+ EMERALD EDITORIALS + It's Spring It’s spring term again. You can tell by the weather. You can also tell by looking at the stu dents. The mid-year tiredness is. still there, but people are becoming more hopeful, for this is that legendary term when one lets everything go and has a good time. Anyway* that's what we’ve been hearing for all these years. Actually, you have to work just as hard to get grades, there are tons of activities, and the weather usually isn’t good enough to permit picnics (defi nition : a type of party to whch everyone but Oregon students takes food) down by the river. For the campus politicians, it’s the busiest time of the year. Junior Weekend, the year's biggest single activity, also takes much time. Duck Preview also occurs. And whoever started the legend about spring term forgot to tell the instructors that this is the party time of the year when there shoulld be no assignments. But spring term is largely in the mind. Everyone will talk himself into thinking that this is the term when we have fun, so we probably will. It’s Spring term. May The Best Win The death rattle of the Senior Ball was drowned out last term by the blare of victory trumpets marking the highly suc cessful Military Ball. But in 1952, the last Military Ball was such a flop that the stu dent affairs banned it from the all-campus social calendar. What does this prove? We think it proves that it takes more than tradition to make a dance a success. First it takes enthusiasm, and promotion. .And in the case of the Military Ball the novelty and the free band probably helped. The Sen ior Ball had none of these assets. Let’s take a quick look at the status of the Senior Ball at present. The senate has gone on reoord as favoring its discontinua tion. This does little more than give next year’s class a kind of excuse to not have the dance. We favor stronger action. Let the Senior Ball be banned by the student af fair? committee. Then to get back in the social lineup, the backers of a future Senior Ball would have to petition the student affairs committee for reinstatement. They would have to show both planning and enthusiasm. And after this effort, it seems like they would do their utmost to make the dance a success. This is basically what happened in the case of the Military Ball. Now let’s carry this line of reasoning one step further. Why not put all the dances in hock. Using winter term as an.example—the student affairs committee could decree that .there w'ould be one all-campus dance. Then all interested groups, seniors, KOTC stu dents, etc., could petition the committee for the honor of putting on winter term's one all-campus dance. This gets at the basic campus problem— TOO MANY ACTIVITIES! We would start with the presupposition that we would have ONE all-campus dance (including the Military Ball) and then let the best dance plan win. It is our suspicion that the Senior Ball was more of a flop than usual because students were saving up to go to the Military Ball. With our plan the ONE competitively se lected dance would have no competition to vie for the activity spotlight. We have made the point of referring to the Military Ball as an all-campus dance. It is a farce to try to disguise this dance as a departmental affair when more than 1000 Oregon males are in the “department.” It’s like saying "Let's have a dance for everybody who takes P.E.” If the Military Ball comes back next year (and if it’s as good as this year’s, it should) we strongly feel that a spade should be called a spade and the Military Ball should be called an all-campus dance. Of course, there’s always the chance that the Military Ball won’t be a success every time. Maybe the novelty effect will wear off, or there will be no free band, or the ROTC department will lack enthusiasm for promotion. In that case fine, put the Military Ball on ice for a while and bring in a different dance winter term. But let’s not have more than one dance winter term and let's have that dance be the best. We are intersted only in cutting Oregon’s activties to a reasonable number. We want the activities that remain to J>e the best. And we believe the plan of prelimiting the number of activity spaces for term and then fitting the best activities to those spaces may be the answer. We hope the senate and the stu dent affairs committee will seriously con sider this plan.—(D.L.) Footnotes We hope President Wilson doesn’t decide to take up golf and establish a putting green on the quad. We'd hate to see a resolution in the ASUO or faculty senate calling for the abolition of the campus squirrels. * * * Speaking of squirrels, we naturally think of the former terror of the campus pampas— \\ aldo. We thought of Waldo while reading about the squirrel incident in Washington and again while sunning ourselves during spring vacation on the University of Cali fornia campus—where the only unbusy peo ple are the campus dogs. (This disjointed train of thought was only inserted so that we could mention Waldo and the squirrels, for the Emerald wouldn't be the Emerald without some mention of the ex-111 >OC.) INTERPRETING THE NEWS Confidence Can Mean Peace By J. M. ROBERTS Associated Press News Analyst One little promise made in con nection with French ratification of the Western European Union accords, if kept and, projected into the future, could mean more to Europe than all of the alli ances these nations have ever signed. It came from a jubilant Chan cellor Adenauer of Germany, “the German government," he said, “will do everything in its power to merit the confidence of the French people and to further de veloped French-German rela tions” The treaties, the Chancellor said, will make a future German French war impossible. In them selves, they won’t. They never have. But if the two nations could