The Emporia Gazette from Emporia, Kansas • Page 2

THE-GAZETTE These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, "Co and preach as you 10:5, 7 RSV. Easing the Cost of Learning LONG last, it appears the Legislature is going to pass a schoolbook rental law. Different versions have passed, one in the House and one in the Senate. If the two can get together, Kansas will have a program it has needed for several decades. The cost of the textbook rental plan is placed at $2.2 million.

It would provide $5 per pupil to schools that adopt a textbook rental plan and make textbooks available to pupils without cost. The rental plan as it passed the Senate would not have applied to grade schools with fewer than 20 pupils nor to high schools with fewer than 50 pupils. The House knocked out all minimum qualifications and made it applicable to all schools installing textbook rental plans. If the Senate agrees today or tomorrow to the House amendments, the bills will go to the Governor. If not, compromise versions will be sought in conference committees.

The legislators have set Friday for adjournment date and it np- pears that the rental plan probably will get to the Governor and he is expected to sign it. Two million dollars is a large bundle of money just for schoolbooks, but the expense is justified. Books cannot be compared with most other items that come from the wage-earner's budget. When a worker spends his money for food it is consumed by the family; when he buys an automobile, he drives it for several years and then trades it in on a new model; when he buys a house, he lives in it for most of a lifetime. Schoolbooks are good for only one year, often less.

They are indispensable in education, so, like taxes and death, they cannot be escaped. But as soon as the book has been used for one year by a student it is virtually worthless. It must be sold at a fraction of its original cost if it does not gather dust on a shelf in the closet. Often books stack up in an attic and are thrown away in three-year lots. Like home utilities, books are a necessity of life; they are required by schools.

For this reason, steps must be taken to ease the cost to parents. Each fall the price goes higher; each year more books are needed to cover the expanding field of knowledge. When the cost of books is too high, low-income families tend to let their children quit school earlier. More important is the waste of books. They deserve to be used every year as much as possible.

At a time when this nation is striving for more and better education; we cannot afford to let a book be "stored away on a shelf, waiting for a younger brother or sister to grow to it. Books become outdated and they must be used fully before they are obsolete. The textbook rental plan is a necessary step forward for this state. Ignorance and lack of education of the youngsters of Kansas would cost much more than the textbook rental plan in the long C. Kansas Wild Flowers TTJAMILIAR Wild Flowers of JL" 1 of Central Kansas" is the title of a most attractive book written by and Horace Jones of Lyons and just off the press as a part of the Kansas Centennial observance.

Mr. Jones is editor and publisher of the Lyons Daily News. Here is a book that deserves the widest attention and, ns Rolln Cly- mer says in the El Dorado Times, he does not know of any similar work of its kind in print. Collecting of a state's wild flowers has been a hobby of many people through the years, and that is what it has been for the Joneses. Horace Jones has been taking color photographs of Kansas flowers along prairie roads and streams for many years.

When he started out he thought he might find 50 varieties but eventually he had 225. Of this number, 150 appear in the book. They are carefully taken pictures all briefly and accurately described with the common as well as botanical names. Although printing them in color was prohibitive in cost, the black and white photographs arc beautifully reproduced. The Jones volume is a real contribution to the state's centennial year and the book should be a possession in many Kansas homes, as well among members of garden clubs and school libraries.

It sells for only $1 and that probably would not pay for the cost of printing. Send a dollar to Horace Jones, Lyons News, and have a fine addition to your Kansas T. L. Making Progress In the Ottawa Herald: ROGRESS, claims one of the TV pitchmen, is an important progress. One of the measures of this is the number of appliances and gadgets people buy.

A recent survey showed that: In 3900 there were 8.000 automobiles in America, today tlu-re are 60 million. In 1900 there were 1.3 million telephones, today 72 miliinn. In 1940 there were- no TV sees, today Ad million. In 1926, 3.5 million homes had electric washers, today 47.5 million. In 1926, 370,000 homes had electric ranges, today 17.5 million.

In 19-10, 15,000 homes had nir- conditioncrs, today 6.5 million. In 1927 there were 142,000 homes with electric refrigerators, tod 50 million. Those figures not only show we hnvc m.idc progress but motor car, telephone and electric appliance stocks should be good buys. Smiles Note of the spring season: Over in Missouri a gal named Ruby Dimond has announced licr ment to John "Tiger Eye" The omion is a most versatile, article, in Clyde Reed's opinion. It can bring tears to your eyes almost at the same time it pur.s on your stomach.

