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University Daily Kansan Thursday. April 26,1962
The Test Resumption
The United States resumed nuclear testing yesterday. It was the first atmospheric test since 1958.
There were many critics against the resumption. Students on this campus and others held protest marches. Other critics raised loud voices about the dangers inherent in the United States resuming nuclear testing. The Japanese government lodged a formal protest against test resumption. A group of Japanese students rioted against the resumption of tests.
The Russians have used the United States resumption of tests as a peg for a massive propaganda campaign. Their campaign could perhaps be expected to succeed in neutralist countries, or countries with communist leanings.
Undoubtedly, there will be more protests. More theories will be advanced against the tests. Some will even be as hopelessly illogical as the one advanced by one of the KU marchers. His sign read; "Isn't Russia a Neighbor."
But judging from events within the United States, such as the peace marchers proclaiming that we should love our neighbor, and that Russia is a neighbor, the propaganda campaign seems to have succeeded best in the United States.
THE RUSSIANS broke the test moratorium with their atmospheric tests last year. They have halted temporarily, but there is no valid reason to suppose that they would halt indefinitely even if the United States did not resume its own tests. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko announced Tuesday that Russian tests will follow the United States' tests.
In short, Russia launched their propaganda campaign on the fact that the United States had resumed testing (after the Russians had already broken the moratorium). This, they said, proved the United States did not want peace. Now Russia is doing the same thing for which they criticized the United States, and by using their logic, which is so often accepted as valid. Russia is also guilty by their own standards. But this is not the logic in point.
THE UNITED STATES has no guarantees that Russia would not resume testing. With the Geneva conference headed toward a dead end as far as the United States is concerned because of the disagreements on setting up international inspection teams, the United States had no choice but to start testing. It was necessary that the United States keep up her end of the power balance scale.
It is probably a good bet that these tests will involve perfecting an anti-missile missile. Both Russian and the United States are racing to develop this device. The winner will greatly shift the power scale to its advantage.
The United States test plan calls for detonating nuclear warheads for all types of intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
The United States resumption of testing does keep the arms race spiraling. But at present there appears no alternative.
—Karl Koch
CRC's Dormitory Probe Criticized Editor;
I am writing in regard to the article published in the April 17 Kansas entitled "The Dormitory Probe." As a fresh student living in Corbin Hall, I am aware that Negro women are roomed separately from the white women in the freshman dormitories. This letter is not meant as a rebuff to you but to the Civil Rights Council.
First of all, I do not believe that there have been any hard feelings among the white or the Negro women in our dormitory because we are in separate rooms. As a matter of fact, the Negro women are happy in their own groups. They have their friends just as the white women do. There are Negro women in Corbin who get along better with white women and they do so without incidents. Therefore I do not believe that separate rooms cause discriminatory feelings among the residents of this dormitory.
There is also the statement that "dormitory residents have the privilege of changing rooms." The CRC will take note: the present ruling allows room changes only at the beginnings of semesters. Those women assigned during the summer to room together the first freshman semester are required to do so. No changes can be made until the second semester. Roommates who found themselves incompatible at the beginning of this year found no relief until they were able to change rooms during semester break.
If freshman room assignments are to be made at random without regard to race, then one of two conditions should exist: (1) Room changes should be able to be made at the beginning of the first semester, say, for a period of two weeks, or (2) Applicants for rooms in freshman dormitories should be able to specify whether or not they would mind having a woman of another race for a roommate.
... Letters ...
THE STATEMENT that "a demand by the CRC that an ideal procedure be established in which any discriminatory feelings among freshman women should be ignored because they are morally indefensible" would undoubtedly create problems which we do not have now. The drunken orgies which take place on weekends here are as "morally indefensible" as the university's alleged discrimination, but to my knowledge they have yet to be attacked by the CRC.
I do not disapprove of women of
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
different races rooming together. I have known many women of other races that I would much rather have as roommates than many white women I know. However, I feel that each woman should have a personal say in the matter of her own roommate. This would alleviate unpleasant experiences, especially when freshman women come face to face with their roommates for the first time.
I hope that the CRC, in challenging the practices of the university, will take these things into account. Radical changes cannot and must not be made without consideration of the feelings of the individuals involved.
Carolyn Kunz
Carolyn Kunz
Greenville, S. C., freshman
** **
CRC's Methods Termed Harmful Editor:
Our civil rights enthusiasts have given the Constitution of the United States a fresh interpretation. According to their sermons, the dear old document contains only two items—a preamble and the 14th Amendment. But it contains much more than that. Think of these things in reference to Greek organizations at KU. Remember that all fraternities and sororites here are part of national organizations — each of them is incorporated.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, freedom of property and freedom of life. To me, the latter of these could just as easily be interpreted as the right to choose with whom you wish to live as "equal protection of the laws" can be interpreted to mean integration.
