"We Should Get Together More Often"
Seventieth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANk
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG.0 ANN ARBOR, MICH. * Phone NO 2-3241
When Opinions Are Free
Truth Wtil Prevail"
BRINK OF LIFE:
No Dearth of Birth
In Foreign Film
ONE WONDERS, after seeing "Brink of Life" at the Campus,
whether perhaps Ingmar Bergman is being brainwashed. His recent
pictures have shown a steady trend toward the simple.."The Seventh
Eel" was dark, mystic. Nobody could miss the beautiful, if peasant,
humor of "The Magician." "Brink," latest in the series, is downright
accessible, so accessible that if produced locally it would be called
corny.
Of course, it would probably never come to pass in this country,
containing as it does all the current rages of imports. If you would
wallow in childbirth, abortion, and illegitimacy, do see "Brink"; it's
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
'URDAY, APRIL 30, 1960
NIGHT EDITOR: FAITH WEINSTEIN
Anti=Catholi ie as
Betrays American Heritage
THE American Council of Christian Churches
recently unanimously went on record as
being opposed to a Roman Catholic for Presi-
dent of the United States.
From the reasons given for this appalling
action it is apparent that this group of men,
which claims to represent 1.5 million "Bible-
believing Protestants," has a very poor under-
standing of the political structure and temp-
erament of American society.
One's first inclination is to incredulous
amusement, but more serious reflection gives
rise to real trepidation concerning the future
of a government dedicated to serve and obey
people like them.
THE COUNCIL approaches the issue through
a completely outdated and misleading con-
cept: that of the "American heritage of sep-
aration of church and state." The concept of
church and state is a holdover from the days
of divine-right kings, when an absolute ruler's
religious beliefs could be national policy.
The Council's reference to our "historic
American "heritage" is inaccurate, because it.
confuses the real nature of that heritage.
To be specific, at no time in our history
could a Roman Catholic President have allowed
attitudes peculiar to his religion to color his
political actions without committing both him-
self and his party to political suicide.
THIS IS PARTLY because the United States'
political structure was originally strongly
influenced by men imbued with the ideas of
skeptical seventeenth and eighteenth century
European philosophers, thus creating a polit-
ical tradition distinctly divorced from religion.
It is also partly because the public influence
of organized religion, which had given way to
the secular intellectual and economic revival
called the renaissance, was no longer a real
political consideration.
This is not to say that religion has not in-
fluenced politics in America. But religion has
not been able to present a united front on any
issue or candidate, simply because the number
MAX LERNER:
and variety of religious traditions does not
lend itself to mass organization.
OUR GOVERNMENT is, for the most part,
run by influence groups, but only when
several of them combine through compromise.
It is highly unlikely that the Roman Catholic
church would have any success in finding
other groups with which to join forces in
order to give official national or international
policy a "Catholic" flavor. Whether it would
want to its a matter of opinion; the fact is,
it couldn't.
Sen. Kennedy knows how far he would get
if he tried to mix his religion with his politics,
and he is hardly foolish enough to try. As it
is, if he is elected there will be plenty of
"Bible-believing" alarmists who will accuse
him of trying it every time he takes a stand.
OBVIOUSLY, the Council's action is poten-
tially more dangerous to the public safety
and sanity than anything Sen. Kennedy could
possibly do, even in the capacity of President.
Apparently, all these people actually believe
that a Roman Catholic President will "ad-
vance the goal" of "dedicating the United
States to the Virgin Mary." This alone is
enough to unnerve anyone sincerely concerned
with the future of free thought and tolerance
in this country.
American politicians are very conservative
people. The job of each party is to get as
many of its own elected as possible. Conse-
quently each party tries to slate candidates
who will offend the least number of voters. A
Roman Catholic might have trouble getting
elected, but think what would be the fate of
an atheist!
For these reasons groups such as the Ameri-
can Council of Christian Churches are at the
very least doing their country a great dis-
service, in tending to impose one more irrele-
vant condition on the parties' choice, in con-
tributing a little more confusion to public
thought on the subject, and in making us look
foolish in the eyes of more than one other
nation.
