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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1? ij i PACE TWO THE DAILY TAR HEEL Policy Statement Friday afternoon one of this campus' finest VM1114 toed mule a most off-base comment in the offices ol I he Daily Tar Heel. The individual happens to be a member of one ol the local sororities. When inform ed by the 1 dttor that the paper was planning on taking some pot-shots at the sororities' lukc Mome rushing program, she remaik fd. "Rrtnember what happened to Norman Smith when he started slamming the sorori ties and fraternities around." Our answer to this is simply that this pa per will dis(uss any issue pertaining to any prnup rr any tim that it deems it necessary to do so. We will onlv accept such statements as a (halleii'C to fu'lill the purpose of this paper, i.e. to simulate thought.: Challenging Brother Edit The editor takes up most of the page to dty with a rcptint of a speech made by his eldet brother to a gioup of incoming fresh men. Those of you who have elder brothers ( ind 'or sistets) will know vli,.'t pain and humiliation is theicbv imohed. In any ecnt. the speech is not reprinted for reasons of trass nepotism. It is reprinted because it is. beyond any question, one of the most important things that has been said on this (ampus in a long time. YOl' ART III K CHALLENGE merits your (losest attention. It also merits addition al reprinting by those college editors on our exdirngc list. Touring The Bush With Al Not too long ago there uas a guy named Lowenstein who pursued higher education on this 1 ampus. He was a funny sort of guy. kinda mixed up in every jxjssible activity he could find. He was and is today a great x testier, politician, academician, counselor, speech maker, woild traveler, wiiter and bicud. Well, a while ago Lowenstein left the Car olina scene, and went to work for Senator Hubert Humphrey in Washington.- And then this summer, the former Tar Heel took a ttip to South West Africa tor the United Nations. l our weeks ago Lowenstein return ed to this country ."nil immediately diove to the I'niseisiiy of Illinois to partake in the program of the National Student Associa tion's Annual Congress. (He's a former Pres ident ol that group.) Scseral times during the course of the Congress, which was aside from this pretty dull. Lowenstein stepped behind the rostrum to address delegates on what he had seen in South West Africa this summer. Tuesday in this editoii.tl column, the Editor will start the first of a two part series orr the Lowen stein ttip. paraphrasing his recent remarks and impressions. This will be done because of the simple lac t that what is happening in this very remote spot is important to this (ampus. So join us Tuesday when we tour the "bush" with Allan! K. Lowenstein, a first thss guy. What About This? 1. The nition it at war. 2. Th nation is losing the wi', badly. 3. .Th nation mut exert a vastly greater effort. m)t iBaHv Car $eel The official student, publication of the Publication Board of the University of North Carolina where it Is published daily except Monday and examination period? and summer terms. Entered as second class matter in tr post office in Chapel Hill. N. C, under the act of March 8, 1870. Subscription rates: $4 00 per se mester, $700 per year. The Daily Tar Heel Is printed by the News Inc., Carrboro, N. C Editor . ..."7T 7 W 4 , J.rfh first y 1 mmm 1 Associate Editors ... Assistant To Alitor Managing Editor Co-Managing Editor DAVIS B. YOUNC FRANK CROWTHEP RON SHUMATE GINNY ALDIGE .... CHUCK ROSS LARRY SMITH, Business Manager WALKER BLANTONf Advertising Manager . JOHN MINTEEI Peter B. Young Mr. Ycung, a Wuodrow Wil son ard Southern Funi Fe'low ln !h? UXC H.story D?partment, Is currently w 01 king on a siuJy of strategic thinking at the Air War College. Thi3 speech was delivered to 150 fieshrmn stu dents at the YMCA Orientation Camp. Editor.) The great Army tark general. Georgie S. Patton. ence was pushed cut on stage in front of a high school assembly in Iowa, or seme o'her equally Gou-forsaken place. Th? general had a little csnned speech all rea:ly for the students, something about buying war bonds, but when ho saw those a-ert, clean ycung faces he threw away his prepared text and tried desperately to get across a suc cinct expression c-f hard-earned wisdom. He began his ad-libbel speech this way: "KIDS, DON'T BE A DUMB BASTARD AND DIE FOR YOUR COUNTRY! MAKE SOME OTHER DUMB BASTARD DIE FOR HIS COUNTRY!" There is no record of the stu dents' response to General Pat ton's advice. There is no evidence, either from Iowa or anywhere else in Americ.i. that indicates cur understanding cf ration's fundamental princ'plo that sound thinking can save our lives. On the contrary, there is consider able evider.ee that we hive tailed to take Patton's injunction to heart. We spend more money for highways than lor schorls. We spend more money for television advertising than for public health. We spend more money fcr booze and cigarettes than for missiles. The chances are excellent h :t this kind of topsy-turvy confusion will kill a majority of Americars within the next five years, and thereby end the gre.it