Page 2 University Daily Kansan Monday. Feb. 12, 1962 The YAF and Its Poll Another petty storm has struck the KU campus. The KU chapter of the ultra conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) has decided it must poll the political science and economics departments. The YAF's poll is supposed to determine if their suspicions that there are no conservatives among the faculties of these two departments are correct. Entirely aside from whether or not the members of YAF have the necessary qualifications to conduct a poll, it is obvious that their Goldwater definition of conservatism would make it difficult for them to find a faculty member to fit it. Sen. Earry Goldwater does not have many followers among either the teachers at KU or educators in general. THE REACTION of the faculty members of the two departments and of other student political groups to the idea of the YAF poll has been unfavorable. This is understandable and logical. The whole idea of the poll and its purpose is a negative one, and it resembles the harrassment the John Birch Society has directed against other educators far too much. could definitely take a more constructive approach in their activities. The YAF represents a political fringe element, just as Sen. Goldwater does. No responsible person would suggest that they should be denied the freedom to express their opinions, but they At a recent meeting the YAF voted to attempt to establish a conservative youth club at Lawrence High School, work for the resumption of nuclear testing, establish a statewide committee for Congressman Robert Dole and invite Sen. Goldwater to speak at KU on March 30. It would be far better for both YAF and the society they think needs to be remodeled in the Goldwater image if YAF devoted itself to activities like this that at least include a constructive approach. EVEN THIS is not likely to help YAF much, for like its patron saint Goldwater YAF usually is wrong in its approach to the solution of economic and political problems. Their main value lies in the fact that they question things that would otherwise not be challenged. Occasionally their criticism contains an element of truth that is worth considering. The poll plan of the YAF is important as an example of the ridiculous and sometimes dangerous ideas that political fringe groups often have, but the poll plan is hardly something that should be taken seriously. The YAF itself is important only as an example of the many political curiosities that come and go. William H. Mullins WHATEVER IT IS that is going on in the Kremlin, it is bringing to the fore an idea that would have gained little yardage in the not too distant past. A Relative Matter That idea is that roly-poly Nikita S. Khrushchev may not be such a bad fellow after all. This estimate is arrived at in the process of speculation not as an isolated judgment but on a basis of comparison. Compared with the other possible leaders of the world Communist bloc, Khrushchev is beginning to look pretty good. The assumption is that Khrushchev is in trouble at home. A number of signs point in that direction. The exact extent of his trouble is unknown, but the on-and-off mystery of V. M. Molotov's status and whereabouts, among other things, suggests that the old-line Stalinists are closing in. Possibly Khrushchev overstepped himself in forcing de-Stalinization. Having been a part of the Stalin apparatus, he may have been wrong in believing that he could attack it even at this late date without having his own role exposed. Whatever the facts of the Russian domestic situation may be, it becomes clearer every day that his program has split the Communist camp—in itself perhaps a fatal blunder. The dispute with China is out in the open and raging full blast. It is from China that the full effect of a Khrushchev reversal can begin to be seen. The Chinese alternate their sniping at Khrushchev with diatribes on the inevitability of war with the West. Just this week, all the major newspapers in Red China carried especially violent denunciations of the United States. President Kennedy came in for particular attack as a "Fascist." Khrushchev's policy of co-existence has no support at all in China. Were Mao Tse-tung's idea to prevail throughout the Communist world, war with the West would immediately advance from the stage of possibility to one of extreme probability. How closely the anti-Khrushchev forces in the Kremlin follow the Chinese line we have no way of knowing. But if Khrushchev were ousted at this point, Soviet policy would almost certainly take a turn for the worse from our point of view. Tough as he is, and as unpleasant to deal with, Khrushchev looks positively cherubic compared with Mao Tse-tung, and the Stalinists who are out for his scalp at home don't look much better than Mao. (An editorial in the Jan. 18 Chicago Daily News) Worth Repeating The best American designs have the solid, powerful, tidy, everything-in-place, nothing-superfluous quality of an old sailing ship . . . Another American look is the "Detroit" look. These designers have turned to the development of motorized jewelry, which has not only obscured the fundamental form of the automobile, but has begun to infect other types of products. To see what I mean, visit your local appliance dealer; many of the refrigerators and washing machines give you the feeling that you can drive them away.