-ANDREW HAWLEY }
, _Wmy"Wr%
km
4~'6o I4ASW 6TQPJ _ -os . .
the limit, so to speak. These drol-
leries are of course accompanied
by amusingly misspelled and Tin-
completely translated subtitles,
the latter characteristic serving
primarily to draw attention to the
fact that venereal disease also
pops up, albeit inconsequentially.
' THE STORY and, more im-
portantly, the characters on which
these heavy happenings are hung
are, unfortunately, so thinly drawn
and portrayed that the emotions
lose their meaning as expressions
of human feeling and must be
interpreted symbolically, if at all.
The action occurs in the wards'
and delivery room of a Swedish'
hospital for miscellaneously preg-
nant girls. Cecilia is there rather
accidentally. In about her third
month she has a spontaneous
abortion which, being an intellec-
tual type, she blames on her psy-
chology and the fact that her
husband doesn't love her. Things
seem on the brink of clearing up
for her at picture's end, though.
* * *
STINA IS bouncy, gay, married,
in love and vice versa, and much
excited about coming events. Who
would guess that her overactive
contractions would cause a still-
birth? There is, of course, the
potentially unmarried mother, or
rather unmarried potential
mother. She left her lovely home
for the big city and wound up in
trouble.
She is terribly scared of her
straight - laced mother: "I just
wouldn't dare call her," she says
in fractured Swedish. Who would
guess that she eventually calls her
mom who says, "Come home any-
way." Her name, one of the great
unconscious bilingual puns of the
year, is Hiordis.
* ** *
THE SUBJECT matter seems,
like Tennessee Williams so far.
There is a significant difference.
With Williams, shocking events
are usually presented through the
characters. They sit around and
talk about them, and one observes
their effects. In this rmovie one
really sees things happening, but
to little effect.
To me the most effective scene
concerned the appearance of Ce-
cilia's sister-in-law with the ad-
vice that the marriage should be
saved.
More frustrations, sublimations,
hopes, and fears are portrayed in
two minutes by this superbly acted
dark cloaked figure than had ap-
peared in the preceding ninety
minutes' worth of hysteria.
-J. Philip Benkard
AT THE MICHIGAN:
Western
'T EUNFORGIVEN"isaget
i NWs a great,
sweeping movie laid in the
Texas panhandle, sometime after
the civil war. It has some of the
finest talent in Hollywood-John
Huston, Burt Lancaster, Audrey
Hepburn, Lilian Gish, Dimitri
Tiomkin--on its credit listing.
These people have put together
a picture whose first half is truly
memorable. The rest is less in-
spired but still ranks with some
of the best work that is being
produced today.
The film's first section deals
with the question: "Is Rachel
Zachery (Audrey Hepburn) really
white, or is she an Indian?" In
the second part, the Indians have
decided that she is really oneof
them and so they try to take her
away from her white family (Burt
Lancaster, Audie Murphy, Lilian
Gish and Kip Hamiliton).
PEOPLE MAY say that director
John Huston is not what he used
to be, but this movie proves that
the old creative fire is still burn-
ing. He is able to get some depth
behind the usual stony Lancaster
facade. His sense for pictorial
composition is stunning. It is art-
ful but never arty.
The section in which Lancaster
and Murphy go hunting in a dust
storm for the man who is spead-
ing the rumor that their'sister is
an Indian is a tour de force of
camera shots. Filters are em-
ployed to heighten the visual ef-
fect but their use is never so dis-
tracting as they were in "South
Pacific."
MISS HEPBURN is her usual
self, but even more so. She can
be playful and serious, happy or
sad with the ease of a real pro.
Joseph Wiseman as the venge-
ful Kelsey all but steals the movie.
He is eerie and wierd as the self-
appointed sword of God.
As the mother, Lillian Gish is
the true stoic pioneer woman. The
scene in which she hangs Wise-
man is unforgettable.
Last mention must go to Dimitri
Tiomkin's beautiful background
score. It is the crowning touch for
this fine picture.
-Patrick Chester
CHESSMAN CASE:
Issues Transcend Individual
Talk Veils Cold War
NEW DELHI-I was one of the gallant and
desperate newspaper crew that stuck with
Chou En-Lai's farewell cunference until the
bitter end at 1:15 a.m. As I listened to Chou
talking hour after hour, the chill thought
afflicted me that if the Chinese Communists do
not swarm over the world with their population
or devastate it with weapons they will exhaust
us into submission by talk.
