Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 18, 1945)
^imiiHiiiuniiiiiiiiiiiuwaiiuirnnnniiimiiiiiiniiuniiiiiiiiiiimiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiHi^ Comments I „ Where There’s Smoke, There’s Ire The Barometer printed a snappy bulletin concerning smoking on campus which the faculty secre tory sent to the board of regents (any similarity to the cigarette of the same name is purely coinciden tal) on January 27, 1890: “Observations exchanged among the members of the faculty con cerning the increased popularity among students of 'dried leaves of the plant known as ‘Nicotiana. ta hacuni' have deemed it wise to act ia prohibiting' it from the prem ises.” FOOTBALL SCHEDULE IN '45 was the banner headline on Thursday’s University of Cincin xiati News Record. In view of many student requests for the'return of intercollegiate football, the Cincin jn/iti board of directors announced that the sport will be resumed next fall after a two-year suspension. By JANE ELLSWORTH aiul BETTY BUSHMAN ‘Dear Arise—’ To Half or Have Not Half credit must be given to Syracuse university, where the 1945 version of a gridiron machine will be a six-man team. Regular inter collegiate football has been aban doned-for next year because of the scarcity of men on campus. On the Air By SHLBERT FENDRICK How does a great dramatic radio show originate? We now take you into the KOAC extension station for the production of a radio pro gram by our radio workshop group. “Are you ready?" pants Bob Moran, our director. ‘•Ready," I reply, clutching my script close to me. “Ready,” replies Eddie Lyons, as lie vamps the mike. “Ready,” reply Cay Shea and Betty Miller as they dash for the mike. “Ready," replies Wally Johnson an he hauls his sound effects into tie loom. “Ready," replies Bob Moran, car nod away with himself. Three to Get Ready Then we are on the air. Not really, of course, but our voices are being carried over the loudspeaker to the class in the next room. Moran starts the music, tones it down, and points at me. I start to tell him that that is impolite, but then I realize he wants me to speak. Then, of course, I get mike fright. With a mighty effort, how ever, I shake off my inhibitions, and begin mumbling off the script into the mike. : Soon we are in the midst of the script. Wally Johnson runs madly from one sound effect to the other. Eddie Lyons jtf^rU'tsJ rewrite the script, and the girls huddle to gether for protection. Bob Moran begins to tear his hair, discovers lie can't spare any of it, and re turns to the controls. I’ulp-icide As Cav finishes reading each page of script she drops it to the floor. As we proceed toward the finish, the pile gets higher and higher. Soon we are knee deep in radio scripts. Soon we are waist deep in radio scripts. (Long script i. Then, just as we are threatened wdh asphyxiation, we come to the end. Bob Moran throws himself over the controls and sobs bitterly. Coy clutches the mike for support. Ed die clutches Cay for support. Wally clutches Eddie for support. Betty clutches Wally for support. By this time, I have collapsed. ^ And so we go off the air, Oregon W Emerald T ANNE CRAVEN Editor ANNAMAE WINSHIP Business Manager MARGUERITE WITTWER Managing Editor PATSY MALONEY Advertising Manager WINIFRED ROMTVEDT News Editor Jane Richardson, Phyllis Perkins, Viriginia Scholl, Mary Margaret Ellsworth, Norris Yates, City Desk Editors Bjorg Hansen. Executive Secretary Mary Margaret Ellsworth, Anita Young, Co-Women's Page Editors. Jeanne Simmonds, Assistant Managing Editor Maryan Howard. Assistant mews r-unui Shirley Peters, Chief Night Editor Darrell Boone, Photographer Betty Bennett, Music Editor Gloria Campbell, Mary K. Minor Librarians Jack Craig, World News Editor EDITORIAL BOARD Norris Yates, Edith Newton Published daily during the college year except Sundays, Mondays, and holidays and final examination periods by the Associated Students. University of Oregon. Entered as second-class matter at the postoifice, Eugene, Oregon.