American saga. On that cheery note permit me to add my small welcome as you begin your college careers. At this preckus moment we arc all virgins. As far as the Univer sity of NV'ftti Caroiira is con cerned, you are wi.hout a fault. And as far as you are concornel, the University is populated by in tellectual giants about on a par with the late Albert Einstein. It will take about one week tc djspel this false illusion cf virginity. The University will tind that mist of you have been "had" by criminal ly inadequate high schools, that cu are unequipped for serious college work. You, in turn, will quickly discover that we are ml in'ellectual giants, that we are, in fact, somc;hirg very close to stumblebums. Having discovered these awful truths, we will ;hen settle down to some sort of four year marriage. Fcr a few ol you. a precious fe. it will be a mar riage of love. For most of you. it will he a marriage of convenience or worse, a grim marriage of ne cessity. Now I am supposed to address you this mornirg on the assigned subject: THE CHALLENGE OF THE WORLD SITUATION. The YMCA Committe that concocted this pretentious title did so on the sound assumption that it was so meaningless ns to enable me to say anything I wanted. The first thing I want to do is to examine this title in the most literal sense. The title implies that there is something separate and distinct from us, something called "the world situation." an.1 this something is a challenge. What nonsense! There is nothing on this earth that you are not. intimately connected with. YOU ar "the challenge of the world situation." Such strergtis as you possess are th hone of "the world situation." Yi ur many abundant weaknesses ae the de spair of "the world s'lintion." YOU ARE THE CHALLENGE OF THE WORLD SITUATION. And around this simple, but radi oed, formulation I will build the rest of my ta'.k. The dominant fact about "the worm situation mat ycu are a pait of that you are the chal lenge of is that there is a war going on. The major belligerents ate, of course, ourselves and the Russians. You will be surprised how many supposedly intelligent people refuse to face this sordii fact: that there is a war in prog ress and you may be interested) we are currently the losers. An important part of your j b as stu dents will be to rudely inject this nasty fact into every classroom. Where is this war being fought? This is an important question, and I will answer it by telling a very V y. : ' 4 A. "'I.-'' V' .7 7 personal story. Piease lorgive me. The story concerns, in addition , r 1 I It s 'a - v jw to myscU. a Dcauami ana wunut-i- xv-, ; ful eirl who once told me the most t??.r t &t:X"rV $ mag-nficcnt lie 1 ever neara. ine story takes place in 1350 when I was just about your age, and the girl was perhaps a little younger. We were spending the day on an isolated beach about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. We had a portable radio, a few sandwiches and (truth will cut) a six pack of beer. Ycu dig the bit, I am sine. Now this girl 'was a Polish Jew, and as a mere child she had somehow managed to survive the great Nazi death ramp of Ausch witz. About three million Jews were exterminated at this camp whiie only a handful survived, k long chain cf little miracles brought this girl to that Southern California beach, to the portable radio and the sandwiches and the beer. We dozed off after lunch. If there were any onlookers 1 which I ooubt" it was a peaceiul Amer ican scene: the boy, ihe gin, uie blanket, the radio, the empty beer Cdus. I was avvakened when tne gal began talking in her sleep, ihon sne uttered wordless liu.e cries anj whimperings, ana anal ly her whole oooy shud.erea tear fully. She was having a night mare, and 1 gently woxe her. "Bad aieam.'" 1 asked. "Yes," she said, "i vas dream ing ,bout the cmp. 1 am sj sorry." For some reason, perhaps be cause it was so wildly grotesque for her to apologize to me for tno nightmare, 1 bioke up. 1 mean I bawleu. Al this point, our roles nveisea. She attcmp.ed to com lori me. She heid me in her arms, patted my head, and said: "Do not cry, Peter. We are in Amer ica, and the war is far away." THE WAR IS FAR AWAY, No! This was a he, a magnificent lie, a lie motivated by love, but a lie r.everlheless. The war was right there on that secluded California beach. And 1 mean to tell you thai it was a hellishly tough war that day in sunny California. She v as wounatd in that war, and to was I. THE WAR IS NEVER FAR AWAY. That is the first corollary to our major formulation that YOU are the challenge of the woil j situation. How close to Chapel Hill is the purely military aspect of the great war now in progress? This ques tion can be answered with pre cision. The purely military aspect ci !Ik great war for the world is currently being fought at Golds boro, about 80 miles trom here. A lew weeks ago, I saw a small paragraph buried in the back pages of the Durham newspaper that the Strategic Air Command had transferred a squadron of giant B-52s to the air base at Goldsboro. A squadron of B-52s consists of 15 planes. In addition, these particular planes were B 52G models, wiih the exception of the missiles and the