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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1951)
Pn c s E Battalion Editorials Page 2 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1951 «THO^HJV|DroNlHAyE TgQjjBlKjNOUGH From WIlere ! Sit A Choice, A New Freedom... 0 Pi ca oi ov Di W ac m st m sc F! cl it a gl' d .A e o v /! F F NE OF THE best cases of indirect de nunciation of the present United Na tions policy on aggression appeared in the Profile magazine of the University of Cin cinnati. While The Battalion does not concur entirely with the views expressed, they do constitute a reasonable facsimile of the thinking of a large segment of the Amer ican populace today. We quote: REMEMBER, back in 1946, during the American-Russian occupation of Korea, it was quite obvious to our men that the Rus sians were up to no good. To any of the American soldiers who had to ride through Russian occupied territory in old, beat-up “six-byswho saw the row on row of lend- lease trucks stretching away to the dull brown hills of the “Land of the Morning Calm,” the shipping-paper still stuck to their new windshields; who awoke at two in the morning to the tune of Russian tanks rum bling past their outposts; who played chess with the Russians, drank with the Russians, had “border incidents” with the Russians, it was pretty plain that something was brew ing. Many of those G.I.s who did outpost duty on the thirty-eighth parallel in those days of uneasy peace still remember the hoarse cries of panicked men, the clutching at rifles, the envisionment of days among the barren hills and rice paddies when some drunken soldier bellowed “The Russians are coming” in his besotted frenzy during the dark, silent hours of the morning, before the scrawny Korean chickens began to crow. And many of the G.I.s who came back from that disease-ridden country, where the fields reek with night-soil in the spring; where fierce North Korean Communists raided villages, locking up the police in their own jails; where the whining anopheles mo squito took a ten-percent toll of a man’s out fit ; and where the Japanese had left their in delible mark upon a people, will remember that they said, “That is where it’s going to start!” to their friends and relatives, who pooh-poohed them, optimistically watched the new, hopeful UN making its fitful, ideal istic start in this countiry. “You walked out on the League of Na- itions, that’s why it didn’t succeed.” We have heard that old wheeze for thirty years , or more, and mostly from the very nations that really undermined the organization. “It’s all your fault,” they said, “you were the miss- i ing prop that made the great experiment ! flop.” This time, at the close of the Second World War, we determined that we would , show them that we had the right spirit of idealism: we would show them that we would ;not only join a world organization, but that we would sponsor one; and so the UN was Lorn, in that characteristic American “all out” vigor. In the background, a few small voices cried, “Beware of foreign entanglements,” and “Don’t forget what Monroe said;” but they were soon labeled “Isolationists,” and drowned out amidst the generally enthus iastic shouts of “Peace! Peace! The world has learned its lesson, and will have peace! Man has at last seen the benefits to be de rived from living at peace with his fellow- man. The brotherhood of man! That’s the thing. The brotherhood of man!” Somewhere a group of men sat and plan ned the undermining of the UN, hidden by the rest of the world’s hysterical shouts of joy. The group of tasteful buildings at Ge neva were empty and useless, it remained only for another group of buildings to be erected and subsequently to be rendered in effectual. Now we have entangled ourselves thor oughly in the tentacles of international in trigue. We are shown, with daily increasing emphasis, that a nation will not give up its sovereignity for the sake of another. Here is the crux of the matter. Will Britain stop her trade with a nation and take up arms against it for the sake of the general welfare of the world? Will France send troops to fight in a land where she has no territorial interests? Will Holland stop trading and fight with a nation to which she sends her industrial products? Certainly. Certainly the member-states of the UN will join in concerted military ac tion ... on paper; but when the time comes to act, to fight, will England send more than a token force? Will France send more than a two-ship task force? Will Holland send more than a