__ Mote Pawesi to Ijou?. . . ‘‘Student government—did it ever exist? Duke and Northwestern have asked themselves that question. Oregon mav well examine its present governmental set-up. The educational activities board makes all major decisions concerning' publications, music, forensics, and all other money making student functions. Eight faculty members and four students make up the board. The executive council coordinates student activities, such as the rallv squad and the war board, supervises junior and senior honoraries, and approves Oregana and Emerald appoint ments made by the educational activities board. All ASUO officers, two representatives from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes, the president of AW S, and the editor of the Emerald are members. Until 1935 the control worked from the bottom up instead of from the top down. The administration could veto student action, but students initiated and organized activities under the supervision of a graduate manager. The new system, of course, has an obvious advantage in that plans doomed to fail ure are nipped in the bud, and time and effort are not wasted working on programs that will not materialize. On the other hand, students are denied any real responsibility and are not encouraged to develop new ideas and put them into execution. When the system was reorganized, student finances were in need of better supervision. Compulsory fees could not be charged. The educational activities board and the athletic board were created to solve the financial problem and to guide the future handling of funds. They have succeeded in putting Uni versity activities on a sounder basis. Whether students are ready to take more responsibility in their government is the question. The Duke Chronicle of larch y says: We believe that students, if given the chance, can govern themselves adequately, because increased power will in turn breed a larger sense of responsibility. . . . Student government would be able to operate in a much more healthy atmosphere if it did not seem that dire administrative edicts would be the onlv alternative to a student-sponsored proposal which did not prove to be sufficiently ‘constructive.’ Certainly many forms of regulation of students would seem more reasonable and less picavunish if they stemmed from students themselves through a powerful, responsible, and respected student go\ ernment—which we have never had. Oregon students had more power and responsibility once, and lost it. Could we accept it now? Keep, 0j^ the /?oa^. . . Yes, it's spring', and being' outside is the best thing that can happen to anyone, t he library seems too dull to stand. So what do you do? You go outside. Fine. If—if you don't decide that going outside should in clude going out on the roof of the library. There are signs on the roof that distinctly say no one is supposed to be on the gravel. There is a door distinctly marked “fire escape which is obviously to be used for no other reason. But still students choose to ignore the signs. It isu t that the libiary officials have anything against the great out-of-doors. The reasons foi lin' signs are good, and failure to observe them can be very disturbing to other people. In the first place, the graveled roof of the library is not pre pared for people to walk on, and it could be damaged seriously if treaded on to any great extent. Furthermore, the roof is far from sound proof, and every time someone walks across it the sound is all too audible in the rooms below. The libe has two porches where smoking is permitted and which students are allowed to use. If these are crowded there i> nothing to keep anyone from going outside—the lawn m back of the library is an excellent place to study. Some rules seem senseless and keeping them is liaid. 1 his one about not going on the library roof is not. The reasons for it are clear, and obeying it is showing appreciation for our fine library and consideration for those who are studying below. PnxUeAA-0-n. Gkalle*Ufe& JPaudatian o-l tf-tomco By WILLIS B. MERRIAM Assistant Professor of Geography I did not have the privilege of serving in the Spanish Civil War as a “soldier of the cross,” and had I been in Spain during that war, I most certainly would have served on the side “for whom the bell tolls.” However, I am sufficiently disturbed over the article by Robert E. Hinds in Tuesday’s Emerald, extolling the saintly motives and character of Francisco Franco, to feel that the article should be refuted and that the other side, based on the evidence of Franco’s record, should be presented. Franco is a Fascist; and if we are fighting World War II for the elimination of Fascism, then Franco must be tried with the biackest of the war-guilt criminals. Any other attitude toward him will result in losing the peace as surely as our neighbors did in 1919. Spain, during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, was making great strides in the direction of what Dr. Isaiah Bowman, in his “New World,” calls “the demo cratic drift in Spain.” This drift toward a popular front govern ment, and the agrarian and social reforms it attempted, was checked and destroyed by Franco and his backers, including the militarists, reactionary capitalist interests, a totalitarian church (whose