Explains the Ahoona Tribune, a sharp nose indicates curiosity, a flat one curiosity that was overdone. Short sophomores may not srand out in the campus crowd, says Jack Harris, but they are above suspicion of having taken a basketball bribe. A world traveler sets forth in the magazine the names of his 10 favorite streets. Rolla Clymor scanned the list in vain decided the writer hasn't been anvu-hore. He left off both Main liasv streets.

The Parsons Sun notes that the turnover rate among city managers at Kansas City is threatening to rival the record set by departing managers of the same city's Athletics. Kansas people move around quite a lot nnd some even move to Missouri, we presume, but not many. Ihc wrather bureau says we are to have above normal precipitation in April. What with a wet M.irch, it looks as if i.yon County's Upper and Lower Dry Creeks are in for a btiiy T. L.

20 'ears Ago April 6th, 19-51 More than 40 women attended the Kansas Federation of Women's Clubs convention in Salina. Amonj; those who went by chartered bus were Mesdames I B. Mauck, G. W. King, Vance Fyfc, W.

E. Fox, H. F. Alspaw, Dale Stout, Virgil Hurt and L. A.

Sorber. Miss Velma Wood, whost marriage to Olma Peak, was to take yjace Sunday was honored with a party and shower given by Mrs. E. and Betty Mclntosh. Gticits were Mcsdarnes Fred Sicklcr, Ward Bacon, Amby Wood, C.

Magathan, Paul Hatcher, Lee Bryant, Tracy Hughrs, Robert Korte, Sam Kcefcr, Weidon Hanna and die Misses Peggy Hughes, Thclm.i Wood, Margaret PfU-rson, Ernestine Sh.iwgo, Marie Pcndergraft, Marjorie Storror and Claudia Williams. Forty Years Ago Two of the Young People's classes of the First Chriitian Sunday School had party at the home Mora Hoi- A Shelter In Spring Straight Talk 'By Irene Corbally Kuhn I IS an unprelty state affairs in what is still a wonderful world when we must live constantly with the nightmare of sudden death. Here it is spring, the pulse- quickening, thrilling season when all the earth is reborn, life is renewed, romance and dreams rule the heart and mind, and what are we doing? We're testing a young girl's reactions and responses to solitary life inside a bomb shelter. On Sunday next, in the Baltimore, Armory, a young woman who has been selected from her response to a newspaper advertisement, then psychoanalyzed and tested by government experts, will move into a Lancer Survival Shelter and compose herself for eight days of unutterable boredom. She will be guarded, around the clock, by Pinkerton guards to make certain all goes well with her, and to assure her safety in case she starts climbing the walls and wants out She will have dry pack foods, books, games, water, all the ingredients necessary to support life for her long week.

She'll cook her choice of the 90 items of survival foods, after mixing them with water, on a propane gas stove. The victuals are said to be sustaining and. nourishing, if not exactly delicious. They have the advantage, so the makers claim, of years of packaged goodness without spoiling. Carefully Watched The subject will be under constant observation by various government departments the Air Force, the medical division of the Health, Education and Welfare Department, the Chemical Warfare Division and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization.

Unlike the family in the experiment conducted at Princeton University a couple of years ago, this young woman will not be spied upon by tape recorder. That time, it will be remembered, the dignity, privacy and constitutional rights of a couple and their children were cynically violated by Princeton psychologists who listened in on the tape which was installed in the shelter, without knowledge or permission, "in the interests of science." The. Lancer Blast and Fallout Shelter, our young woman's home away from home for the period from April flth through the IBlh, is a dome-shaped concrete structure which is one of three O.C.D.M.- approvcd types. Twenly-cight companies arc in this new business but Ihe official stamp of approval has been given only to these Min- Y. -made shelters, to Chicago's Wonder Shelter, and to a Washington, D.

C. product made by the American Survival Corp. The new director of Ihc Civil and Defense Mobilization, Frank B. ICIlis, is intent upon bringing home to the American people "their spiritual obligation to prepare for survival and aid in the survival of others." Hence the drive for these pillbox protectors which, happily, can be used now in the turnado bell. There are 100 of them in the Omaha, area and the soul Invest.

Soviet Shelters There is reason to believe the Soviet Union has beer, building bomb shelters since 1946. Confidential sources say -10 per cent of the population there has sonic sort of atomic lallout protection. Here, there is no law making shelters mandatory. However, the O.C.D.M. is pushing a program of education and effective counter measures against nuclear attack which, despite all the hysteria, need not be lethal.

