9.

PAGE FOUR

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1951

r

______________________________________________________ I


dite 1/te
By CHUCK ELLIOTT
W HEN A GROUP of college presidents de-
cided to see what could be done about
cleaning up collegiate football, nearly every-
body cheered. Now, when they have begun
to make suggestions that may actually have
some effect, the complaints have started to
roll in-from the poor beleaguered coaches
and, above all, from the alumni. It is per-
haps understandable that the alumni (the
particularly vocal ones, at any rate) should
be so concerned.
A protest which may, given a few more
weeks, become typical reached my desk
yesterday. From a University alumnus in
Los Angeles, it was a copy of a letter sent
to John Hannah, president of Michigan
State College and chairman of the special
committee of the American Council on
Education studying the athletics question.
Brushing through such statements as
" . what right have you (as a repre-
sentative of MSC) to sound off about the
Rose Bowl pact between the Western
Coniference and the Pacific Coast Con-
ference, at least at this stage, when Mich-
igan State has not yet become a member
of the Conference?" and a few miscel-
laneous slaps at State's "recruiting and
subsidizing of athletes," we come to the
core of the alumnus' argument.
"It has also been my observation since
the Rose Bowl pact between the Western
Conference and the Pacific Coast Conference
that, generally speaking, a better brand of
football has been presented on New Year's
Day. At any rate, millions of people have
listened to the radio for this event on the
first day of each year . . . It would be tragic
if this event was suspended because of the
attitude of college heads like you."
So there is the picture as seen by an
alumnus. In his eyes football on the college
level is no longer a sport for the players, or
for the players and students, but rather for
anybody who happens to be interested. Foot-
ball has assumed the position of a symbol,
and it is now a question of who has the
best symbol rather than who has the best
school. Patriotism of all kinds is much
simpler to feel if it can be placed in terms
of a single symbol, but (and this case is
a fine example) unless the symbol is an
impersonal one, like a flag, or a song, some-
body is bound to suffer.
When the premise that football repre-
sents the quality of a school is accepted,
as it has been just about everywhere, it is
natural to expect further confusion of
values. It is that confusion which we see
now. Colleges have come to the point now
where any angle to get a better football
team will be seized. Alumni groups spend
all kinds of time and money trying to get
high school stars to come to the alma
mater. Coaches get fired when they don't
turn out a good team. Educational chaos
necessarily results. And all because of a
basic misdirection.
And now we can read about a group of
college presidents trying to find out what is
wrong. We are advised that they frown on
post-season games-that they believe ath-
letics should be rammed back into their
proper sphere in relation to course work-
that subsidization is wrong-and that the
faculty should have closer control over ath-
letics. But what will be accomplished?
Probably nothing at all-unless, and I sug-
gest this hopefully, the "football public" of
the United States, and everybody else, can
be made to realize that Michigan is not its
football team, nor is Notre Dame, or Michi-
gan State, or any other institution which
was formed to provide education.

I,


MATTE R OF FA C T
By JOSEPH ALSOP

The Week's News
. . .IN RETROSPECT .. .

/fetteP TO THE EDITOR
The Daily welcomes communications from its readers on matters of
general interest, and will publish all letters which are signed by the writer
and in good taste. Letters exceeding 300 words in length. defamatory or
libelous letters, and letters which for any reason are not in good taste will
be condensed, edited or withheld from publication at the discretion of the
editors.

