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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, April 24, 1963
HERBLOCK'S CARTOON
Worry If the Talk Stops
The disarmament talks in Geneva have been running more than a year, and on the surface there appears to be no progress.
While both the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly have acknowledged that nuclear war probably would end Western civilization as we now know it, both sides apparently refuse to erase the basic differences which cause the danger.
But there is no value in wallowing in a morass of inevitable destruction.
THIS FAILURE TO absolve differences leads many people to assume that nuclear war is inevitable; the antagonists are on a collision course with both parties picking up steam.
Thankfully, the U.S. and Soviet leaders act in a manner which would indicate that they doubt the inevitability of nuclear destruction.
IF FOR NO OTHER reason, a disarmament agreement will not be put into effect because neither side will trust the other, and the Soviets refuse on-site inspections.
But while the principal goal of the Geneva conferences probably will not be met, the antagonists are talking. And the more they talk, in attempts to define and understand more clearly the basic differences, the higher the chances they will not turn to war as a final solution.
It is generally believed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union will make a calculated, planned decision to start a nuclear war; neither side would serve national interests by triggering total destruction.
BUT THE DANGER of accidental war is another matter. An invulnerable deterrent, which is the bulwark of the U.S. defense, requires spreading your counter-punch capacity over a wide area. While this lessens the chance for an enemy to knock out punch, it also increases the problems of controlling the weapons.
THE MUCH-PUBLICIZED "hot line" between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev is to be used to prevent nuclear war by misunderstanding. It resulted from talks at Geneva.
Of course, this may not prevent war, even accidental war, but it certainly is an improvement—a step in the proper direction.
If the threat of nuclear war is to be dissolved, the two antagonists must dissolve their basic differences. Certainly, this hope is nothing but a pipe dream at the present time,but it is the best we can hope for.
The irony of the world being bathed in nuclear fire as a reaction to an accidentally fired missile would not lessen the disastrous results.
The only way to negotiate differences (outside of fighting) is to talk. They are talking; we should start worrying when the talk stops.
- Terry Murphy
"Some Day We'll Have To Get This Thing Finished"
Weather Control Possible Key to Water Control
Rv Terry Murphy
Water: we drink it, wash with it, and generally take it for granted even while knowing what a precious resource it is.
Its importance is historic: men have fought range wars and other wars when access lanes to reservoirs were closed or regulated. Federal court dockets are jammed with cases in which large cities fight for the vital right to tap large pools, both underground and on the surface.
These are manifestations of the struggle which boils down to this: Water—how and by whom shall it be controlled and to what ends?
The most obvious means of water control seen throughout the world is dams.
Dams vary in size and form, from those used to create farm ponds for watering livestock, to the monuments to engineering which stretch across miles-wide valley floors with bases measured in width into hundreds of feet.
Regardless of size or form, all dams serve one common function: the storage of water. They are designed to make the most effective possible use of water.
Man has been dependent on dams for much of his recreation, electric power, irrigation, navigation and, most important, for drinking water and hygiene.
As the dependence on dams has grown, the emphasis has shifted to erecting what are termed multipurpose reservoirs. The term dam fails to convey the multiple role the structures have come to assume.
One of the more spectacular examples of multipurpose reservoirs is Lake Mead. When the lake was formed by backwaters from Hoover Dam, recreation was a distant second to the basic purpose of storing water for irrigation and flood control.
But Lake Mead has become as renowned as a recreation area as a flood control project. The same probably will hold true for the recently completed Tuttle Creek Dam project north of Manhattan. Yet the original Tuttle Creek furor was grounded in conflicting views about the best method of watershed control.
As important and prominent as lakes are, both natural and man-made, they remain just one consideration in the entire picture of water resources.
Oceans are the largest reservoirs. Like lakes and ponds they provide recreation, but the prime importance of oceans lies in their value to transportation, both of goods and ideas.