The kind of world we live in is one in which hysteria must be anticipated and nullified with reality. The parades of undoubtedly sincere people, here and in England, demonstrating against nuclear bomb tasting, aro not conducive to a realistic appraisal of the facts of life in the atomic age, nor a proper way to protect and preserve a nation and its citizens. Not everyone is going to rush out and gel a F.H.A. loan to build a fallout shelter. More young people arc going to apply for a F.H.A.

loan just to build a home and slart rearing a family. But for those who wil; feel easier in their minds if Ihey have a shelter to repair to, should inler- nationa! insanity prevail, and atomic bombs slart falling, il is good to know the engineers have designed simple and relatively inexpensive survival colls. The young woman who next week will try living in one completely equipped with all that is deemed necessary (o preserve life until it is safo to come out into the open again, will be adding important data to Ihc sum total of knowledge in a rapidly accumulating file. hr, 1961, KinR Inc.) THE GAZETTE 1 Malice in Wonderland Arguments Misleading oil School Aid National Affairs by David Lawrence lar. Present were Ethel O.irkson, Mabel Spencer, Norinc Thomas, Anna Willis, Ruth Morgan, Noel Franfcfin, Howard Morgan, Frank Johnson, Bill Chitty, Floyd Brooks, Swinr, ilmmct Myers and OrviIIc Houslcy.

HE Kennedy Administralion is unwittingly misleading the American people on the issue of aid to parochial schools by frequent reiteration of the phrase "across -the board loans and grants" and an accompanying statement that these are unconstitutional. The public has gotten from this the impression that the Catholic Church, for instance, wants gifts and loans to be given by the Federal Government to all parochial schools to teach which, of course, would be unconstitutional. No such request has been made by any church organi- za lion. The fact is that Secretory Ribi- coff of Ihe Department of Health. Education, and us just transmitted to Congress a group of lengthy documents, and one of them is entitled: "Federal programs under which institutions with religious affiliation receive federal funds through grants or loans." At least 50 different foims of financial aid to religious schools are listed, including aome for the training of teachers wno will teach modern foreign languages in all types of schools operalcd by church groups.

These programs w-jre enacted by a majority of the members of Congress, and the laws were signed by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, all of look an oath to support the Constitution. President Kennedy has not said that he would ask Congress for the repeal of these laws, nor have congressional opponents of niel to parochial schools clone so. Instead, there is continued emphasis on the Administration's opposition to "across the board loans and grants." Mr. Kennedy has used the phrase often in his recent press conferences. The Real Issue The single question at issue today, however, is whether federal loans may be authorized to help all private and nonroligious in financing their construction costs.

Already federal loans for the building of dormito ries to house students are authorized by Congress, and they aro being made to religious institutions throughout the country. Likewise, even parochial schools at the elementary and secondary Icvc! are being granted federal loans right along to buy equipment to help tlicm leach mathemalics, science and foreign languages. It could be argued that this isn't an "across the board" loan because it doesn't apply to all subjects or to religious instruction. Indeed, in the memorandum filed by Alanson W. Willcox, the General Counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and in by the Department of Ihc is made that the criterion is the "purpose" the loan.

Thi argument in (he memorandum in support of this concept is contradictory. Thus, in one place the Willcox memorandum says: "Plainly an across (he board frant is the typo of support which (l.o Supreme Court has ruled is prohibited. no effort is marie lo earmark funds for specific purposes, such a hoard grant inevitably facilitate the performance of iho religious finvt'on of This the First Amendment forbids. "Across the board loans to church schools are equally invalid. A loan represents grant or credit.

When made at a i ate'of interest below what is normally available to the borrower, it also constitutes a grant of the interest payments which ave saved. These benefits plainly have the purpose of priding financial advantage or convenience to-the recipient. And like the board grant, the across- the-board loan would inevitably facilitate religious instruction." Gets Around Question One would chinx horn the above that any loan o- grant which helps a. religious institution at the college or elementary-school level is a form of assistance which "would inevitably facilitate religious instruction," bu the Willcox cloeu- mei'l gets around all this, where federal or stale grants or loans al- icady have been made, by arguing that they are for a "special purpose. It is being asked, moreover, why loans for construction of church- school buildings where general education courses are to public also in accord with a "Specific National Purpose" fostered by the National Defense Education concept of aiding the youth of all religions to become better trained for the perplexing problems of the "cold war" age.