B 58s now phasing in. the best offensive wea pons we possess. This one squad ron of B-52s at Goldsboro carries more cf an explosive punch than all the planes of all the countries ccmbined in World War II. This one squadron at Goldsboro is fully capable of killing perhaps 25 to 30 million Russians. Now if I saw this li.tle para graph in the newspaper, you may be sure that Soviet Intelligence also picked it up. Those boys are good, and they buy a lot of Amer ican newspapers for just such tid bits as the one that I fell across. Therefore, it is safe to assume that somewhere in the U.S.S.R , in an underground command post, there is an enormcus war map of the United States with a pin, of a particular color, placed square ly on Goldsboro. The color of the pin means that in the latest, re vised Russian war plan a 'missile carrying submarine or an inter continental rocket or a lcng range bomber has been assigned " the routine chore of "taking' ;! out" Goldsboro. Taking out Goldsboro will also take out much ol the so vereign state of North Carolina. Bui i; the fall-out paUern is' cf certain configuration, we. in Chapel Hill may well suivive. That is, we will survive if Le administration of tills University has the vision ahd the foresight to stockpile a two-weeks supply ot canned foods to keep us gci:g. This is the minimum civil de.erse recommendation, and I see no rea son why institutions cannot be urged to comply, as well as in dividual householders. It is one of the great ironies of history that the metropolis of New York poses no immediate threat to the Russians and there fore can be allowed to live for a cay or two or three, while Golds boro, N. C. the Peyton Place el Tobacco Road must be obli terated instantly on the first strike. In a deeper sense, the war is even closer to Chapel Hill than Goldsboro. This is a total war, a phenomenon peculiar to cur cen tury, which means simply that it i.; a war fought with every kind of weapon in every place. This war we are in, this war we are losing, is like a many-faceted dia mond. Turn it one way and the light reveals a military aspect. Turn it another way and you see the political aspect. Turn it still another way and yrou get th? economic slant of the conflict. Keep turning it, and you will see still more facets . ideological, psychological, subversive, etc. The front is everywhere. Here in Chapel Hill the war is being fought on the education front. When ycu walk 'into a classroom at the University of North Caro lina, your real compcti'ion does not come from the bright kid who si's next to you, that kid who keeps pushing up the curve and whom you heartily detest. No, he is not your competition. - Your real competition is sitting in a classroom on the other side of the world. He is your Russian opposite number. And he is just a annoyed with HIS curve set ters as ycu are with yours. Be cause, ycu, see, your Russian op posite number, like you. is no gen ius. Like you, he is just a guy. His one advantage (an important one) is that he understands far more clearly than you the essen tial facts about the war now in progress. Because of this under standing, your Russian opposite number is a very hard-working boy. The importance of this educa tional front cannot be over-estimated. In fact, it may well be the most important front of all. ,Wh?,t a man thinks will largely deter mine the nature of his weapons. These weapons, in turn, will large ly determine the nature of his strategy, and -herefore. his chances of victory. Notice that in this chain THINKING comes first. And what comes even before thinking? TRAINING. You cannot think until you are trained. That is why you are now about to en ter the University of North Caro lina. That is why your perform ance here is so critically impor tant. This brings ma to the second and last) corollary to cur major formulation. TilE EVENTUAL OUTCOME OF THE WAR VIC TORY OR DEFEAT, LIFE OR DEATH WILL BE DETER MINED BY A CALCULUS OF EFFORT. This second corollary can best be illustrated by a little borrowing from the world of big time football, surely a timely sub ject in itself. Next week, when the sur. goes down behind Kenan Stadium, ihe scoreboard will read (we hope) UNC 26, Clemson 7. (And UNC will be well on its way to the Su gar Bowl -where my alma mater, LSU, will beat their brains out'-. But let's get back to this Clemson score, 28-7, and what it really means. On every play of the game, every man will have an assignment which will bring hir.i into conflict wiih one or maybe more of the opposition. If there are 100 plays in the game, thi means that there are perhaps 1100 little conflicts subsumed with in the one big conflict which reg isters on the scoreboard. Each one of these little conflicts has a winner and a loser. So a more ac curate rendition of the Carolina Clemson score might well be Car olina 647, Clemson 453. W7hich one of these little con flicts was the decisive one? That is impossible to determine. Actual ly, they are all decisive, each and every one. That is why Bear Bry ant!? the great Alabama coach, sayi: "The name of the game is knock." The most fundamental idea in football is to belt that oth er guy on EVERY play. (And