Of Chou's entourage, Vice-Premier Marshal
Chen Yi suffered and sweated silently, catch-
ing little catnaps while we watched with envy,
and Vice Foreign Minister Chang Han-fu
fanned himself stoically. While Chou's sensi-
tive, mobile features were highly expressive, his
lips scarcely seemed to move, leaving you with
the eerie sense of words coming from nowhere,
signifying nothing substantive yet charged with
meaning, when you consider that no elite since
Hitler's has been so certain about the wave
of the future which will inevitably give it
world rule.
WROTE hopefully the other day that Chou's
stay in New Delhi might be educational for
him, but I fear that he departed undented,
unbowed, uninstructed and unconverted. Even
if he were capable of learning, which would
be miraculous in a Communist at 62, he would
scarcely have dared show it, knowing that
every word of his answers would be weighed in
Peking in assessing his orthodoxy to the gospel
according to Liu and Mao.
On the ruins of the Five Principles, the
Chinese Communists, undaunted, are now try-
ing to build the Six Propositions. These are
presumably the points of proximity which
(Chou feels) ought to exist between the two
countries. The only phrase in them that
counts appears twice, in Point Two and Point
Five. It refers to the geographical line of actual
control.
Point Two asserts the existence of this line.
Point Five insists that both sides stick to it
until a settlement is reached and that neither
should put forward territorial claims as pre-
conditions.
THIS IS THE heart and body, the strategy
and the tactic of the Chinese position. Sev-
Editorial Staff
THOMAS TURNER, Editor
PHILIP POWER ROBERT JUNKER
Editorial Director City Editor
eral times during his press conference Chou
spoke of the present actualities as the baseline
from which talks must proceed. The rest of the
stream of his talk was meant to engulf his
listeners and the world in historical and geo-
graphical detail, diverting them from the cen-
tral fact that the Chinese meant to sit tight
where they are sitting right now on the present
actualties, holding the line of actual control.
Stripping away Chou's verbiage about friend-
ship and love, these six propositions came
down to only one proposition: the rule of force
and the law of possession. When Chou said
that the boundary dispute was only one finger
out of 10 he forget to add that in his mathe-
matics, possession is nine-tenths of the law.
The road across Aksaichin linking western
Tibet With Sinkiang is what the Chinese mean
to hold at any cost. While Chou insisted that
the so-called McMahon Line was unacceptable
to China, he hinted that China would swap the
present actualities in Ladakh for the present
actualities of the McMahon Line.
This was the old deal with which Chou
came to New Delhi. He had no new deal to
offer. All the talk of the historical and geo-
graphical officials of both countries who will
meet fromb May to September will not change
this intractable fact of the right of forceful
possession as the ethic of Chinese communism.
THE DANGER of this ethic is not only its
cynicism, since so much of the system of
world politics is built on synicism. The danger
is that if China can establish this principle
as a precedent in relation to India it can plead
the same precedent in future relations with
Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim,
Whatever happens in external aggression or
internal penetration and subversion, the
Chinese will insist on retaining their present
position in the disputed border area as the
baseline for further negotiation. I think it was
this knowledge that made Nehru firm up his
stand, lest any appeasement on his own part
be followed by greater appeasement on the
part of Prime Minister Koirala of Nepal.
When Hitler invaded the Rhineland a quar-
ter-century ago, when China invaded Tibet
a decade ago, when Russia crushed Hungary
less than five years ago, the strategy of each
was to act by force and then confront the
world with the politics and ethics of present
actualities. You can's be surprised that China
is trying it again vis-a-vis India.
When Nehru says that the border will be
alive for some years to come, he is admitting,
whether he likes it or not, the existence of a
cold war between the two nations. Chou's in-
By JOHN ROBERTS
Daily Staff Writer.
W HATEVER repercussions it
may have in the continuing
controversy over capital punish-
ment, the Caryl Chessman case is
now nearly close - for Caryl
Chessman.