hospital corps unit? We don’t know if any other nation in the world is so full of naive optimism as we are; but we still have hopes, although they are not so naive as they used to be. Day by day, like Swift’s Gulliver, we are being divested of our open ‘Boxoffice ’ Reflects Jingle, No Heartbeat Texas Boy Loses Hands, Legs to War Oakland, Calif., Feb. 2—W)—A thin, quiet Texan is in Oakland ~ , Naval Hospital here, a quadruple . .. By Herman C. Gollob amputee from the Korean theater. T 0 READ Boxoffice, a weekly magazine published by Ben ™2™o f Sa^AntonTo^ 11 ^ •*- Skylen for the benefit of nationwide exhibitors, is to gain R ein j nger i ost his right leg- above an even keener understanding of the stupid, drooling com- the knee, the left leg below the mercialism in Hollywood that has rendered movies, for the knee and all ten fingers, most part, paragons of banality. He was neither bitter nor opti- Modestly subtitled “the pulse of the motion picture in- mistic. dustry,” Boxoffice reflects not the aesthetic heartbeat of sincere creative artists, but the jolly jingle of profits that swell the cash-registers of shrewd show-businessmen. It is concerned with the saleable aspects of pictures, their “public appeal” and the means of exploiting it. The puerile “appeal” of the q average film suggests that Holly wood’s ruling- hierarchy is catering dm Scotch brogue being hard to From the City Desk . . . Big Profits Forecast From BAFB Personnel . . . By Joel Austin C ONGRATULATIONS businessmen of Bryan. The time and effort you put forth toward the reactiva- bitor'credo and Xaraetem MaTwe tion of Bryan Air Force Base has paid off. “It depends on how it all turns out,” he said, with a soft Texas accent. "I have a future. It will take time but I’ll be O.K.” Reininger, a marine corps reserv ist, was caught in the beginning of the retreat from Chanhjin Reser voir. He was a machine gunner right to a public of backward tots. Box” understand. When will they bring “P against the Red lines. On the rvffiVn ic, uioCani- uri+v, Aowk/wont Lassie back to this country? MGM v ? as npuied the gun was is passing up a good thing here.” f rozen > jamming the automatic We don’t blame F. M. or his g ea ri and he was firing one shell patrons a bit for squawking about at a t‘ me - dogs w r ho bark in a Scotch brogue. “Two of them (enemy) suddenly Goodness knows, we think the jumped up,” he said. “One of them world of Lassie and her intellect, had a burp gun. I got one with but this Scotch accent gimmick is the machine gun and a buddy took a trifle snobbish. Who does Lassie care of the other one. think she is, Orson Welles? The “But another guy got pretty sooner she barks so that we can close with grenades.” understand her, the better. The blond Texan got two gren- And we admire the sentiment ades in the legs, which F. M. so amply displays in He told of the bitter 20 to 20 his request that Lassie come home. We, too, have missed the valiant canine. Besides, she is too refined to be subjected to the shrill, coarse wail of bagpipes. But we must laugh loud and long at F. M.’s naive lack of faith in MGM’s business perspicacity. Come Reininger. now, F. M., who ever heard of He was flown out of Korea twi office is blatant with flamboyant enticement from studios which sing of new productions purged of or iginality and chock-full of the hackneyed nonsense so dear to the hearts of us idjuts, the public. It is tragic and criminal that a medium with such vast poten tialities as a legitimate art form has been desecrated by the Pro ducer - Exhibitor vandal who gauges his films to a low pitch of mediocrity because he is un able to distinguish between his own materialistic, short-pants mentality and actual public taste. • In recent Boxoffice editorial, publisher Skylen employing the brisk and amiable insincerity char acteristic of a high-powered sales man, gave eloquent voice—in prose and poetry—to the Producer-Exhi degrees below zero weather as he spent three days in the back of a jeep trailer, covered only with his fighting clothes and a blan ket. “There was just no damn time to treat any of the wounded,” said i'i quote: Uncle Leo passing thing? up a good days after he got to then was flown to tin a hospital ; U )ital and S. Jan. 27. The harvest will be yours to reap with the additional This is a business of good 3,500 Air Force personnel and their families soon to be here. c ' heer - The t'c are ways of stimulat ing business. Let’s be realistic and Many of those people will need homes, food, clothes, and optimistic. Battles aren’t won by all the necessities of life which any good businessman will be thinking and talking defeat. Movies glad to provide have much to offer the public. They __ _ _ ^ You can be thankful Bryan is suitably located for flight can iif e . Let’s tell the public. For T"" 0 ' "r/" 1 'T"?