sometimes between plays). That is why Paul Diefzel, coach of the LSU national champs, has a sign in his locker room which reads: "When the going gets tough, that's when the tough get going." If we belt that other guy on every play, if we smash him every chance we get, the cumulative ef fect of this kind of pounding will eventually crack him. He will get one straw too many, and we will find (much to our surprise) that we have broken his back. At that point we get the spectacular tench down which even the fans in the stadium can see. What holds true for football also holds true for international con flict. The great war for the world is actually made up of an infinite number of little, man-to-man con flicts. As previously indicated, these little conflicts take place everywhere; these little conflicts are military, political, economic, psychological, ideological, etc. . Which of these little conflicts will prove to be decisive? Again, no one knows. It could easily be that the fate of the world will be de termined in a Chapel Hill class room. It may be that one of you will suddenly catch on fire in a freshman history class, and, as a result, grow up to provide this na tion with a portion of the disting uished, gutty leadership it so de sperately needs. In any event, as your "coach" for today, I want to give you your assignment. For the next four years, your assignment is to belt that Russian kid, your opposite number, EVERY day. I mean I want you fo smarh him. and I'm net too particular how ycu do it. As your 'coach" for today, ycu should know that I am not one of thesa phony "character builders." Like the late Jim Tatum, I be lieve that WINNING builds char acter far more effectively than LOSING. This is particularly true in the international conflict where the penalty for heing a loser is death. I have yet to hear of a Beatcfe-Siient Generations Frank Crowlher (PART II) If we are to thoroughly understand the Beat 3 ri Silent Generations, we must begin by examini.--their collective roots which reach back to the L-rt rnpration of-the 20's. For the past few years, corpse which has any kind of char- cQuntry has been experiencing a revival of into-t acter whatsoever. jn tne "flapper era," but this must be termed a Since we began with a Patton superficial trend because we have actually ne?r story. I suppose that symmetry iost the hangover brought about by those reckle-? de-mands another Patton story as years following World Wa; 1. we approach our conclusion. Pat ten was never the kind of gen- Tj,e Generation was neither lost nor a n eral who stayed behind his troops, eration. It was a romantic iaea precipitated by mar.. He was always out in front. (For things: the var, the hopelessness about politics. th? those of you who have grown to intellectual demoralization, the disintegration of ti -maturity under Eisenhower, this pattern of old values in fact, the entire physical particular quality is called "lead- and spiritual flop experienced at the end of the ership.") war. The whole world seemed to have an ' Out Order" sign hanging on it. All of the sad your; One day, Patton, accompanied men in the woricS Gf Hemingway and Fitzger?M by his driver, came across a do- the prophets of the age, were said to have been Uchment of GIs lolling on the seekers "for landmarks in a terrain for which th edge of a small river in Western mapS had been mislaid." Since there is not sdc Geimany. It was November of to write a definite essay on the 20"s, I will conf 1944, the river was just beginning my remarks to the world of the Lo?t Generation a; to encrust with ice, and the pace pictured by Ernest Hemingway, who became i? of Patton's lightening advance spokesman but who did nof. believe in its existed had bogged down. (as he has said many times and as is evident if The general leaped cut of his you read carefully the inscription in i:The Sun A1-d jeep and, with his usual gentle- Rises"), ness, demanded to know just what in the hell was going on. A young lieutenant came for ward. "Sorry, Sir," he said. "We're waiting for the engineers Hemingway shrewdly designated himself, for 3 time, as the literary biograoher of the Lost Genera: tior., for Which Gertrude Siein was supposedly tbs "hieh priestess." In "A Farewell To Arms" the au to come up and build us a bridge." thcr anU(jed to the time proceeding his earlier we-k. "YOU'RE WHAT?", roared the The Sun Aiso Rises," and told a fictional story of incredulous Patton. "YOU STU- tne events which led to the latter novel. It wa? 2 PID SON-OF-A-BITCH.I'LL SHOW tale which provided a grea literary escape for the YOU HOW TO GET ACROSS Sad young men who had fought in the war (and THAT RIVER!" for many who had not) and returned home to find 4, t" , . only dispondency and desolation. The novel offered With that, the general ripped them a romatic picture of the past that produced . oft all Ins clothes, dove into the emotjonal Pentiment for the time to which none of icy stream, swam across with them cmjd return Hemingway wisely drew from powerful, lunging strokes, and the ioneiy discards of society" for his several clvv clambered up the bank on the acters and painted a touching story of irony '? other