It appears almost certain that.
after a twelve-year legal fight to
save his own life, the convicted
kidnapper will be executed Mon-
day. In his years on Death Row
of California's San Quentin State
Prison, Chessman has made him-
self a trained lawyer, a best-
selling author, and, through the
dogged persistence of his fight for
life, the symbol of a growing in-
ternational protest against capital
punishment.
* * *
THE WIDE publicity given the
case has probably convinced most
Americans that Chessman himself
is little deserving of real sym-
pathy. A hardened and habitual
criminal since youth, he was con-
victed of kidnapping with bodily
harm after a fair trial and on
substantial evidence.
There is no question that the
man belongs in jail. But the issues
involved have long since trans-
cended that lone individual on
Death Row, raising questions
which are now gnawing at the
national conscience.
The moral problem is by all odds
the most important and, some
would imply, the only one. Instead,
Chessman's long struggle through
the courts revolved around what,
to the layman, seems little more
than a technical quibble-the dis-
puted accuracy of the trial tran-
script. But, according to Prof.
B. J. George of the Law School
very real legal issues have been
raised by the Chessman case.
* * *
AS REPORTED in Res Gestae,
the law student newsletter, Prof.
George has called into question
the whole rationale of the Cali-
fornia statute under which Chess-
man was condemned to die. This
law makes it a capital offense to
"carry away any individual . .
with intent to hold or detain .. .
for ransom . . . or to commit ex-
tortion or robbery . . . in cases
in which the persons . . . suffers
. bodily harm."
The movement of the victim,
rather than the injury actually
inflicted, is thus made the decisive
criterion. One is left with the
curious conclusion that bodily
harm becomes somehow more ter-
rible if the victim is first forced
to walk a few paces, and in point
of fact, Chessman's "kidnapping"
never involved a movement of
over twenty feet. "Do it on the
spot," rather than "don't do it,"
Is the legal imperative carried by
this strange law.
A SECOND legal issue involveds
in the Chessman case is the dif-
ference of procedure in civil and
criminal trials in California
courts. If a dispute over the trans-
cript arises in civil cases, a new
trial is ordered. In criminal cases.
transcript would be the basis for
any appeal of the case.
After a long legal fight, the
Supreme Court in 1957 upheld his
objection and ordered a new hear-
ing to revise the record, at which
Chessman was present. A large
number of changes were made;
Chessman, however, objected to
this modified transcript also and
launched a new court fight, which
was not resolved until a Supreme
Court denial this December.
As Prof. George points out, the
quickest solution to the knotty
legal problem would have been to
grant Chessman a new trial. This
would have given the condemned
man the full measure of his rights,
and would have undoubtedly pro-
duced the same verdict anyway.
' *, *
THE DRAMA of the lone wolf
teaching himself law and single-
handedly challenging the courts
has perhaps led to an exaggera-
tion of Chessman's technical abili-
ties as a lawyer, particularly in
the early stages of the case.
"Many of Chessman's difficulties
stem from his insistence on de-
fending himself, and this in turn
stemmed from his overweening
ego," Prof. George points out.
An argument advanced recently
by investigators under the spon-
sorship of a national men's maga-
zine illustrates the point. They
claim that another ex-convict in
the custody of the authorities at
the time of the trial more closely
matched the description given by
witnesses as the "Red Light ban-
dit" than did Chessman, but that
the prosecution failed to follow
out this lead.
* * *
BUT ACCORDING to Prof.
George, the responsibility of the
prosecution lies in accumulating
evidence providing guilt, rather
than checking out every conceiv-
able angle which might be pro-
posed, for purposes .of delay, by
the accused man.
If there was any substance to
the claim, the defense should have
raised the issue at the time and
produced positive proof, but this
was not done. This was just one
example of the mistakes made by
Chessman; Prof. George notes that
a check of the trial manuscript
shows numerous instances in
which the prosecution took ad-
vantage of the defendant's lack
of legal training.
Under these circumstances can
Chessman be properly said to have
enjoyed the maximum protection
of a fair trial? While the courts
have ruled that no man can be
required to accept counsel against
his will, Prof. George believes that
a reexamination of this principle
in cases involving the death pen-
alty is needed.