So the solution or the Constitutional dilemma would appear to be for Congress simply to write into the proposed law such a "Specific National Purpose." Then federal loans or grants could be made to primary and secondary religious schools just as is already being done through federal grants and loans to colleges and universities in the sectarian category. (Copyright 1961, New York Herald Tribune, Inc.) No More Koreas These Days by George Sokolsky HE great cost to the United States in the Korean debacle was not that we lost a war but that every nation had lo reassess its relalionship lo Ihc United Stales and an increasing number became neutral. Everybody likes a winner. If we lose in Laos or, for that matter, if we suffer any further loss anywhere, our international situation will degenerate with finality. Let us note the position of President De Gaulle of France.

Laos was a part of French Indo-China. French Indo-China was a most important political and economic sector of France, the city of Saigon being for France what Hong Kong was for Great Britain. The Anna- mites and other peoples of French Into-China rebelled, supported by the Chinse Aommunisls and won a great victory over France which resulted in France being eliminated from southeast Asia. Had France been supported by its allies, Ihe United States and Great Britain, it might not have lost French Indo-China. The United States was lied clown to a doctrine of anti colonialism which has fragmented Asia and is now gragmenling Africa.

French Indo- China was broken inlo Norlh Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and because of this, Thailand (which used to be called Sir.m) is in peril falling to the might of Red China. Huge Population The population of Red China is variously estimated up to ooo persons. No census has ever been taken. However, whatever the figure may be it is too large for the food supply which is traditionally inadequate. During the past two years, at least.

Red China has suffered several famines, which is not too unusual, particularly for the southern part of (hat country where the density of population is perhaps the greatest and worst in the world. Density of population is best solved by the population moving where food is more plentiful. This is a rice eating people and China has, for centuries, imported rice from French Into-China and from Siam (Thailand). What is happening in Laos is that a Chinese, population is pouring into that country. The report that Chinese are about to move into Laos is piffle; they have already moved.

Red China sought to solve many of its economic problems by orthodox Marxism, by establishing communes, and failed. The communes did not an increase of food. As a mailer of famine- pursued the communes. Red China is pouring population into all the countries of east Asia. Laos in Bad Spot Indonesia has set up resistances to the increase of Red Chinese in lhal counlry, but Laos is not geographically or militarily situated suitably for rcsislance lo Red China.

In Ihe south of China lie four heavily populated provinces, Kuan- lung, Kuangsi, Kweichow and Yun- nan. Kuantung, which is often referred to as Canton because of the name of the city, has produced most of the Chinese who live outside of China. In Kuangsi live many races of aborigines who have never engaged in any other business than war since Ihe authority of Peking weakened over them during the Taiping Rebellion (18501865). Yunnan lies in mountainous country close to Burma and French Into-China and has been under the influence of the former French city of Saigon for more than a century. It is out of these four provinces that a Communist Chinese population heavily armed is pouring into Laos.

Every day that is lost in stopping them from marching southward gives them more territory. Perhaps when the time comes for a 14 nation conference, Laos will be populated by Chinese Reds and the world will encounter another Soviet fait accompli. This has always been Soviet soft and fight continuously. While all this is going on, the Warsaw conference has sought to divert attention to Germany. This too is a Soviet tactic: Hit two at one time and let the West take its choice as (o when it will accept defeat.

(Copyright, 1961, King Futures, Int.) Emporia, Kansas, Thursclay, April You Should Buy and Read Compassion Fatigue By Norman Cousins A MERICANS who come to Southeast Asia fortify them-, selves with all sorts of 'Their little vials ate like prancing medieval steeds; they their owners into battle against all corts of marauding bacteria. One disease, however, the intrepid little pills cannot conquer) The disease goes by the' name. of compassion, fatigue conscience sickness. When it strikes, it produces a violent- retching of the. spirit with an accompanying, severe upset -the moral equilibrium.

At first the then they narrow in a desperate ot seek cover, from an abiding reality. There is '10 prescription except to tell the victim to lower his gaze, then bundle him gently -and send hinv.hóme. Over the years, on various trips to the Far East 'and I. have watched the newcomers as they arrived. At first, there would be the full flush of response to a powerful new experience.

They would caught up in the dramatic discovery of conspicuously different cultures. But then somethig would happen. They would be confronted the evidence that, for the most part, the world is not congenial to life in human form. Conditioned by a society of abundance, the newcomers would be plummeted out of the sky into an area where the primary mystery of life is not how it originated but how it is sustained. The newcomers would see men harnessed to wagons' like dray horses; they are by far the cheapest form of hauling power available cheaper than bullocks or horses and infinitely cheaper than trucks.