* ^"7 training and equally proud your voice in Washington was the new year let’s resolve to: taith in human natuie, until, and this must with so many people scheduled to be here for the simr a snne-of n-nori chccr be our only saving features: we do not trust nex t few years, merchants can feel relatively secure that any one, and proceed with the utmost cau- business will be the same with a probable large increase in tion in international affairs, being careful to sight. consider our welfare alone, above all else; be- We marvel at the way this reactivation program has come almost wholly, if not totally, selfish in been accepted by our neighbors of only a few miles away. the interest of saving our own skins. , The first response was in the form of a protest to the sSIwe™ Xh SS rent increases. The protest was directed to Congressman aspersions on the equine intelli- No, we are not “Isolationist,” we only Olin Teague who warned Bryanites that unless they could gence. Skylen’s words suggest want to know how long the United States is stabilize rent prices and offer all possible cooperation to the rather the sense of an ass, the going to handcuff itself to a debating-so- Air Force, the air base would be moved elsewhere. The warning had its sting. It came at a time when some good could be done. Sing a song of good cheer, Sell our pictures to the sky, Put forth our best showman ship And build our grosses high!” As a crowning effect, this ex hortation was accompanied by the heading, “Good horse sense from ciety, composed of weak-kneed, appeasement- minded bankrupts. There is a choice: either we abandon the United Nations and strike out on our own, or we take an autocratic lead How About Credit Where It’s Due? . ,,, ... ... , Regardless of what other complications might arise, in that organization until such time as it don’t you think it’s time a little credit was given.where credit learns to act together toward a purpose com- j s due? mensurate with its name. There’s a little matter of 7,000 students at A&M who greed and crude cunning of a wolf. Beneath the shallow, platitudinous odes there lies the suggestion of lip-service. The suspicion is qual ified in his infantile, goody-goody hymn to avarice. We fear that publisher Skylen is not so concerned with the public zeal and the prestige of films as he is with the height of his grosses. In either case, it is obvious, from where bave been he / e for a lon S t” 16 and will continue to inhabit f ">” sk >' l “' 5 news tidbits about the ad vertising machinations of flicker- flash impresarios, current activ- , . . the campus for many years to come. These people are per we sit, that America must again engage in manen t residents of this area—maybe only for four years— an all-out war. As long as there are men who but there is, always someone to take their place when they ities of various production com are willing to sacrifice other men’s lives on leave. panics, popularity ratings of cur- the altar of their ambitions, we shall be fore- For the person who would take the “what if” attitude, ed to fight; but must have freedom to battle & should be interesting to view this subject from another tic bait-lines_to be used in news- for our way of life. There were once four s ^ an dP°i n t- What if A&M had been placed two miles from the small old rural community of Calvert some 30 miles north of Bryan. We would wonder if those people would be gracious enough to encourage business from the students who were helping their city outgrow the many other farm towns of this area. Maybe they would provide recreational facilities, stim ulate good common meeting ground where the boys of this all-male institution could meet girls to have good, clean fun. Would Calvert Pay Dividends? Do you think the people of Calvert would have showed A&M students how much they appreciated their business , _ .. . rather than treat the boys as strangers when they wish to th pSTLSS become mends ? 