L 11


WASHINGTON-After a remarkable dis-
play of feebleness and folly, the State
Department has apparently decided to enter
a declaration of bankruptcy for its Middle
Eastern policy. According to report, Assis-
tant Secretary of State George McGhee,
who has been presiding over this vital
branch of our affairs, is about to be trans-
ferred to the comparative safety of our
Embassy to Turkey.
The event is comparable, or at any rate
one hopes it is comparable, to the declara-
tion of bankruptcy entered for the old Far
Eastern policy in 1949. At that time, W.
Walton Butterworth was shipped off to
the Embassy in Stockholm, and the able
and hard-headed Dean Rusk replaced him
at the head of the State Department's
Far Eastern division. If a comparable im-
provement can be made in our Middle
Eastern leadership, it is barely conceiv-
able that a full scale Middle Eastern dis-
aster can still be avoided.
This reporter's partner is now in the Mid-
dIe East, assessing the situation there on
the spot. It will not be competitive with his
work, however, to note certain repeating
errors which marked the handling of the
Far Eastern crisis, and have now cropped
up anew in the crisis in the Middle East.
FIRST, THE SPECIALIST groupings in the
State Department, like the Middle East-
ern and Far Eastern divisions, until recent-
-ly formed separate careers within the larg-
er career of the Foreign Service. Thus the
specialists tended, as it were, to take out
honorary citizenships in the regions of their
specialties. Hard and vital American inter-
ests became obscure to them. They grew
indignant, as Chinese might be indignant,
about the corruption of the Chiang Kai-
shek regime; or they worried about Iranian
public opinion as an Iranian politician
might worry.
In the Middle Eastern division, as man-
aged by McGhee, this tendency expressed
itself in a strange hankering to enter a
sort of Middle Eastern popularity contest.
And thus when the Iranian oil crisis de-
manded hard and disagreeable American
action to safeguard American and Wes-
trn strategic, economic and political in-
terests, our interests were unhappily sub-
ordinated to this will-o-the-wisp of pop-
ularity.
Second, in the Middle East, as in the Far
East, the rule was never recognized that
inaction can be vastly more dangerous than
action. Nothing was done while China sub-
sided into Communism, because any effort
to prevent this catastrophe inevitably en-
tailed grave risks. Nothing effective was
done while the Iranian crisis went from bad

to worse, because there was nothing to do
that was easy and sure of results. But in
both cases, while the immediate risks of
effort and action were safely avoided, the
inevitable and infinitely greater price of
inaction had to be paid in the end.
Just as the present grim Far Eastern sit-
uation was the sure and mathematically pre-
dictable result of a flabby policy in China,
so the present hideous situation in Egypt
was the certain outcome of a flabby policy
in Iran. In both cases, the risks that must
now be run are immeasurably greater than
the risks that would have been entailed by
fore-handed, preventive action. In both
cases, the chances of saving something from
the ruins now are much less than were the
chances when the trouble started.
* * *
THIRD, by the same token, judgments of
Far and Middle Eastern affairs of the
future were consistently warped by Micaw-
berism. It was desired to avoid disagreeable
and dangerous decision. Therefore it was
easier to predict, as Butterworth predicted,
that it would be five decades before the
Chinese Communists could organize China
and begin to make their force felt beyond
their frontiers. And it was easier to assert,
as McGhee successively asserted, that the
Iranian oil problem could be arranged with
the powerless Prime Minister Ala; that a
rational solution could be worked out with
the irrational Prime Minister Mossadegh;
that W. Averell Harriman would fix every-
thing (which came nearest to being correct);
and finally that a deal could be made with
Mossadegh in the soothing climate of Wash-
ington. Being founded on wishfulness, all
these judgments were inevitably wrong.
Fourth, in both cases, finally, great
efforts have been made to avoid respon-
sibility for the bad outcome, by loudly
pointing to the follies of Chiang Kai-shek
and the mistakes of the British. But in
fact wise American action could have
prevented those follies and corrected those
mistakes. And. since American interests
have suffered, the blame is here. Indeed
it is contemptible for the greatest power
in the world to try to place the blame
elsewhere.
The wisdom to understand American in-
terests; the courage to act strongly and in
time; the honesty to assess unpleasing sit-
uations in their true proportions; the dig-
nity not to blame others for the .bad out-
comenyou can avert yourself-tlete are the
characteristics which lacked in our Far
Eastern policy; which have been lacking in
our Middle Eastern policy. They are also
the essential characteristics of all sound na-
tional policy-making.
(Copyright, 1951, New York Herald Tribune, Inc.)

p.

ON THE
Washington MerryGo-Round
WIlil DREW PEARSON

'3


A SPECIAL HOUSE committee, now prob-
ing the Communist slaughter of 5,500
American prisoners in Korea, heard secret
testimony recently on a similar shocking
massacre during the last war. This was the
brutal extermination of about 10,000 Poles
by the Russians in the Katyn forest in' West
Russia.

Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily
are written by members of The Daily staff
and represent the views of the writer only,
This must be noted in all reprints.
NIGHT EDITOR: CAL SAMRA
CURRENT MOVIES
At The Michigan..
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS: with Gene
Kelly, Oscar Levant, Leslie Caron and the
Music of George Gershwin.
A TECHNICOLOR, romantic Paris serves
as the background for an easy-going,
intelligently performed musical that should
please even the most hyper-critical movie-
goer.
Gene Kelly, as the American, is a
young artist who falls in love with Leslie
Caron, a French girl. The plot is mildly
complicated, but after a tribulation or two,
they both dance happily ever after,
Oscar Levant is his usual delightfully
obnoxious self. He portrays a young musi-
cian, whose financial support for the past
six years has consisted solely of fellowships
gleaned from various American universities.
One of the most amusing sequences in
the movie is the one in which Oscar Levant
dreams that Oscar Levant is a brilliant piano
soloist, playing in a symphony orchestra
whose membership consists of a hundred or
more Oscar Levants conducted by the great
Oscar Levant.

The testimony was
tee secretly by Lt. Col.
an American prisoner
mans in World War II.

given the commit-
Donald B. Stewart,
taken by the Ger-

Colonel Stewart related that he was an
involuntary witness when the Germans dis-
interred the massacred Poles in May, 1943.
He didn't want to take part in any "propa-
ganda or publicity trick" by the Germans,
who had plenty of blood on their own hands
in mass killings. As a prisoner of war, how-
ever, he was forced to observe the ghastly
spectacle. He even had to walk in one mass
grave where long-decayed bodies were
"packed very tightly, like cigars."
Most of the dead were former Polish army
officers dressed in heavy overcoats, Stewart
said. Practically all of the dead had been
shot through the back of the head, as were
the Americans in Korea, but a few had been
bayoneted.
Since Russia was our ally in 1943, and
also because Stewart at first couldn't be
sure that the Germans themselves weren't
guilty of the massacre, he and other pri-
soner observers "tried to keep any expres-
sion from being shown on our faces" dur-
ing the disinterment.
"For instance, in spite of the stench, we
tried to keep from wrinkling up our faces
so that they (the Germans) could not take
a picture of us expressing disapproval or
distaste."
x ,
RUSSIAN ALIBIS
R USSIA HAS SINCE DENIED any respon-
sibility for the mass murder, claiming
that the Germans had killed the Polish offi-
cers, after forcing them to work in "road
camps" during the time the Nazi Army oc-
cupied the Katyn forest area in the "sum-
mer of 1941."
However, the Soviets convicted them-
selves as liars by their own charges, Col-
onel Stewart testified, for the Nazis never

"We did not like the Germans," Stewart
reported bitterly. "Those who had been pri-
soners longer had a more intense dislike.
The longer I was a prisoner, the more I hat-
ed the Germans; and yet in spite of (this)
animosity and in spite of what we found
out about their concentration camps, in
spite of everything that I learned about the
Germans while I was a prisoner, it did not
change the conviction that I formed then,
that in this one case-I do not know about
any others-in this one case the Germans
were not responsible; that these men had
been executed by the Russians.
WASHINGTON PIPELINE
SENATOR McCARTHY filled the final ed-
ition of the Congressional Record, just
published, with 18 last-minute statements.
All but two tell what a great guy McCarthy
is. (McCarthy used to get Senator Cain of
Washington to praise him. It now looks as if
there's no one left but McCarthy to pat him-
self on the back.) . .. Chief Counsel Adrian
De Wind of the House Committee investigat-
ing tax scandals, keeps an investigator on
duty in the office at all times-since he
caught a reporter snooping in an office brief
case ... Noble Travis, the Michigan GOP
chairman, has prepared several anti-Labor
ads to be used during the election campaign.
The ads will be unsigned, and will carefully
refrain from showing any connection with
the Republicans. (This is the same Noble
Travis who was a director of the notorious
society of sentinels, which fought against
social security, foreign aid, minimum wages,
price controls, and federal housing loans in
1946.) . . . Army Intelligence reports a sud-
den increase last week in the number of
enemy tanks in North Korea.
ACHESON BORED
IT MAY BRING A DENIAL, but Secretary
Acheson is so disgusted with the lack of
of progress at the Paris meeting of the Uni-
ted Nations that he almost came home the
other day.
Immediately after giving his speech de-
nouncing the Russians and Chinese Com-
munists, Acheson told his assistants to
make arrangements for him to fly back to
Washington.

