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University Daily Kansan Thursday, May 17, 1962
Wichita University
Tuesday Gov. John Anderson re-opened discussion here on the proposed acceptance of Wichita University into the state educational system. Immediately many opinions were forwarded by faculty members about the advisability of such a move.
The governor, who has always contended that Wichita University should be added to the state system, brought out two points which he feels make the idea feasible. He said restricting that institution to study only on the undergraduate level would cost the state less and take less funds from state allocations for education. The other point of note is that the governor said that since Wichita is the largest population center of the state, it would be less expensive to take over the university now than to try to expand facilities at other state schools.
THE SPEECH by Gov. Anderson comes 14 months after action by the Kansas Legislature to refer a bill bringing Wichita University into the state system to the legislative council for an interim study. This move virtually stopped any chance Wichita had of becoming a state university for two years. This places a date for the earliest action about 10 months away.
Comment here last spring was against any move to incorporate the Wichita school into the state system. The basic reasoning was that such
THE IDEA OF the addition of Wichita University was somewhat of a shocking one last year and apparently has caused the same reaction with the governor's talk this week. But there is no cause for excitement at this time. Wichita University cannot encroach further upon the Kansas tax dollar at least until a year from now.
an addition would hamper KU's hopes of continued expansion and growth as a progressive university. The move in the Legislature which forced the bill into committee—where it was stalemated—was spearheaded by a State Representative from Lawrence. Therefore the governor made his remarks in one of the places in the state which is most strongly against the move to elevate Wichita University to the stature of a state university.
But this is not the real issue. The real issue is whether or not the state should spend money building facilities to handle rapidly increasing enrollments when those facilities are available free. This is the key factor in the controversy.
Gov. Anderson's decision to make such remarks at this time here might be construed to be the start of a new move in this area. The Legislature convenes again next year and will be able to take action at that time.
Bill Sheldon
From the Magazine Rack
Force as a Language
During the past few years, in various parts of the world, I have had a substantial number of private discussions with Soviet citizens — professors, scientists, writers, churchmen, artists, and everyday people. I have tried to find out how they view the United States, how they justify or explain Soviet policy, and how they see the future.
Two main lines of thought seem to be reflected in the Soviet view of the world in general and the United States in particular. One line tends to favor a consistent development away from the kind of absolutism represented by Joseph Stalin. It envisions a steady upgrading in the standard of living, in the importance of educated people, and in the government's intercourse with the rest of the world, especially the West. Those who are identified with this view believe it possible for the Soviet Union and the United States ultimately to resolve their differences, or at least to keep them from bursting into flame.
THE SECOND line of thought, which has gained in strength since the U-2 episode, tends to take a somewhat sterner and more cynical view of events. It believes that no fundamental change in world tensions is likely to come about until the Soviet Union resolves the present world balance-of-power struggle in its favor. Accordingly, it justifies the Soviet unilateral resolutions of nuclear testing on military grounds. It feels that production of consumer goods, especially of conveniences and private automobiles, should be set aside or sharply reduced in favor of armaments.
Proponents of this viewpoint seem to feel that the only way to deal with the United States is from a posture of superior strength. They believe it dangerous to allow the
United States to possess a decided nuclear advantage, fearing this might tempt the American military to make a serious miscalculation. They see, as another reason for resuming the tests, the need to convince the United States that the Soviet Union is serious about Berlin and would not back down because of the horrors of a possible nuclear showdown. (Chairman Khrushchev was asked by a fairly sympathetic correspondent how he could justify the decision to resume nuclear testing in view of everything he himself had said about both the hazard of radioactive fallout and the dangers of stepping up the pace of the arms race. Mr. Khrushchev replied: "When you're worried about being taken to the guillotine, you don't fret about your hairido.")
BASIC TO this line or reasoning is the belief that the United States understands and respects only one language: the language of force. Thus it is held that the United States would be willing to enter into serious negotiations only when the Soviet Union possesses preponderant military strength. There was some advance opposition early last year to the scheduled June meeting in Vienna between President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev. It was feared that if no basic amelioration were produced by the talks, Chairman Khrushchev would lose prestige with his own people, for their hopes would once again have been raised — only to be thwarted.
Proponents of this second school do not go all the way with the Chinese Communist ideologists who contend that there is no use talking about peace since the United States has already declared war on the Communist world. Nor do they fully accept the Chinese view
that war is inevitable at some point because it is built into the nature of capitalism. But they feel the Soviet Union must be totally prepared, nonetheless, for a nuclear showdown.