0 r failure. Businesses that don’t pay dividends have trouble keep ing stockholders satisfied. But the stockholder may with draw from the business when he deems it desirable—just by selling his stock. freedoms—there is now a fifth: the FREE DOM TO FIGHT. Las Vegas (Nev.) Review-Journal: “Single business girl ivants small apartment convenient to strip.” Jersey City Jersey Journal: “Wo man wanted as housekeeper; no clothing.” Cottage Grove (Ore.) Sentinel: “Lost—Black pocketbook ivith old 1st Natl. Bank on it.” paper ads, Boxoffice contains a honey little feature entitled “The Exhibitor Has His Say.” Here, theatre owners review movies in the light of audience reaction and gate receipts. This may not make for valid criticism, but comments such as “I broke even on it” and “business was poor” furnish discerning readers an insight into the delicate tastes and sensibilities prevalent in show business. And there are precious mom ents of high comedy on those oc casions when the creative artist crops out in our public servant, the exhibitor, and he feels the The Battalion Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Founder of Aggie Traditions "Soldier, Statesman, Knightly Gentleman” lollegf five times a week during the regular school year. During the summer terms, The Battalion is published four times a week, and during examination and vacation periods, twice a week. Days of publication are Monday through Friday for the regular school year, Tuesday through Friday during the summer terms, and Tuesday and Thursday during vacation and examination periods. Subscription rates $6.00 per year or $.50 per month. Advertising rates furnished on request. The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republication of all news dispatches cred ited to it or not otherwise credited in the paper and local news of spontaneous origin published herein. Rights of republication of all other matter herein are also reserved. Entered as second-class matter at Post Office at College Station, Texas, under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1870. Member of The Associated Press Represented nationally by National Ad vertising Service Inc., at New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Aggies have no stock to sell. They are to continue contributing to the prosperity of Bryan with the few dividends, if any, that are declared by Bryan merchants. Be jubiliant people of Bryan, but be thankful. Be thankful that when such prosperous war times are not at hand, A&M is still in College Station with thousands of students who spend money in your town every day. Not because they want to, but because there is no place else to take their business when it can’t be done in College Station. CS Schools To : Re-Open Monday DAVE COSLETT, CLAYTON L. SELPH. Co-Editors John Whitmore, Managing Editor Bob Hughson Campus Editor Today’s Issue John Whitmore Bob Hughson Ralph Gorman.... Joel Austin Campus News Editor ... Sports News Editor — City News Editor Monday morning at 8 approxi mately 1100 students of the A&M Consolidated School District will City Editor once more return to school. Supt. Les Richardson said yes terday the four day icy holiday is over and students and teachers will once more resume class chores. He added that he felt sure all students were looking forward to returning to their studies. Managing Editor ..Editorialist* T. M. Fontaine, Carter Phillips Sid Abernathy Campus News Editoi Bob Hughson, Andy Anderson, George Charlton, Tom Rountree, Allen Pengelley, Leon McClellan, Wayne Davis, Bob Venable, Bill Streich, Norman Blahuta, John Hildebrand, Bryan Spencer, Ray Williams, Edward Holder, Richard Ewing News and Feature Writers Curtis Edwards Church Editor Roger Coslett .PipeSmolasg Contest Manager Vivian Castleberry , Women’s Editor Ralph Gorman, Fred Walker, Chuck Neighbors, Jimmy Ashlock, Ray. Holbrook, Joe Blan chette, Pat LeBlanc, Dale Dowell, Jimmy Curtis, Dowell Peterson, and Joe Hollis. .Sports News Staff Sam Molinary Chief Photographer Autrey Frederick...... Advertising Manager Russell Hagens. Frank Thurmond Advertising Representatives Herman C. Gollob— ^ - A mu amenta Editor Bible Verse Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people,, whose God is the Lord. —Psalms 144:15 Take, for example, F. M.’s with ering analysis of “Hills of Home:” “This is a good Lassie picture, but there were plenty of squawks about Mail Us Your. . . CLASSIFIED AD GRADUATING SENIORS! Use Classified Ads to sell your uniforms, boots, surplus furniture, books and other items which you will no longer need. Through one classified ad you contact 10,000 readers of The Battalion. USE THE HANDY COUPON BELOW! Rates: 3c per word, or 60c per column- inch. Minimum charge is 25c. CLASSIFIED AD START AD ON STOP AD ON .... Insert Following Ad: □ Payment Enclosed. □ Send me a bill. 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