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University Daily Kansan Monday, April 15, 1
Nasser's New UAR
The recent political upheavals in Syria and Iraq have given a new push to Arab unity.
Although the latest Syrian revolt was openly a move toward union with Nasser's Egypt, the Iraqi revolt was supposed to be primarily anticoommunist housecleaning. It now appears that the drive against Iraqi communists was secondary, at least in consequence.
THE NEW United Arab Republic looks like a re-run of the one that collapsed in 1961. Once again, Nasser will be top man in the regime, and the capital will be at Cairo. There is little surprise in seeing Nasser on top. The crackup of the Egyptian-Syrian UAR was in part a reflection of fear of Nasser's dominance. This is the same dominance that offers the best possibility for achieving real Arab unity.
The new UAR is not just a loose federation of independent states but actually one nation, at least where external matters are concerned. The new central government at Cairo will control foreign affairs, defense, economic planning, currency, foreign trade, customs and taxes. The three "regions," as the member nations will be called, will give up their separate seats in the UN and hold just one seat.
That Egypt has no common border with Syria and Iraq could create some problems for the new republic, but apparently Arab leaders are not too worried about this detail. The most likely additions to the new UAR are even further from Cairo than Syria and Iraq. Although Yemen is not too far away, it hardly is a geographical part of anything except Saudi Arabia. And Algeria,
another candidate for membership in the UAR is even farther from Cairo than Yemen is.
IT IS unlikely that Nasser has overlooked the problems that might arise from the scattered positions of the Arab nations he wants to unify. This probably is a situation he would have avoided if possible, but Nasser he would take whatever countries he can get. And Syria and Iraq, with the possible addition of Yemen and Algeria, were the countries available at the moment. No doubt Nasser hopes to fill in the gaps before the scattered geographical locations can become a great enough problem to cause a split.
Geographical disunity could lead indirectly to political disunity. The geographical disunity creates administrative problems, and the administrative problems could lead to dissatisfaction and political unrest, which in turn could split the union into its original parts.
The key to political unity will be military unity, for politics within the member "regions" traditionally depend on support from the military for survival. In this respect, Nasser may have the key to holding the UAR together.
NASSER'S NEW German-designed rockets could become the key to military unity. Nasser's rocket force should be very attractive to the militarists of all Arab nations. These rockets, small by comparison with the giant ICBM's of Russia and the United States, nonetheless are a symbol of the military strength longed for by Arab army chieftains.
Nasser and rockets could be just the right combination to hold the new UAR together.
— Dennis Branstiter
THE LINCOLN NOBODY KNOWS, by Richard N. Current (American Century, $1.95).
Richard N. Current, a professor of history at Wisconsin, tells us that his title was inspired by Bruce Barton, who in "The Man Nobody Knows" told us some years ago that Jesus was a good advertising man. Current also tells us that he still finds much mysterious about Lincoln, and that he doesn't find him as simplified for posterity as Barton found Jesus.
So, as we continue to plow through the Civil War centennial, we have more illuminating reading matter about the Great Emancipator. This is some of the best. Current studies Lincoln as "the most shut-mouthed man," as family man, as man either greatly influenced or little influenced by organized religion, as opponent of slavery and wartime president, as military leader, as compassionate savior, as Republican politician, as uniter of the sections.
And finally, a chapter called "The Martyr and the Myth." Almost 100 years after his assassination, Lincoln remains an enigma. In his very remaining an enigma he also remains our most beloved national figure.
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THE DISINHERITED, by Jack Conroy (American Century, $1.95 paperback).
It is not purely proletarian, for Conroy was too interested in writing to turn his novel into a polemic. It is basically a story of life in the depression, with episode after episode detailing the grim life being lived by so many in the pre-New Deal days.
In his introduction, Daniel Aaron says: "The casual laborers who appear and disappear in its pages are precisely the men one might have met in the early thirties working in the mines and railroad shops and rubber plants, digging pipelines, hustling bags of beet pulp, paving roads, or scrambling to keep up with the speed-ups in the Detroit assembly lines."
MADE IN AMERICA, by John A. Kouwenhoven (Doubleday Anchor, $1.45).
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Though not nearly so well known as Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle" or Farell's "Studs Lonigan," to mention two books of the thirties, Jack Conroy's "The Disinherited" deserves a special position in literary history. In its day, though it was never a tremendous bestseller, it was a vivid description of class conflict, and was widely hailed by many critics.
By this tradition Kouwenhoven refers to the unself-conscious efforts of Americans to create satisfying patterns out of their environment. So he deals with technology, architecture, the fine arts, movies, literature, and jazz. These, he maintains, are intrinsically American, and the examples he includes prove the point.
Fascinating, entertaining and perceptive is this little book, which is almost a standard in American studies. Kouwenhoven's central thesis is that America has a culture worthy of analysis by any scholar and any other civilization—in its "vernacular tradition."
The machine, early American buildings, the work of the Pennsylvania Dutch, the skyscraper, the penny newspaper, the cotton gin, the writings of Mark Twain—all of these are cited by Kouwenhoven. The book is consistently readable and challenging.
