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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 5. 1963
Streamlining Needed
The charge-countercharge game has begun again as the spring campus elections approach. Not that this is characteristic of campus politics only. The same thing has gone on for years in national politics and probably will continue in the foreseeable future.
But the fact that this is the way the big boys play hardly makes the KU version of a political campaign seem any more justifiable. Leaders of both parties are scrambling to tell the students what the other political party has not done since the last election.
ITWOULD seem that by now the campus political parties would have developed a standard form for charges and corresponding countercharges. Such forms would save a great deal of time—time that might be used in some worthwhile endeavor.
The forms could be made up in pairs-one with the charge and the other with the corresponding denial and counter-charge. The leaders of each party could have a complete set of all the stock charges and counter-charges.
These sets of standardized forms could be printed as a handbook and bound in black leather for the career politicians and published in a special paperback edition for the easily amused student.
BLANKS COULD be left so the rival politicians could fill in the appropriate names. Each succeeding generation of campus politicos could use the same edition of the handbook by simply using different names.
Every four or five years the issues could be updated, but these SLIGHT revisions would not change the basic structure of the forms.
This standardized handbook system could eliminate the need for time-consuming political speeches. Whenever a party leader wished to make a charge, he could call the Kansan office and give his name, the number of the desired form and the name of whichever opposing party leader or candidate who is the target of the day.
THE PROCEDURE would go something like this:
"Hello there, Clark old buddy. This is that great servant of the masses, Simon Sludgepump. I want to file a form 23 against Slippery Sam Simmons," the politico would say.
"OK Simon. You don't need to elaborate. I've got the handbook right here in my desk," reporter Kent would reply. Then he would call Slippery Sam to verify the counter-charge.
"Hello, Sam. This is Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Kansan. Simon Sludgepump just filed a charge 23 against you. I assume counter-charge 23a will be satisfactory."
"RIGHT, CLARK old buddy," Sam would answer.
See how simple it would be. The politicians would waste only a few seconds of their precious time. After all, campus politics must be streamlined to keep up with the jet age.
— Dennis Branstiter
Stalin Provided Organization
(Editor's note: This is the first article of a two-part series tracing the rise and fall from favor of Josef Stalin.)
By Jerry Musil
Josef V. Stalin died in the Kremlin in Moscow of a cerebral hemorrhage 10 years ago today.
RISING THROUGH the ranks of the Bolshevik faction of the party with Lenin's help, he became an ex-officio member of the Central Committee in 1912. He also became editor of Pravda, the party newspaper.
mage 10 years ago today. Stalin, alias Soso, Koba and many other names, became a revolutionary while studying to become an Orthodox priest in Tiflis. He was expelled from the seminary for academic reasons, although the authorities undoubtedly suspected him of political disloyalty. He then became a professional revolutionary and a follower of Marxism.
In 1924, he was elected secretary general of the Central Committee, a post he held until his death. He did not receive his first government post, as opposed to a party job, until 1934, when he became a member of the Presidium. This was about 10 years after he had become de facto ruler of the U.S.S.R.
But his real career started after the revolution. Contrary to popular belief and the efforts of his official biographers, Stalin was not one of the main participants in the November revolution. Trotsky wrote of Stalin, "The greater the sweep of events the smaller was Stalin's place in it."
AFTER THE death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Leo B. Kamenev ruled the Soviet Union together. But even under this system, Stalin was the real ruler because of his position as secretary general of the Central Committee.
Under an arrangement arrived at before Lenin's death, the secretary general controlled government policy except for one day a month when the committee met.
Stalin gained complete control over the government following the 1936 treason trials and executions of Zinoviev and Kamenev. He then became premier in 1941.
PRIOR TO World War II, Stalin played international politics with Hitler and signed the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 with Nazi Germany. But when his thirst for expansion became excessive, Hitler decided to crush the Soviet Union.
The German attack on Russia turned Western sympathy to the Soviet cause. British, Canadian and American war material was supplied to fight the German advance. The three famous conferences, Potsdam, Teheran and Yalta, between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt followed.