action was condemned by many of its own adherents), the grandees, and other powers of privilege and vested in terests, restoring a system of hu man exploitation which is intended to keep the peasants of Spain in poverty, ignorance, and misery. Russia’s Part There is no evidence that demo cratic Spain was in the hands of “godless Bolsheviks.” A few com munists were in the ranks of the popular front. Spanish peasant leaders studied with interest and hope the Soviet system, and Russia did send meager aid to the partisan army. The presence of these forces on the leftist side does not, how ever, warrant the conclusion that the civil war was a communist revolution. “Germany helped Franco, so naturally he values German friend ship,” states Mr. Hinds, but other wise, he infers, there is nothing Fascist in Franco’s dictatorship. By exactly the same reasoning it can be shown that the Russian people aided the Spanish peon’s cause, so naturally they value Rus sian friendship, without making them all communists. It is well-known that along with open aid from the Fascist front in Europe, Franco also employed some 150,000 bloodthirsty Moors, to kill thousands of Christian Span iards “in response to an offer of a chance to kill Spaniards in their homes.” What a record on which to glorify the character of Franco as a “good Christian soldier!” For that act he received the grand laureled cross of Saint Ferdinand, and placed on the tunics of feis mercenary Moorish legions the award of the bleeding heart of Christ! What a price to pay for the privilege of “going to church on. Sunday” in Spain. Survival of Christianity Christianity will survive without champions like Franco. Democracy and the century of the common man can never be attained or long endure with men of his ilk in the saddle. It is as correct to call Hit ler a good Christian soldier as Franco, wi,th his black record of intolerance, duplicity, and sav^gP barbarism. I personally condemn all that both of them stand for; and mil lions of lives have been lost in this war to back that stand. What Franco is and represents must nev er be allowed to survive in the world of tomorrow. "Amusing to Hilarious/’ Judges Reviewer of Try and Stop Me’ By FABER O’HAGAN TRY AND STOP ME, Bennett Cerf, Simon and Schuster, 1944, $3.00. This is a wonderful book. It is exactly as sober as a cucko^ clock, as profound and mature as a peppermint stick. In this cold, rainy, “unusual” spring weather it is well to have a book which has been written with a light heart. Not even the most determined searcher can find a sinister, or even a serious, purpose in “Try and Stop Me.” Bennett Cerf has filled 368 pages with quips and anecdotes roughly organized under “The Literary Life,” “Back to Hollywood,” “.Music Hath Charms,” and similar head ings. The tone of these stories varies between the amusing and the hilarious, and since one page has little to connect it with the next, the book may be read for five minutes or five hours, as you prefer. The length of the stories ranges from that of the five-year-old girl who, on being taken to a concert, was beautifully obedient to instruc tions and sat quietly through two intricate numbers before asking "Is it all right if I scream now?” to the much longer story of the fabulous parrot who laid square eggs, but couldn't talk very well (all she could say was “Ouch"). The Effect of Humor In evaluating this book a dis tinction must be made between anecdotes (narratives, usually brief, having a beginning, a mid dle, and an end, in the best Aris totlian tradition), jokes, which are things said or done to excite laugh ter, and humor, the effect of which seems to be solely to make one feel good. Technically speaking, I suppose fine humorous writing makes the reader feel so good he laughs for sheer joy, but laughter is hardly essential to humor. The differences between these forms are much easier to recog nize than to define. Much of Dick ens, for instance, is designed to stimulate good feeling. On the oth er hand, many radio comedians say absolutely nothing that makes me feel any better. Few men have had as good op portunities to collect such material. At the moment Bennett Cerf is a publisher (Rapdom House I, a col umnist (Saturday Review of Lit erature), a book reviewer (Es quire), and an editor (council on books in wartime). His Environment Most of his waking hours are spent among men who know how to put their ideas into words and whose wits are always working furiously. Most of them are cel ebrities (people who don’t have to be explained, as “my-mother-in law” or ‘‘Mr. Quimp, who is iJBNi suring the hall for new carpet (Please turn to page jour)