Letters
Car Pools
I noticed with some annoyance Thursday, April 3, that the many cars racing about the campus, and particularly one red jeep, constituted both a definite menace to safety and an irritant to those more profitably engaged, as a result of various and noisy honking contests.
Can't someplace besides a university campus be provided for these people to play their games?
James F. Girard
Wichita freshman
Short Ones
Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. — Mark Twain.
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Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy. —Havelock Ellis
Man is the Only Animal that blushes. Or needs to.—Mark Twain
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
MENT
Fred Zimmerman
Management Editor
Bru, Marshall. Bill. Sheldon.
Mike Miller, Art Miller, Margaret
Cathcart Assistant Managing Editors
Scott Payne City Editor
Stuart Clark Sports Editor
Trucky Reserve and
Jackie Stern Co-Society Editors
Murrel Bland Photograph Editor
BORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Brauner  Editor
Terry Murphy  Asst. Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jack Cannon ... Business Manager;
Jim Stevens, Asst. Business Mgr;
Mike Carson, Advertising Mgr; Joan
Moore, Marketing Mgr; John
Brooks Harrison, Classified Mgr; Bob
Brooks, National Adv. Mgr; Charles
Hayward, Promotion Mgr; Bill Finley,
Merchandising Mgr.
Sound and Fury
Disarmament To Cut Distrust
Certain arguments would lead you to believe that unilateral initiatives entail immediate destruction of our entire weapons complex; thus leaving ourselves defenseless. This is simply not true. Unilateral initiatives do not mean unilateral disarmament. Mr. Peter Allen's initiatives are precisely what would lessen Mr. Robert Ash's "... distrust that ranges itself along the world's borders..."
The communists distrust the U.S. in part because the U.S. has "several thousand" nuclear weapons in Europe alone. Forty-two "nasty" nuclear missiles in Cuba distressed the Americans deeply, but they calmly expect the people of the world to accept U.S. missiles as messengers of peace.
DESPITE THE militarists' screams for more and better missiles, I for one will be hard to convince that a nation which possesses nuclear capability for some 20 times over-kill, worth some 10 tons of TNT for every human being on earth, is going to impair its defense capability by removing two or three bases from foreign shores. Disengagement of this kind would be acts of good faith, attempts to convince others that your intentions to lessen world tension are sincere and legitimate.
Maintaining that after four or five such actions Mr. K. & Co. would not take some comparable action belittles certain facts: Mr. K. & Co. are continuously attempting to cast themselves as the agents of peace; the emerging and non-aligned nations, whose favor Russia so hopes to curry, are continually bringing up resolutions, explicit in their demands for peace, in the UN; the Russian people prefer peace; these people have some influence over their system; the Russian communists would like immediately to enlarge their consumer economic sphere; the communists can be talked, as in the past, into alternative courses of action. The point is, we have nothing to lose and something to gain by taking unprecedented steps to resolve unprecedented situations. A small step away from war, taken by Russia and America, is of more value than large steps toward war.
LONG TERM nuclear commitment has pushed the "battle for men's minds" into a poor second place, and refuses to face the inevitability of war when in the future 20 or 30 nations have "independent" nuclear deterrents. Purporting that communism can be beaten by exporting "bombs and dollars" rather than freedom and justice is saying that "containment" has worked. Nuclear weapons should have been only a method of buying time, but because of the lack of positive action by the people and the government, nuclear weapons have become the rationale behind our foreign policy.
Contrary to public opinion, the majority of the people in the world do not see the U.S. as a pure, benevolent nation. Actions are what people want and judge by, not images manufactured from half-truths. You decry a people's intelligence when you speak to them of freedom while at the same time you finance their dictator. When communism pops up, you're amazed, you rebuke them for not having the education you could have supplied. America is "the showcase of freedom and democracy," but because of the plethora of entry rules and a lack of funds that you could provide people can't come to look. The people in this country are so self-righteous about what they have done they cannot see the tremendous things they could do. If we do not act, cozy naive chauvinism will bury us so fast the communists will hardly have time to dig the grave.
A few contend that a majority of people do not passively support the peace movement. In disregarding the impact that Christianity has had on our culture you have to disregard reality itself, and reality, once disregarded, leaves imagination, the possible, without reason, the probable, to guide thoughts and actions. A dangerous course indeed.
BY BECOMING more aware of the dynamics of social machinery, of discrepancies between ideologies and practices, of alternate courses of action, people the world over will come to realize that there is only one desirable world condition—freedom and peace.
Public frustration and inaction exist in part because bureaucracies tend to ignore or discourage ideas and actions that do not apply to their current definitions of reality. Few institutions keep pace with and adapt to a rapidly changing world. Institutions and their policies must be brought up to date. By stimulating them with political action. The inability of nations to elaborate viable alternatives to the arms race and the cold war has prompted many individuals, such as myself, to join the peace movement.
James I. Masters
840 $ ^{1/2} $ Kentucky
Kansas City sophomore
Worth Repeating
Far better it is to do mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.—Theodore Roosevelt