One hope for reclaiming arid
The principal difference between the Sahara Desert and rich river-bottom land is the absence of water in one and the plenitude in the other.
Another source, wells, supplies enough water to make areas of marginal precipitation support life. But wells always represent a second choice as a water supply. Surface water presents many obvious advantages.
As valuable as water is to man, it represents a threat to his continued existence. When not in the relatively calm state in lakes or slowly-moving streams, water threatens property, life, and most importantly, the top-soil from which man exacts food for life.
But the inaccessibility of ground water does not lessen its importance. Without groundwater, important streams would be dry except during and immediately after storms.
Dailij 17änsan
lands lies with the success of men working toward an economically feasible means of distilling salt water. This could hold the solution to the problem of supplying cities with water to meet domestic needs.
A less obvious, but just as important, source of water lies beneath the surface of the earth, out of sight and beyond practical methods of control.
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
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Fred Zimmerman
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Branstiter
Managing Lato.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Each spring, we know that at least one section of the country will be inundated by river water which leaps it banks and leaves property damage totaling millions of dollars, not too mention the lives lost.
Editorial Editor
Jack Cannon
Floods are familiar disasters to everyone; persons living in mountain areas can attest to the fact that water—in its various forms—kills and destroys in other ways.
Business Manager
Snowslides have made news often enough to familiarize most people with their effects. More rare and proportionately more destructive are earth slides or mud slides. A complete village
in Peru and nearly all its 200 inhabitants perished last year in a mud slide that resulted from water than ran unharnessed.
The people of the Midwest are well aware of the problems tied to too little or too much water; the region's economic base rides on the measure of moisture.
But dangerous as water in motion is, its value to transportation has been and remains an important determinant in the economic and political strength of regions and even nations.
Here in the Midwest the battle between the big dam forces and the catch-it-where-it-falls advocates has shifted local attention away from the importance of rivers as transport avenues, but it is merely a provincial blind spot.
But provincial conditions blind us to the problem, which is neither too little nor too much water, but rather whether the water present can drain properly.
Fast-evaporating water flowing down slopes in thin sheets produce alkali flats, unfit for crops or grazing land for livestock. The reverse situation, where evaporation is minimal, produces marshes. Economically, such land is uninhabitable. Politically, the field marshals of Hitler will certify that one famous marsh, the Parapet in west-central Russia, greatly influenced the tide of world affairs.
The importance of water is a subject which, perhaps, is so obvious that it is of little avail to discuss it. They key to this sentiment is found in the expression, "the weather; everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it."
This old saw is losing its teeth of truth, especially in light of developments since World War II.
The entire strategy of attacking "Fortress Europe" swung as a pendulum on the thin thread of predicting the weather conditions; specifically, the end of the spring storms.
In Italy, Allied offensive efforts appeared doomed to failure in the slow-moving muck; the predicted ends of the rains made an important diversionary action possible.
The major Allied thrust in Normandy was nearly called off because of storm-chopped waters in the English Channel. Had the invasion been delayed, the loss of surprise would have been measured in the loss of lives.
Despite ever-foaming detergents and other pollutants which plague water conservationists, man apparently has mastered the technology of managing water resources after they have reached the surface of the earth.
Presently successes which are timid in light of final goals include the "salting" of rain clouds to precipitate rainfall. In 1963, the business of successful Indian rain dances is the concern of scientists.
The task of manipulating the atmospheric conditions is the new challenge. Don't bet against gradual success.
In an age when men orbit the earth and return to tell, no one laughs very loudly when meteorologists speak of controlling the amount, time and location of precipitation.
If science can provide moisture in the amounts at the time and place desired, the task of feeding the world will be made easier.
Letters Minutemen
I hope that those who read or heard the talk of Mr. De Fugh, on Thursday, April 18, in the Minority Forum, noticed that the only difference between his speech and those of the Nazi leaders in Germany 30 years ago is that Mr. De Pugh did not deliver his speech in the German language.
Ruth Adam
Lawrence graduate student