After World War II, Stalin instituted full-scale cold war with the West. He began the Berlin blockade and encouraged the Chinese Reds against Nationalist China, the North Koreans against the South Koreans and the Viet Minh against the French in Indochina.
Short Ones
The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and justice in their courts is forever in a passion.—William Makepeace Thackeray
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia—to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess—H. L. Menken
AND AFTER his death, Stalin's body was enshrined next to Lenin's in the Moscow mausoleum where millions could file by and gaze upon the countenance of their "deity."
No sensible man watches his feet hit the ground. He looks ahead to see what hunk of ground they'll hit next.-Ernest Haycox
Stalin was the only man who could have consolidated the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin's death could not have come at a more opportune moment for the first experiment in communism.
The revolution now needed a man with great organizational ability. Lenin was not that type of man. He was a theoretician and an intellectual. Khrushchev would not have been the type of man either. He is a strategist and an adept politician with some characteristics of a public relations man.
STALIN WAS that man who possessed great organizational talents. Although he certainly was not the only man with these talents, his knack for political intrigue gave him the edge over the others.
He recognized that the doctrines and theories of Marxx and Lenin were not practical, so he did not follow the teachings of the great socialists. He simply twisted his policies and the Marxist-Leninist theories together until they emerged as Stalinism.
Stalin assumed control before the Soviet regime was firmly entrenched in power. There was still active opposition to the Soviet revolution, particularly from the Western powers. He fought the "enemies of the revolution" until nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture were complete.
Remark Draws Appropriate Reply
Stalin organized the bureaucracy — an institution feared and hated by Lenin — and made it his tool for ruling Russia. He built the state that was supposed to "wither away," but he had no intention of allowing it to do so.
Any person who is acquainted with Nolen Ellison must wonder what in the world it would take to provoke him into doing what he did in the waning minutes of last Friday's basketball game between Kansas and Missouri.
A rather substantial Kansas lead was crumbling in the face of a full court press by Missouri. Despite the press and Kansas' inability to score free throws, it appeared likely that the Jayhawkers would outlast the Tigers.
THEN ELLISON was fouled from behind. As he stepped to the line to shoot his free throw, Ellison suddenly wheeled on a Missouri player and smacked him in the face.
Why? Nolen was quoted as saying, "He called me a name which wasn't nice at all." Nolen's brother, Butch, who rushed to the sidelines during the ensuing melee was more articulate:
He was called a name with racial and generic references.
Butch was even more articulate than that, but it takes little imagination by the reader to get the picture.
AFTER THE game. Nolen apologized to the team, saying that what he did was no way for the team captain to act.
Nolen obviously was not proud of what he did. He said that he wished he had had a few minutes to think before he acted.
But he didn't have a few minutes to think; a supposedly decent human called him the lousiest, rottenest, stinkiest name in the books—a name that reflected on his family as well.
He did what was natural. Now that it's over, Nolen and everyone else can wish—if they want—that he had retained the impeccable demeanor that he has displayed all through his college career.
BUT BEFORE any man wags a clucking tongue at Nolen for not exercising super-human self control, let him decide what he would have done had he been in Nolen's place.
And I'll bet one thing—I'll bet that a right cross to the chops takes a lot of the fun out of being a racist.
— Terry Murphy
UNIT ON ITY
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Telephone: Viking 2 2700
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 $3 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.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Fred Zimmerman ... Managing Editor
Ben Marshall, Bill Sheldon, Mike Miller,
Art Miller, Margaret Cathcart ... Assistant Ma
Art Miller, Margaret Cathec Assistant Managing Editors
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Branstiter...Editorial Editor
Terry Murphy...Assistant Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jack Cannon, Business Manager; Jim Stevens, Assist. Business Mgr.; Mike Carson, Advertising Mgr.; Joanne Zabornik, Circulation Mgr.; Brooks Harrison, Classified Mgr.; Bob Brooks, National Adv. Mgr.; Charles Hayward, Promotion Mgr.; Bill Finley, Merchandising Mgr.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"THERE ALWAYS SEEMS TO BETHIS INFERNAL LAG BETWEEN
OUR INCREASED ENROLLMENT AND OUR BUILDING PROGRAM."