"And what will you do with your share of the
new pay boost, Professor Schultz?"
DESPITE the losing football season, University faculty members and
employes were in high spirits this week as a pay hike of six percent
was voted by the Board of Regents.
The across-the-board boost will go into effect next January 1.
Coupled with a 10 percent raise brought about last December, it
represents a 16 percent upward adjustment since 1946.
But latest figures from the Government's cost of living index
contrasted sharply with the increases. Since 1946, prices have gone
up 35 percent, with a 10 percent climb since the Korean outbreak last
year.
* * * *
END OF AN ERA-The Wolverines ended their golden reign of
pigskin supremacy this week, capping their first losing season since
1936 with a one touchdown shutout over a strong Ohio State eleven.
Although the underdog Michigan team showed frequent spots of'
brilliance in its conquest of the Red foe, there was nothing at stake
except pride. But all in all, the season was not as bad as the scribes
held it. For the first time in years, students spent their Saturday
afternoons in spirited suspense. Unlike the days of Rose Bowl pre-
cision, nobody knew who would win.
As Ann Arbor swiftly became a gridiron power vacuum, an agri-
cultural college to the north took the headlines by storm as the
Spartans roared to an ominous preface to their entrance into Big 10
football two years hence.
Meanwhile, Illinois won the Big Ten crown.
YOUTHS SENTENCED-William R. Morey, III, and Jacob Max
Pell, convicted murderers of Nurse Pauline Campbell in the now-
famous Sept. 16 mallet-slaying, began life sentences this week at the
Jackson penitentiary. Although sentencing was originally scheduled
for next month, sheriff's officers' discovery of a plot by which the
teen-agers planned to escape from the County Jail prompted Circuit
Judge Breakey into earlier action.
S * * *
International . . #
BUFFER ZONE-It was a week to give city editors nightmares.
By fits and starts, prognostication and denial, propaganda and nerve-
war, the negotiators at Panmunjom painfully met and adjourned and
met yet again to agree at week's end on a buffer zone. But weeks of
haggling did not go for naught as UN delegates finally won their
demand for a truce line based upon the present fighting line. The
Panmunjom talks still left us with the queerest "peace" in history-
the fighting will go on until all other aspects of a permanent armistice
are settled. And if the armistice isn't signed within 30 days even the
agreed buffer line is nixed and negotiations become a wide open ques-
tion once more. City editors and the rest of the world weren't nearly
out of the woods yet.
** *: *
BLOODY NEWS-The grisly truth behind premature Red atrocity
revelations seemed likely to outstrip all rumors. The Defense Depart-
ment revealed this week that Gen. Ridgway had reported over 8,000
Red atrocities to his UN superiors weeks ago.
AIRPLANES, AIRPLANES-Who had the airplanes? American air
craft strayed over both bristling hems of the Iron Curtain this week,
were fired upon, and haven't been spotted since. One, a Munich-bound
flight had been storm-blown over the Hungary-Romania borders, said
our Belgrade embassy. A likely story hinted the Red satellites, but the
military transport had actually. attempted a deliberate violation of
their borders. For the other errant waif we had nothing but the
say-so of the Soviets; it had passed near Vladivostock and been fired
upon by Red fighters. Had it been destroyed?-the Red's didn't say.
But two Red Navy airmen were sporting new decorations for outstand-
ing performance of their Siberian patrol duties.
HOT WORDS, COLD WAR-The marbled halls of the Palais de
Chaillot heard some strange sounds this week-Egypt, bitter over
Britain's stiff stand in Suez, came out for the Soviet disarmament plan
-the first non-Communist nation to do so. That august structure
heard more familiar sentiments at the following day's session of the
UN General Assembly when Andrei Vishinsky accused the United
States of promoting an espionage network within the USSR. Earlier
in the week the Soviets filed a similar but more formal protest against
a provision in this country's new Mutual Security Pact which could
be interpreted to pay for just that.
S * * *
MUDDLE EAST-A truce, a triuniph and a warning made their
effects felt throughout the Near East this week. The truce, unfortun-
ately a limited affair, came at Ismailia, where Egyptian and British
officials agreed that there was no point in getting killed in the riots
and violence which have torn that mid-Suez city. The triumph, a
four-day paean to Iran's Mossadegh, returning from an as yet fruitless
mission to this country, climaxed in a frantic adoration of the feeble
oil-fanatic.
The warning, addressed to all Mid-East nations,
What the Soviets had to say was this: don't join a West-sponsored
Middle East Pact-or else.
-Zander Hollander and Barnes Connable ,

