning and evening by the gentlemen of good old C. & O. as the citizens of the 1962 Kansas Girls State parade by the reviewing stand (the front steps of C. & O.). After all, would we not welcome them with open arms (if we ever get the chance, that is)? We are looking ahead to the fall of 1963 when the majority of these girls will attend KU (with, perhaps, a little less chaperoning) and again brighten our fair campus with their never-to-be-forgotten smiles. We the residents of Carruth-O'Leary Hall, welcome the Girls Staters and wish for them a most enjoyable experience.
Dear Editor:
Myron A. Calhoun
Federalist, 1958
Florida Boys State
Decline And Computers
By Dick West
WASHINGTON—(UPI)—Hardly a week goes by any more that some company doesn't contribute to man's decline by bringing out a new type of electronic computer.
This week's model, which went on display here today, is called "Cris." A product of the Information Retrieval Corp., it is billed as being "desk-sized."
The desk-size computer comes on the heels of a computing machine called the "Automated Realty Services Plan." Its purpose is to replace landlords, which in some ways could be a blessing.
IT SUPPOSEDLY performs all of the functions that a landlord performs, like notifying you that the rent is overdue.
The literature I have doesn't make clear, however, whether it puts poor widows out into the streets on snowy nights.
The electronic landlord apparently has one major advantage over the human variety. When you complain that your apartment isn't getting enough heat, it merely ignores your protest without giving you a lot of lip.
Another new type of computer, fortunately still in the experimental stage, may eventually replace the office secretary.
If it pans out, it will take dictation, translate the phonetic sounds into writing and type out the words without so much as a misplaced comma.
According to the Smithsonian Institution, which recently did some research on the subject, the culprit is a certain Charles Babbage, a professor at Cambridge University in England during the middle of the last century.
The only drawback is, it can't sit on the boss' lap.
IN VIEW of the havoc that computers are creating, you might be interested in knowing who started it all.
Babbage drew up a design for a computing device which was too complex for the technical skills of that day. Only part of the machine was built, but it was responsible for much that came later.
Any way you look at it, Babbage was a busy man. In addition to designing the first computer, he is the genius who invented the cowcatcher for locomotives.
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Steve Clark and
Karl Koch ... Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Bonnie McCullough and Bill Woodburn, Co-Business Mgrs.
IVANHOE, by Sir Walter Scott. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents.
KENILWORTH, by Sir Walter Scott. Doubleday Dolphin, $1.45.
QUENTIN DURWARD, by Sir Walter Scott. Doubleday Dolphin,
$1.45.
A true romantic, if there are any true romantics in matter-of-fact 1962, can be transported to a world of enchantment by reading these three novels. I read them for what one KU English professor contends is the wrong reason—for escape and enjoyment. I didn't read them to learn about life or about people. As a matter of fact, I would have failed had this been my purpose.
Scott's people are not real people. But oh, they are good fun. There is the lure of the forest and the chase, of damsels in distress, of good King Richard and Locksley (later revealed as Robin Hood, of course), of gloomy old castles and dungeons and moats and archery and duels and derring-do when knighthood was in flower.
"IVANHOE" IS A REAL STICK of a hero, and one who feels that the poor guy will stay forever on that sickbed after his jousting with old Bois-Guilibert (really not a bad chap, even if he is the villain). Tressilian is a pretty empty hero in "Kenilworth," too, leaving all the fun to that vile and entrancing knave, Richard Varney. But "Quentin Durward" is different. He is all boy, and his adventures in the France of King Louis' time are lightly enjoyable.
So it's off to Merrie Olde England. Let the critics say what they will: Scott is much better reading than Meredith, or whoever it is who occupies the honored place these days in English Lit.
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THE UGLY AMERICAN, by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. Crest Giant (Fawcett), 50 cents.
Reading a book that had a temporary and exciting vogue a few years before is like buying a pink shirt two years after such shirts have gone out of style. There are mixed feelings while reading "The Ugly American": the reader is perturbed and fascinated by what he is reading, but he knows at the same time that many experts—as well as governmental officials—have withered the reputation of the book to a certain extent.
Still, if even some of these things are being allowed to happen in countries where we are trying to make friends, and to fight communism, then it is a serious commentary on American foreign policy. The theme of how America represents itself to the rest of the world is not a new one. Long before Lederer and Burdick wrote this splashy sensation, Edwin Reischauer, our present ambassador to Japan, had asked some penetrating questions about how we sell ourselves in "Wanted: An Asian Policy."
How many would go into the "boondocks" and work with farmers and recognize the necessity to accommodate themselves to another kind of culture? We don't know. Fawcett asks, in a cover question, "Is President Kennedy's 'peace corps' the answer to the problem raised by this book?"
How many of our diplomats are able to speak the language of the country to which they are assigned? How many Americans are able to understand the culture of another country, and appreciate it, and not try to superimpose a supermarket way of life upon it?
Maybe, but not if our bright young folks go into other countries not like the "ugly American" but like Graham Greene's "Quiet American." absolutely sure that they have the answer to all problems, messiahs determined to force the American way upon others. As the American colonel said in "The Teahouse of the August Moon," "We'll teach 'em democracy if we have to shoot every damn one of 'em!"
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THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS AND OTHER STORIES, by Sarah Orne Jewett (Doubleday Anchor, 95 cents).
This beautiful book is not well enough known. Though the short stories are of most interest as local color glimpses of Maine folk of about 100 years ago, some of them have additional value, like the tale called "A White Heron," in which a 9-year-old girl tries to keep a young ornithologist from learning the secret of where the great bird nests.
"The Flight of Betsey Lane" is a lovely story, too—an old woman fleeing a poor farm and having herself a grand old time at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia. Others are good, but of most interest is "The Country of the Pointed Firs." This is one of our dozen or so greatest American novels.
IT IS ALMOST PLOTLESS. Basically it describes a young woman's stay in a Maine village, her talks with the herb woman, her trip into the interior country to see a woman who was born the same day as Queen Victoria, a trip to see an old woman on an island, a conversation with a retired sea captain who tells a strange tale about elusive people in the far north.
It is a story of old or aging people. There are few really young people in Sarah Orne Jewett's writings. But there is a feeling for the land, for the beauty of nature, that surpasses almost anything in our literature:
"When I thought we were in the heart of the inland country, we reached the top of a hill, and suddenly there lay spread out before us a wonderful great view of well-cleared fields that swept down to the wide water of the bay. Beyond this were distant shores like another country in the midday haze which half hid the hills beyond, and the far-away pale blue mountains on the northern horizon." —CMP
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FUEL FOR THE FLAME, by Alec Waugh (Bantam, 60 cents)—a recent novel by the author of "Island in the Sun." Waugh here moves to another exotic setting, the South China Sea, for a romantic story with the predictable components of lust and conflict. The plot concerns the head of an oil outfit, his wife, his daughter and her native lover, a fanatic rebel leader—a little, that is, of everything.