side. There he stood, naked, central figures, Catherine and Frederic, are rv? the pride of the American Army, sented as two against a world that has become cold He yelled a few choice obsceni- ly alien. They were victims of a mundane hell iiro ties in German on the off-chance which they felt themselves unfairly cast, that there might be some Nazis present, turned around, and re turned the same way he came. He stood in front of the lieutenant, wet and shivering and still naked. "That," he said, "is how you will get across the river." In terms of your own situation, the point of that little story is The milieu of the novel was the war and it; values were extracted by retrospection into the his torical past through a chain of events which termi nated in a certain sensory culmination of emotion The book was wildly successful at the time of it; publication since the country was overly suppll with recalcitrants who for sc long had ben reVHl ins against all constituted authority. It became t!i? this. Do not vait for our faculty temporary assuage for many of the men and wom-n tc come up and build you a nice who had lost their moral consciences and their h: easy "bridge." In the first place, man compasses, who responded to the fact that "r? the chance is good that our fa- can never go back" but wasn't it so damned bea-i-culty (like other faculties) is nev- ful to slobber over it. er coming. In the second place, if by some miracle the faculty sfcould make the scene, they will doubtless construct a bridge that will collapse the first time you put any weight on it. , Within these two books, the sad escape artiU found all the tools of their trade: obsession with war, frustration, futility, alcoholic escape, ethical de cisions, the problem of the moment, fearsome sym bolism, premonition cf disaster, violent death, spinal-sacrifice, self-sacrifice, religious sexual union and a perverted code of behavior. All of these were characteristic of the animal or natural man who recognized the disappearance of the human soul which apparently did not exist in the first pla." who bemoaned the fact that all life must be trsrr--cended by the world (we are born, live and die wh the world pervades). No, you must rip off your clothes (so to speak) and dive in. Dive in where? Try the library. In many respects, it i is a third rate library, but it is all w-e have and we must learn to work with in its limitations. If you are de voted and ingenious, I can assure you that there is more than enough material even in our li brary which will enable you to The "not shutting ore'? eyes" when confront! z carry out successfully your im- rfoni, -11 , lU . ' oeatn was all important for it was only then. s j'oiiam usbjgiimem 10 ueu mai Russian kid every day. And now we must summarize and conclude. FIRST, You are the challenge of the world situation. SECOND, The war is never far away. The war is everywhere. the story goes, that we realize the fact that all life is directed toward death and nothingness. As Fred eric observes in "A Farewell To Arms,": "The wm! l breaks every one and afterward many are strops at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle an'l the very brave impartially. If you are none of thee THIRD, The eventual outcome you can be sure it will kill jou too but there will be Oi the war for the world will be no special hurry." determined by a calculus of ef fort. The decisive blow may be struck at any point, even in a Thus the cult became one of futility wherein sleepy Chapel Hill classroom. death s the "unescapable reality" and the only If you keep these fundamentals thing one could do was to shrug the shoulders and in mind, you may yet live. Indeed, write it off as a "dirty trick." The sense of dec " vcu may live to see and help ence whieh lav hplnw tho cr',,. nf f; .mf.. mism of the 19th century- was thereby carried c er into the sadly disoltitioned 20th. build the bright tomorrow. luck, and God bless you. Good z c -4 h d fa J $ 1 Jl Jil t . c N O O o , ' C'OWUAN'TURTI.giS PUJMM' MOST TO A CWAgACTK WHAT'S F2CVOUTOFTHI5WORtP Hg $27A WSV PSACTIINT VT' .a tpso Oil k m . ASANS WELL'- Tfl CAPTUfW SQMB302V1 ( SCZZV-A The effects of the so-called Lost Generation ha"-1 influenced our present generation much more tha 1 anyone has yet admitted. Also, many of us grew up during the "big war" and participated in t!-r Korean "police action." The politicians have con tinually stumbled, fumbled and walked around on their knees. Our economy is not the most stable in history and is proving periodically unstable on the verge of collapse. Our values have been beaten, bet tered and all but lost in mulligatawny. Idealism is thought of as being naive and bourgeois. In !M face of such, the Silent Generation has become ap 1 thetic in its buttoned-up decency, groupism con-i -vatism, conformity and the great search fo rsecuri- iy in suburbia. The Beat Generation h-JS its :: Zen, poverty, social protest and misasthropic futil ism. Tomorrow, we will examine more closely tsn Silent Generation on the College campuses if A merica.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Sept. 22, 1959, edition 1
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