CHESSMAN'S most recent plea
argued that the postponement of
got
his Feb. 19 execution date was
ordered solely to prevent an em-
barrassing incident when Prsi-
dent Eisenhower toured South
America; this juggling of a prison-
ers' fate, he contended, constituted
cruel and unusual punishment, in
violation of the Eighth Amend-
ment.
The Supreme Court refused to
hear the case last Monday-pre-
dictably, according to Prof.
George. He points out that the
various stays of execution which
have kept Chessman alive for
twelve years have all been either
directly engineered by him or
have had his approval.
Moreover, the Supreme Court
has not been receptive to argu-
ments based on this aspect of the
Bill of Rights.
Prof. George cites as the
"strongest pronouncement of the
Court on this matter" a 1946 de-
cision involving a condemned
murderer in Louisiana. In this
case the man had actually been
strapped in the electric chair and
administered a shock, but because
of a mechanical failing was not
killed.
When a new date of execution
was set the prisoner claimed he
was being subjected to cruel and
unusual punishment; the high
court found differently.
BARRING an intercession by
Governor Brown, which is unlikely
in view of the State Supreme
court's refusal to certify a peti-
tion for clemency, Chessman will
die Monday. While his lawyers
make last-minute maneuvers,.such
a plea based on the findings of
the magazine investigators, the
condemned man himself faces the
execution with the same melodra-
matic attitude which has always
characterized him.
About the magazine's claims,
Chessman said with a Roman
pose, "I do not want to be in-
volved in this finger pointing." He
has steadfastly refused to name
the "real" Red Light bandit, whose
identity he claims to know, and
seems to look forward to becoming,
a martyr.
Moral issues there are, and legal
ones. But in dissenting from the
1957 ruling, Supreme Court Jus-
tice William 0. Douglas pointed'
out, with considerable logic, that
"the conclusion is inescapable
that Chessman is playing a game
with the courts."
And now the game is up.
New Books at Library
Kertesz, Stephen D. and Fitz-
simons, M.A. ed. - Diplomacy in
a Changing World; Notre Dame,
Ind., Univ. of Notre Dame Press,
1960.
Koenig, Louis W. -- The Invis-
ible Presidency; N.Y., Rinehart &
Co., 1960.
'AT THE STATEF:
'V isit' Laughs Lean
SOn Spaeman Antics
THE OBJECT in projecting a character from way out somewhere
into a common situation is to throw a reasonable representation of
humanity into a relationship with ordinary people so that his presence
will satirize them. Hal Wallis has forgotten this point in his "Visit to
a Small Planet" as easily as the audience can forget Jerry Lewis is a
reasonable representation of humanity.
Since the object is not satire, then the only thing left is to provide
as many laughs as possible. This Hal Wallis accomplishes with a degree
of success. Some of the situations are indeed ludicrous, if you find
traffic cops losing their pants ludicrous.
The humor is not the slapstick Jerry Lewis used during his days
with Dean Martin. Rather it depends on his superman type powers
that flabbergast other people. As long as a surprised look on some-
one's face, or the anticipation of that look remains funny, a movie
o, this type will be amusing.
JERRY LEWIS, a spaceboy just twenty-one million light years
old, wishes to visit Earth, the planet he is studying in his history
course. He sneaks off against all advice and lands during the middle
of a saucer scare.
Expecting to partake in the Civil War, he instead blunders-into
a Civil War masquerade pre-party, cuts a few capers, then straightens
everything out with the household. Swearing them $o secrecy, he
enforces this secrecy by a whammy system having a voltage from
eight to eighty-six. The latter burns anything on the spot while the
size eight jolt merely makes them sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb"
all the way through.
Women quickly become an object of interest. He finds the 36-24-36
style a pleasant idea. It seems that women beyond are 36 all the
way down, and this, he claims, is monotonous.
HE VISITS the local expresso shop, "The Hungry Brain," in his
space suit, plays the bongos by remote control, dances with a swinging
chick, and zips off her skirt with a full eight-six. This is too way out
for even the cats.
The fun stops presently, however, as the powers beyond tire of
his foibles and cut him off. Without his powers, Lewis is no longer
funny. But that doesn't matter, the show is almost over anyway.
-Thomas Brien
.
I
By; Michael Kelly'
i
a
:fi n u4 * $ YDC'0 I Q-I
I