Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1963
University Daily Kansan
Page 3
The Week in Review
(Continued from page 2) troupe. Crowds are streaming into the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, Mo., to look at a retrospective exhibition of Van Gogh, and foreign-language films are big box office.
THERE IS ANOTHER side of American culture that must have confused many last week. We should have foreseen the dangers of electing a family to the White House that plays touch football; our errors have come home to roost in the form of the 50-mile hike, which became a passion these past few days. The overt act was President Kennedy's finding an ancient note by another exponent of the rugged life, Theodore Roosevelt, speaking to the questions of hiking Marines for 50 miles. Last week's hero for many Americans was not the man who hiked but the man who decided not to — that one-time sports writer, Pierre Salinger, who concluded that walking from press office to presidential office in the White House was enough for him.
There were other symptoms of the mad season (which now seems to last for 365 days, and next year will last for 366). A man drove his car onto the steps of the Justice Department building in Washington, threatened to blow up the building, and finally was routed. And in Atlanta, the chief justice of the United States was greeted with signs demanding his impeachment, and the police were forced
to give him protection. Justice Warren was in the South to speak at Georgia Tech.
This nation, which a few years ago was labeled isolationist and whose editors were being given warnings against stressing Afghanistanism in their columns, has become more and more concerned with Afghanistanism, and other once little-known isms. And these are being reflected in our domestic affairs. There's the controversial Kennedy tax program, for example, which got a not unexpected boost at the President's press conference, and which is being criticized by persons as diverse as Democratic Senator Lausche of Ohio and Truman's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Leon Keyserling.
THE TAX program goes too far, says Lauschie; it doesn't go far enough, says Keyserling. To try to get the bill through the Senate, the President is engaged in a campaign to enlarge the Senate finance committee, which has been almost the private preserve of Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd. Labor — with Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers as spokesman — is saying the tax proposals are too weak. And last week Kennedy unveiled one way he proposes to spend money, a kind of domestic peace corps that recalls the Roseovelt era CCC and resembles today's foreign Peace Corps. It would be called the National Service Corps.
We look at Cuba, where the threat is as great today as it was
in October, according to Republican Sen. Kenneth Keating. The McNamara spectacular on television failed to convince everyone; that is sure. The Pentagon confirms the existence of a sizable arsenal on the island, and even an administration friend like Walter Lippmann writes that there still is much that hasn't been divulged about the situation in the Caribbean. That usually harsh critic of the administration, David Lawrence, wants to know why the Cuban army needs 17,000 weapons instructors. "After our experience last fall we operate on the assumption, while hoping for the best, we expect the worst," says Lawrence.
THERE WAS high drama on the seas last week. A Venezuelan freighter was hijacked by the Communists, about the time President Romulo Betancourt was planning to leave for a state visit in Washington. The freighter disappeared, then it was sighted, and then Cuba's Fidel Castro offered Cuban asylum for the hijackers, an offer that recalled the period when pirates hid in sheltered harbors of the Spanish Main. On Sunday, Navy planes of this country intercepted the hijacked freighter and fired rockets across the bow, but the captors refused to change their course. The hijackers have now anchored off Brazil, where they seek political asylum.
the United States. The source was the third Afro-Asian solidarity conference, which tagged this country as imperialist. The conference also endorsed the use of violence in South Africa, the most consciously white supremacist area in the world, including the state of Mississippi. But strong words were not limited to attacking the United States. African students in Bulgaria battled with police on the streets of Sofia, protesting a government ban on African student organizations in Bulgaria.
In Tanganyika, there were heard strong denunciations of
And finally, to the situation in Iraq. Things have quieted down, we are told. The National Revolutionary Council is mopping up armed Communists. There are still bodies lying in the streets. Moscow, Washington and London have all recognized the new
regime. Violence remains the pattern of governmental change in the Middle East. A world beset by trouble can depend on such a news story every few months. And as one looks back over the upheavals, disturbances, riots, assassinations, falling governments, brushfire wars, threats, counter-threats and powder-kegs that blow up so frequently, he can readily see why, even as we become more educated, we seem to know less and less about what is going on in the world.
BB coming soon THE BIG BUY
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