FUNDAMENTALLY, then, this second school is heavily conditioned by traditional military and real-politic reasoning. The main danger it represents is that the very measures taken to augment the Soviet military position actually add to the risk of nuclear war, which the Soviet Union couldn't possibly survive, any more than could anyone else. When Mr. Khrushchev brandished his fifty-megaton bomb last fall, he did not intimidate the United States. Quite the opposite: he helped to insure that the United States would undertake new nuclear tests of its own. By assuming that the United States would understand only the language of force, this group itself is committed to the language of force, again adding gravely to the chances of war.
It is not likely that this second group — or even the first, for that matter — is apt to respond readily to the idea that national security in a nuclear age is obtainable only through a world organization possessing the authority of enforceable world law. Ideas of absolute national sovereignty are too strongly ingrained in the Soviet Union to warrant any hope that rapid progress can be made in this direction. But if enough people throughout the world rally around this concept and regard it as their best chance for purposeful survival, there is some chance that a new line of thought on the Soviet Union may begin to emerge. Such a powerful and genuine world momentum in the direction of law may help to build up salutary pressures inside the Soviet Union.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Daily Hansan
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1004, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912 Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
In this editorial, emphasis has been given to the second group for three reasons: First, because this group is becoming increasingly potent in the decision-making machinery of the Soviet Union — in direct proportion to the acceleration of world tensions. Second, because the growth of the second group indicates that the confrontation with the Soviet Union today is becoming more and more national, rather than ideological, in character. Third, because certain similarities may be discerned between the Soviet second group and its counterpart in the United States.
Member Inland 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.
(An editorial in the May 10 issue of the Saturday Review)
By Carl Leonard Brookfield, Ill., junior
NO HIGH GROUND: THE STORY OF THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB, by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey. New York, (Harper and Brothers) 1960.
Jeppson had started his own count when the tone signal ceased. Now he was nearing the end. 39 . . . 40 . . . 41 . . . 42 . . . 43. Jeppson stopped the count. The thought flashed through his brain: "It's a dud!"
At that instant, the world went purple in a flash before Caron's eyes. His eyelids shut involuntarily behind his goggles . . . Bob Caron had been looking at an explosion which in a slice of time too small for any stop watch to measure, had become a ball of fire eighteen hundred feet across with a temperature at its center of one hundred million degrees. Such was Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) at precisely 8:16 on the first Monday morning of August, 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
So climaxed the story of the first atomic bomb. Authors Knebel and Bailey have undertaken, with obvious exhaustive research, to explain the story of the events leading up to and after that fatal Monday morning over Hiroshima.
THE READER is led through the painstaking preparations of General Groves' Manhattan Project, a project which was to create an atom bomb before the enemy could, and is given a true insight into the immensity of the security problems imposed by such a project. The scene is switched from Tokyo, where Hirohito and his ministers struggle with surrender, to Potsdam, where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin decide the fate of the Japanese empire. The authors go into extreme detail with descriptions of the city of Hiroshima and the individuals who were to experience the horrors of the atomic age.
Back in the United States, the Manhattan Project's personnel work night and day at now historic places such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the squash courts under the football stands at the University of Chicago and the laboratories at Los Alamos, New Mexico to create the parts that would make up the bomb called "Little Boy." One is given an opportunity to meet the scientists, and to learn of their anxieties about the Frankenstein monster they were creating. Each crew member of the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay" is introduced in seemingly irrelevant detail, but all helps to increase the drama of this remarkable story.
SUDDENLY. THE reader finds himself up in the "Gay" with her crew, looking at the Japanese coastline in the morning sunlight. And just as suddenly it is over—over for 78,000 of Hiroshima's inhabitants. Now the scene is one of devastation, explained through the eyes of the survivors. A full chapter is devoted to implanting the terrifying results of atomic warfare in the mind of the reader.
All in all, a very commendable job has been done in relating the story behind the facts and figures of the Manhattan Project. "No High Ground" is an especially valuable reading experience in these times when bombs—such as "Little Boy," but certainly many times more powerful—are being used to threaten the peoples of the world.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
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"LET'S SEE A COPY O YER GRADES—I LOST $168~ IN RENT LAST YEAR WHEN A PAIR O MY DUMMIES QUIT SCHOOL APTER MID-TERMS."