really establish confidence, that would. Use Unity as Lever The Chancellor spoke against the larger background of fast moving American and European efforts to follow-up ratification of the treaties with a new ap proach to Russia, using their new-found unity as a lever. Now that she has been beaten on the treaty issue—with ratifi cation by the United States, Den mark and the Benelux countries expected to be routine—the West was hoping that Russia would at last get down to realistic nego tiations on such issues as German reunification and an Austrian peace treaty. Russia can still come into ne gotiations with the demand that the allies trade off prospective German power for agreements which, if kept, would mean peace in Europe. She might keep the whole business up in the air for a long time by such tactics. Won’t Stay Disarmed But in the long run she and the allies would both know that a nation such as Germany will not be kept disarmed indefinitely in an armed world. And the allies will know that no peace of in definite duration can be made with a Russia which clings to the Communist doctrine of world dominion. Nevertheless, new negotiations are no win prospect, even if, from the allied standpoint, their only result is to demonstrate again to the French and Germans that there can be no dr agging of feet in implementation of the treaties. A DAY AT THE ZOO A Stirring, Tragic Tale of a Young Poet By Bob Funk Emerald Column'll The violets are red, I wish the hell 1 was in bed, Drop dead. Gordon Gatherroal Gordonson sat at his typewriter, tragically. I am a poet, he was thinking, and a poet in the middle of the night without a muse is tragic, he thought, tragic like -like a tree iv i t h o u t any •Mip, no, that's n o damned ?ood; like a tree on a hill side a blos soming tree on a hillside with Jilt t hf* nimuinn. ate wind to stir its branches and arouse love-fragrance from the little cups of color. That was bet ter. He was like a blossoming tree. Whut a hell of a thing to think you are; he would be social ly ostracized if anybody knew I thought I was a blossoming tree with love-aroma ready to be stir red out of little cups of color. Colour, the Henglish way. He typed out DAM DAMN DAMUAI-L very rapidly on the typewriter. I got a naked bulb above me, 1 haven't shaved to day. there is a half-eaten apple on tha desk that smells like the good earth never, and it's half past three. There is no reason why I shouldn't be poetical as all grape-juice. Something itched. He reach ed inside his shirt to scratch himself, but the itch-pluee had shifted around and he never did find it. He tore a button off instead and said a euaaword very loud. It sounded funny. A voice despondent In a midnight room, he said to himself, when nature Ne'er intended such a sound to find. Reception in the darkened ethers of the night When only love hath eyes, and truth Is blind. What a crock, he said to him self. It was a lot belter if you could make up these little blurbs and then know- them for what they were, little crocks of waste matter distilled from rotten grapes. Rotten grapes? Green grapes ? Neither way was any damned good. He wrote XY Z INCIDENT on his typewriter and then wrote Little green grapes Is like 1’il green apes Clinging to vines In the summertlnes When the big blond sun Spells F-U-N fun In zeon lights Through tropical nights and I wish I knew a girl named Mabel whose skin was like sable and who was ready, willing, and able, to set the table with pep permint leafs and aperitifs. If you were any sort of a male, he thought to himself, you would not lie trying to write this• voinlty poetry and would ko to bed and dreum hImiiiI Imselmll season. If you were any sort of a male you would not have signed up for u course that rrqurles you to write poems. That is, if you were any sort of a male. Any sort of a whale. In a south-sea gale. Ah, out It out. He thought he would call up that gill and ask her If -he would like to go out and get some kiss ing <>n the mouth Saturday. He would say, hello, baby, I under stand you have a strain of I-atin blood, and since I am a good neighbor I would like to take you out to some secluded Ren-dess vouse like Hendricks Park and kiss you more or less tentatively on the mouth. RSVR, Gordon Gathercoal Gordonson. Only then he remembered that It was the middle of the night ami that she win not a jioet, hut a BA major. an * ( UreKon. hntered an Hccond clash matter at the post office, Ktigcne, Oregon. SuUcnptun rate,: $5 per sclniol year; \1 a term. Opinion# expressed on the editorial pay.- are those of the writer am) do not pr. trial to represent the opinion, of the ASH) or the Cnivrrs.ty. t naigned editorial. ate writ-rn ly the editor; initialed editorials by menders of the editorial board. JERRY HARRELL, Editor _ DONNA KI N IlKKli. HtwiiMtw Manager ___ DICK LEW IS, SAI/I.V RYAN, Associate Editor, PAC1, KEEFE, Managing Editor It I l.lTMATNWAK I NtAdverting V. CORDON RICK, New. Editor _NANCY SIIAW. Off,.-. Ma w r _JKKKV CI.Al'SSF.N. CHI '( K .M l'i i HKI.MDUK. Co Sport. Edit^i KDITORIAC BOARD: Jerry Harrell, I'attl Kwfe, Dick LewU, Cordon Kke. jacim Warden Rice, Sally Ryan. Ass’t Managing Editors: Valerio llcrsli, Dorothy Her. Ass’t News Editors: Mary Alice Allen, Carol Craig, Anne Hill, Anne Ritchey, Hob Robinson Feature Editor: Dave Sherman Morgue Editor: Kathy Morrison Women's Rage Co Editors: Sally Jo (Jreig Marcia Mauney Ass’t Sports Editor: Huzz Nelson Managing Assistant: Sanford Milhe* a.u i. vviv. Mgr.: Laura Morrtft < trculation Mur.: Kick Hayden Ash't. Office Mgr.: Ann liaakkonm ( lasttified Adv.: I'atricia Donovan ( o- Layout Mgrs.: Jon Wright and Dick Koe Executive Secretary: Kcverly Landon A**'t. Adv. Mgr.: Evelyn Neliton Kbotography Editor: Dale Turner Khotograpber«: Larry Spaulding. Kudnty Sunderland