A word about interpretation of the Constitution — the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court. Contrary to popular belief, they are not infallible. In fact statistics show that a majority of Supreme Court decisions have been reversed at some time or another. Supreme Court Justices are, after all, human, and just as susceptible to the passions of the civil rights mania as anyone.
AND WHAT about the Negro? Through all this panic he is probably being treated even more cruelly than he was under the whips of slavemasters. He is something worse than a slave now. He is a political pawn — a stepping stone for all zealous young politicians. Very often the martyr of civil rights is not a martyr at all. It may not be common knowledge
but the much heralded Martin Luther King had to be escorted out of the city of Montgomery, Alabama, by police guards following the bus boycott of several years ago. His own people wanted to lynch him.
Naturally, the Negro is sincere in the drive. His passions have been built to such a pitch by NAACP "moralists" (many of whom are white, including 90 per cent of the national officers) that he cannot help sincerity. But, according to the words of the Negro's own revered Booker T. Washington, "Rights come only as they are earned."
FORCE accomplishes nothing — particularly force by hypocrites — the more force that is applied, the longer the average citizen will resist. Force only sets progress back — even force known as "moral suasion." Clauses or no clauses, Greeks still have the right to cling to the membership vote and the blackball — and that's all that's necessary.
No, my fine, free friends of the CRC, civil rights by force is neither morally nor religiously correct. It is never correct to make footballs out of people's natural emotions and weaknesses. Neither is it right to take the rights of one group, so that another may have more. The issue of rights is a two-sided coin. The Constitution guarantees rights to all people, and it is in violation of democracy that anyone's rights be involuntarily sacrificed.
Tom Turner
Kalamazoo, Mich., senior
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"IN CONTRAST—DURING 600 A.D. THE ...DURING 600...THE..."
By Bernard W. Eissenstat
Assistant Director of the Western Civilization Program
PETER THE GREAT, by Vasili Klyuchevsky, translated with an introduction and notes by Liliana Archibald (Vintage Russian Library, No. V-728) New York: Random House, 1961, $1.25.
PROFESSOR Klyuchevsky's major thesis is that Tsar Peter became a reformer by accident and quite unwillingly. In Russia, successful wars have usually served to secure the status quo, whereas unsuccessful wars have provoked such internal dissent that the government has been forced to institute some domestic reform. "Reforms at home were commonly achieved at the price of disaster abroad." During the Petrine period this relationship was reversed. In order to force the wars to successful conclusions, the Russian government had to institute reforms, the nature of which were dictated by the requirements of the military engagements. The concurrent attempts to pursue war and institute reforms proved to be impractical because war impeded reform and "reform prolonged war."
Vasili Klyuchevsky is considered by contemporary historians to be one of the great Russian historians. The son of a village priest, he was born in 1841 in Penza, located on the navigable Sura River, in East Central RSFSR, and now the capital of the Penza "oblast." In 1861, the year of the serf Emancipation Proclamation, Klyuchevsky enrolled in the University of Moscow, where he studied under another great native Russian historian, Sergei Soloviev. Eventually he was given the chair of History at the University of Moscow, when Soloviev became too ill to carry on his academic duties in 1879, and held it until his death.
Peter, in attempts to conclude Russia's war successfully, was forced to institute military and financial reforms, and these led inevitably into social and religious reforms. He wanted not only to catch up with Western Europe's economic and military might, but also to exceed it. The attempts to achieve this led to a struggle "between the despot and the people's inertia." Even so, however, Klyuchevsky concludes that the Tsar's attempts at reform contributed to the public good and had long range beneficial effect on the development of the Russian state.
THE TRANSLATOR has lost none of the author's beautiful and moving literary style and her footnotes are invaluable. To add to an already bountiful offering, Professor Archibald has added a glossary of important Russian terms, translated into English. If "Peter the Great" has a failing it is that Professor Klyuchevsky has emphasized the social and economic history of the period and has almost ignored other aspects, such as religious, political, etc. The book, however, is worthwhile for anyone who has an interest in people or history and a "must" for those who are interested in Russian history.
All who are interested in Russian history owe Kilyuchevsky a great debt for his "Kurs Russkoi Istorii" ("A Course of Russian History") and for his other historical works. "Peter the Great" is part of the fourth volume of the five volume "Kure Russkoi Istorii" and is based on the 1937 edition, published by the Soviet state publishing house. The book is primarily concerned with the social and economic history of the Russian people in the first quarter of the eighteenth century and gives perceptive and sympathetic portrait of the character and personality of Tsar Peter I.