Desert Fox..*.
To the Editor:
THE NOTARIOUS Hitler gang-
man and killer of American
troops, General Erwin Rommel,
commander of the Afrika Korps, is
glorified in the 20th Century Fox
film The Desert Fox.
Rommel, the ex-cop who rose
from a Nazi beer hall ruffian to
become a ruthless Gestapo mem-
ber and Hitler's personal body-
guard, before being elevated to a
high post on the German General
Staff, is presented as a scholar and
gentleman, military master-mind,
loving father and husband and
chivalrous foe.
Nor would it surprise us to see
a 20th Century Fox film glorify-
ing the Japanese Admiral who at-
tacked us at Pearl Harbor.
The Desert Fox not only gla-
morizes the butcher Rommel, but
the entire German General Staff,
with one or two exceptions, is por-
trayed in a flattering light.
If the leading survivers of the
Nazi gang now living in comfort
in Western Germany had set out
to eulogize Rommel and the Ger-
man general staff they could
hardly have done a better job
than the makers of this shocking
travesty of history.
Rommel took part in numerous
murderous raids against liberals,
Socialist, Catholics and Jews when
he was a storm trooper. Later, as
a commander of the Africa Korps,
he caused the death of countless
thousands of innocent people. He
was the soul of Qerman imperial-
ism and militarism and a willing
and bruital Nazi.
He was a close friend of Stuel-
pnagel, hangman of Paris. Win-
ston Churchill called Rommel a
chivalrous personality. The film
goes even further than this. James
Mason's Rommel is such a good,
kind man one can hardly hold
back one's tears when misfortune
knocks at his door.
Forgotten is the Nazi aggression
that took 20 million lives-six mil-
lion of them Jews. Forgotten is
the indictment of the German
General Staff at Nuremberg at the
war's end. They have been respon-
sible in large measure for the mis-
eries and sufferings that have
fallen on millions of men, women
and children. They have been a
disgrace to the honorable profes-
sion of arms and the truth is they
actively participated in all these
crimes, or set silent and acquies-
cent, witnessing the commission
of crimes on a scale larger and
more shocking than the world has
ever had the misfortune to know.
It is deplorable that so soon
after the victorious war against
German fascism there should be
released a film history of that
war-re-written to please the mass
murders of Dachau and Oswie-
cism.
-George P. Moshoff
* * *
Deer Hunting ...
To the Editor:
IN RESPONSE to Miss Hendle-
man's unjust remarks, all "glory
seeking," "rough and ready sports-
men," should rise up in arms. Cer-
tainly there is a most pressing
need for greater safety in the
woods. The so called accidents
DAILY
OFFICIAL
BULLETIN
(Continued from Page 2)
3:30 to 5 p.m. In the south room, Union
cafeteria.