Besides, human fuel requirements are far less costly than either engine or animal. Th newcomers would also see ten or twelve people or more sharing a single-room sometimes a shanty made of old crates or. discarded tin. Some people either couldn't afford the flimsy crates or, finding them too crowded, would set up their frayed bedrolls in the streets. To be sure, not all Americans are affected by compassion fatigue or conscience sickness.

Many of them manage to make the adjustment. As would be expected in some cases, the initial blisters on the sensitivities becomes hardened, even calloused, through constant exposure. A few newcomers, however, achieve the seemingly impossible. They succeed in retain-, ing their sensitivity without narrowing their field of vision or turning away from life disfigured by hunger. The secret of their adjustment lies in their ability to attach themselves to a useful enterprise.

They make important connections with the surrounding reality. They invest themselves in the human situation as they find it, working in the social services on the personal level or through the established agencies. They find their energy in a sustained purpose. View of Life a Key Soon, countless thousands of Americans will be serving in remote places in the world as part of the President's peace Corps. The success of the mission may depend less on their specialized training than upon their view of life.

Their highly developed skills will be meaningless unless their emotional and philosophical equipment is right for the job. Indeed, nothing is more essential than the need to separate one's assignment from the total problem. I met a young American who decided to quit India after only five months of service with a U.S. agricultural mission. "It's no use," he said.

"You help one man only to discover fifty men standing behind him. Then you help fifty men and five thousand suddenly appear. You help the five thousand but what do you do about the five million behind them and the fifty million to follow? At some point along the line you decide it's hopeless." Another American, an expert in housing, confessed that he, too, was about ready to give up. "Few nations in human history have made more progress in putting up new housing units than India," he said. "Last year, perhaps six to eight millions of people were able to move out of the impossibly overcrowded rooms and into decent quarters.

But during the same time ten million people were added to -the population. The result is that the country is at least two million people worse off than it was a year ago. Can you imagine what the deficit will be ten years from now? How can you help but be discouraged?" A young American doctor attached to a hosiptal in Bombay said he was doing everything he could to hold fast to his original purpose in coming to India. "I just wasn't psychologically attuned to the problems I would have to face. Back in the United States, a doctor never has to ask himself: "Why try to keep this baby alive? He concentrates all his knowledge and will power on the need to save a child and give him a chance for a normal life.

But here, in India, maybe two or three hundred million people will never experience a single day free of hunger or sickness in thcir-entirc lives." The fallacy in the reasoning behind these various positions is that each man wanted the evidence of some visible amelioration of the total problem before he could justify his own efforts. Another mistake, perhaps, was that each man underestimated the power of his own example to set others in compassionate motion. Each of these men was part of a total process of creative effort, the nature and scope of which were not wholly visible but were teal and genuine nonetheless. Finally, no one man involved in the vast and infinitely mysterious enterprise of reducing human pain really knows enough about the intangibles of social interaction to be pessimistic about the future. Progress proceeds out of elusive but vital fractions.

Sudden spurts in the condition of a society come about as the result of small achievements with high 1 symbolic content. The probability of such an upturn may be slight in any given situation. No matter. No one can take the responsibility for assuming it cannot happen. Much depends on the role an individual essays for himself.

If he will be satisfier with nothing less than a visible and measurable result in a great cause, he may have to defer his triumph. But if he has a sense of total involvement and engagement to the point of personal mobilization, then this is all that can be expected; this is all that counts in the moral reckoning. Compassion Not Quantitative Compassion is not quantitative. Certainly it is true that behind every man whose entire being cties out for help there may be a million or more equally entitled to attention. But this is the poorest of all reasons for not helping a single man.

Where, then, does one or stop? You begin with the first man who puts his life in your hands and you continue as long as you are able to continue, so long as you are capable of personal mobilization. How to choose? How to determine which one of a million men surrounding you is more deserving than the rest? Do not concern yourself in such speculations. You will never know; you will never need to know. Reach out and take hold of the one who happens to be nearest. If you are never able to help or save another, at least you will have saved one.

Many people stroll through an cntite lifetime without doing even this, Albert Camus liked to quote Emerson's assertion that every wall was a door. "Let us," said Camus, "not look for the door and the way out anywhere but in the wall against which we arc living Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we live attentively we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe, rather, that it is awakened, revived, nourished by 'millions of solitnry individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.

Each and every man, on the foundation of his own sufferings and joys, builds fot all." Saturday Review.