— Henry Dreyfuss --- I do not believe that the confrontation between Presidential candidates lends itself to projection via TV. The very fact of arousing the interest of the millions further lowers the level of campaign oratory that is usually not too high when each candidate performs solo.—Max Ascoli The Rough Edge The idea that the world will never be able to unite is ridiculous. All that is needed is some evidence that men from outer space are about to invade and the world will unite joyously to kill them off. The ultra conservatives may not know how to make any positive contributions to society, but they unquestionably know how to make negative ones. --- --- Studies now indicate that in the event of a nuclear war between the Communist bloc and the West, the Southern Hemisphere would escape destruction, which would allow them to have their own nuclear war. --- It ought to be quite deflating for both sides if teachers and students could listen to each other's candid discussions of the other group. ★ ★ ★ Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.— Napoleon --- The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.—Rene Descartes **** Frankly, the statue named "The Avenger" that the class of 1961 presented to KU looks like someone avenged it. The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.— Henry James * * University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, trillweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912. Dailu Hansan Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. NY News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan. every afternoon during the University. Must possess curricular background. Required holiday and examination periods. Second class postage maid at Lawrence, Kansas. Ron Gallagher Managing Editor Kelly Smith, Carrie Merryfield, Clayton Managing Editors Jerry Musli Editor; Martha Moret Society Editor. NEWS DEPARTMENT EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Bill Moore, Assistant Editor Karl Koeb, Assistant Editorial Editor BUSINESS DEPARTMENT BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Charles Martinache. Business Manager Alah Smith, Advertising Manager迪 Mariam Zakaria, Marketing Susanne Ellermeier, Circulation Manager; Bonnie McCullough, National Advertising Manager. "Giddiyap!" By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism HITLER: A STUDY IN TYRANNY, by Alan Bullock. Bantam, 95 cents. This is probably the standard biography of Hitler, and it should be required reading for some of our bright young folks who talk so glibly about ideologies and say that maybe old Hitler wasn't such a bad guy after all, that he had the Communists figured, and that he also had democracies figured. Too many representatives of the current college generation know Hitler only as a name. This book offers a complete portrait of the man. It offers more than that. Not only Hitler but his whole slimy gang, almost all gutter rats, are paraded here for the reader. It is all done in meticulous detail, for this is a book of great scholarship. In fact, the scholarship might prove overwhelming to the casual reader, especially if he has read William L. Shirer's much more readable "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." "It has been widely denied in Germany since the war that any but a handful of Germans at the head of the S.S. knew of the scope or savagery of these measures against the Jews. One man certainly knew. For one man they were the logical realization of views which he had held since his twenties, the necessary preliminary to the plans he had formed for the resettlement of Europe on solid racial foundations. That man was Adolph Hitler." BULLOCK DOES NOT PURPORT to tell the story of the Nazi party as such, and he tells us much less about the savagery and degeneracy of the Jewish purges. On the score of Jewish treatment. Bullock says this: Bullock feels that the entire Nazi movement was a negative thing. It gave nothing to the world, it destroyed much. It was not a great revolution in the old sense of great revolutions, he says, for its sole theme was force and domination. Bullock accords Hitler a special place in history—alongside Attila the Hun. * * APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, by John O'Hara. Signet, 50 cents. That first encounter with John O'Hara's people can be a disturbing one. As I recall, I first read "Appointment in Samarra" when I was about the same age as O'Hara's hero, Julian English. It was difficult for me to believe in Julian. Either he was phoney or I was incredibly naive. His responses, his attitudes, the world in which he moved seemed completely alien. The intervening years, plus large doses of O'Hara in "Ten North Frederick" and "A Rage to Live," have made Julian English ring a little truer. Many of us have been exposed to O'Hara types, his country club set, his heavy drinkers and ever-on-the-prowl love-makers, both male and female. My response to the novel today is that it is extremely well done but that it is not worth the trouble. Granted that Julian English was headed for disaster even before he threw the highball in Harry Reilly's face. That simple act alone did not doom him to suicide and an appointment with death in Samarra. But he may have been able to forestall disaster. It all seems so petty and meaningless somehow. O'Hara is best as a painter of a segment of society—an almost upper-middle-class segment. people who are almost a-cultural. He had a fine feeling for realism when he wrote this novel in 1934, and in my opinion nothing he has done since is demonstrably better.