"King Richard II," William Shake-
speare's greatest history, will be pre-
sented by the Department of Speech
at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre Wed-
nesday evening through Saturday. All
four performances begin at 8 p .m. A
special admission rate for students is
offered Wed. and Thurs. nights only.
Window sale of tickets opens tomorrow
at 10 a.m. Box office open daily from
10 a.m. thru 5 p.m.
Michigan Dames. The Bridge Group
of the Michigan Dames will meet on
Mon., Nov. 26, Michigan League, 8 p.m.
Tickets for the Christmas dance will
be on sale at this time. Don't forget
to bring those cards!
Russian Circle. Meet Mon., Nov. 26,
8 p.m., International Center. The meet-
ing will include a talk by Mr. Harold
Orel on what the Russian novel has
meant to England. There will be Rus-
sian songs, and tea will be served
around the samovar.
Barnaby Club. Supper and businessj
meeting in Lane Hall. Mon., Nov. 26, 6
p.m.Call 9092 for reservations before
noon Monday. 3

and deaths each year attest to
that. In time, proper corrective
measures may be initiated and
save those needlessly wasted lives.
The above truth does not excuse
the unnecessary slander heaped
upon the head of the deer hunter.
The "brutal pastime," hunting, re-
duces an over-sized herd which at
present has browsed out much of
the winter range and brought
about starvation estimated at from
5,000 to 30,000deer per year, de-
pending on the severity of the
winter. Death by starvation, is a
much more humane method than
that by a bullet? Deer are a crop
like corn, wheat, timber and tur-
keys and should be harvested as
such.
That "wild tasting meat" is
more than likely a reflection of
the culinary skill of the chef or
the storage of the meat before be-
ing distributed. You would not
want a beefsteak from a steer that
had hung for a week exposed to
sun, rain, snow alternately frozen
and thawed, and then placed
alongside a hot motor to make an
extended trip.
When deer hunting is called an
"activity entirely void of construc-
tive value," some one of the 393,-
122 hunters who went afield in
1950 must have had a plausible
answer. Here is one.
Many of the residents of north-
ern Michigan who furnish food,
lodging, guide service, gasoline
and amusement Po the tourist, rely
on the deer hunter for a much
needed source of income amount-
ing to millions of dollars annually.
If the meat from one deer aver-
aged 50 pounds and was worth 50
cents per pound, each deer would
be worth $25.00. In 1950, the 114,-
000 deer harvested would have
been worth $2,850,000,000 to the
hunters plus the enoyment gleaned
from engaging in a healthy,
wholesome out-door activity. All
of this from an "activity entirely
void of constructive value."
Overbrowsing, starvation of the
animal as a consequence of repro-
duction, orchard damage and the,
buck law, have placed the Michi-
gan deer herd in a precarious posi-
tion where intelligent harvesting
is an economic and humane ne-
cessity. Can the mass killings in
the slaughterhouses or slow star-
vation be more merciful than a
clean quick billet? If sport, ex-
citement, and recreation can be
realized, why not include it, with
the necessary cropping of the deer.
Conservation of natural re-
sources means utilization of these
resources, not their wasteful ne-
glect. If "brutality" exists, it is
the fault of the individual hunter
and in no way reflects upon the
current necessity for maintaining
an advantageous equilibrium be-
tween the animals and their food
supply.
-Duaine K. Wenzel

°!
;.

It

I.

Sixty-Second Year
Edited and managed by students of
the University of Michigan under the
authority of the Board of Control of
Student Publications.
Editorial Staff
Chuck Elliott .........Managing Editor
Bob Keith................City Editor
Leonard Greenbaum, Editorial Director
Vern Emerson...... ..Feature Editor
Rich Thomas ..........Associate Editor
Ron Watts ............Associate Editor
Bob Vaughn ........ ..Associate Editor
Ted Papes . .........Sports Editor
George Flint ...Associate Sports Editor
Jim Parker ... Associate Sports Editor
Jan James ........... Women's Editor
Jo Keteihut, Associate Women's Editor
Business Staff
Bob Miller ..........Business Manager
Gene Kuthy, Assoc. Business Manager
Charles Cuson ... Advertising Manager
Sally Fish.......... Finance Manager
Stu Ward.........Circulation Manager
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A.

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BARNABY

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That dog! Bragging to the Professor
that he runs everything around herel


11

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Your Fairy Godfather is of the
opinion that he has learned his

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11 iI