THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Editorials Commentary Page 2 Thursday, April 4, 1968 p i , ef J 'J Youth takes on the 'over 30V The "over 30" generation across four conti nents in recent months has been witnessing its youth assuming a new role. Youth has always yelled very loudly but most of its parts have been Jn the chorus lines, and sometime? not even there. But it is beginning to appear that this is the year that youth acquires a lead role in guiding the world's course. Almost every major country In Eu rope and many in Asia and South America, are hearing rumblings 'n the ranks of the young adults. Since January these rumblings have gained fantas tic momentum. Leadership in the Czechoslovakia!! Communist Party recently underwent change largely because of student protests demanding new freedom and "widest possible democratization." The Polish government has been bludgeon ed by massive student protests against government speech. Some news analysts have said the students' pro tests signal a power struggle within the Communist Party there. In Spain the University of Madrid was closed after clashes between police and students, who are fighting for educational reforms and more free, dom. Universities in Egypt are now open after being ;; closed a few weeks ago because of the 150,000 Egyp tian students who have been rioting for democracy .freedom of the press and abolition of the Egyptian - - National Assembly and the Arab Socialist Union. Italian students have been demonstrating for student power and newer teaching methods at the ' universities. Their actions were not ignored as leg - lslation has been proposed by Italy's coalition gov ernment which attempts to meet most of the stu " dents demands. In Chile students ended a 145-day strike after the government made some concessions to the stu dents' demands that educational reforms be intro duced. In the United States only a minority of stu dents have been actively protesting the draft and the war in Vietnam or storming the capital calling for educational and governmental reforms but the number is growing. American youth's greatest power, this year, however, lies in its ability to be a determining fac tor in electing the next president of the United States whether or not these young adults are of voting age. Some of the presidential candidates are offer ing plausible remedies for the disillusionment that so many youth adults are suffering. And the candidates are directly appealing to the youth and asking for their active support, a plea which never has been so strongly urged until this year. Many "over 30" adults are smiling knowingly at college students exhaustive efforts during the primaries and think it will be their vote and not the unitversity's student's political button which will elect the next president of the United Sates. The college students here, as in other parts of the world, may have the last smile. They are just beginning to realize the power that their initiative and drive can achieve. In the United States this spectacular enthus iasm is electing university students' presidential choice in the primaries and this drive will have a more powerful influence on the voting outcomes next fall than many adults wish to concede. Cheryl Tritt The rise and fall Citizens of Rome: I have come from Athens, my native city, not only to learn about your customs and try to reach a better understanding of your conviction and mo tivations, but also to bring you the concerned feel ings of my fellow citizens. I will not talk to you as a judge but merely as the descendant of once successful empire builders. As you know, Athens had once ruled over a large area of what has become your immense Em pire. The decline of our might is now complete and the renown of our City does no longer rely upon the strength of our armies and fleets. The prestige of our writers, philosophers, artists and craftsman, however, has survived the decline of our territorial and economical domination. Today, I wast you to use these eyes of mine, which I have tried to keep objective, and to look around you, at your City and at the world; a world that so many of you still prefer and pretend to ignore while new forces are building np Inside ag well as outside your Empire which will eventually destroy you and the life you have established for yourself over the years. Look through my eyes and you will wonder, like I do, how long will it take before a Spartacus leads those you have enslaved in the very walls of your city into a bloody revolt which, although it may fail to free them from slavery, will gravely endanger youf own previous liberty. Look through my eyes and you will wonder, like I do, how long your legions, scattered around the world which you call civilized, will resist the growing pressure of the pagan barbarians who have determined to put an end to your economical and military domonation. I have come from Athens, once your friend and ally, where the children used to grow up, like I did, in the love of your greatness and the respect of your ideals. Athens, the city one of the writers called "radious, generous and just." The same wri ter who wroie in one of bis philosophical essays "What you be the meaning of being free if It was not to be just" Athens, where children have learn ed to look elsewhere for ideals and respect. In the light of our past mistakes I cannot con demn you. All I can do is hope that the Roman Empire will not fall from the same mistakes which have destroyed ours. That the citizens of Rome will soon wake up from their frightful nightmare, stop spending their lives between the excitement of brutal games and the warmwaters of their bath tubs; that after havug taken so much from the world, Rome will start giving some of the wealth she has for so long wasted and that, by doing so, she will prevent the coming about of a new dark age. Bernard Durand 'ss( 'r'Mm'im'm """""" v" Sajlon.O Ship of State." Joseph Alsop The grisly routine continues South Vietnam Maj. Gen. P. K. Mearns, commander of the war-hardened U.S. 25th Division, is a tough, sardonic, professional soldier, not given to excessive enthusiasm. As we walked to the helicopter in the bright, early afternoon, he was downright bleak: "Doubt we'll see a damned thing," he remarkedglumly. "From Tet until five days ago, my people and the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) had no trouble getting a fight every day of the week. But now the other side seems to have gone back into the wood work maybe because he was losing nearly a hundred men a day in my divisional area alone, which is a hell of a lot of men when you think about it. This looks like the start of a quiet, quiet time." At the outset, the general's forecast seemed to be con firmed. Here we put down to see a battalion resting and bathing In the sunshine, af ter some days of almost fruit less search. There we drop ped in on a cavalry unit, with much of Its grim armor made to seem near-home lik, be cause washing festooned the tanks and APCs. But when we took to the air again, we had not gained altitude before the ugly scenes of war showed on the horizon. It is something that one does not forget, to see a bat tle from a chopper. A strong Viet Cong unit it turned out to be the Cu Chi local force battalion had dug the new trench lines, the bunk ers, the spider holes were easily traced as the general's helicopter endlessly circled. Here the 2nd Battalion of the 14th U.S. Infantry Regi ment, call sign "Dragon," had run upon the Viet Cong in another routine search. Al pha, Bravo and Charley com panies were moving across the rice stubble, in a perpet ual crackle of small fire. And now the helicopter gunships, now the fighter bombers, now the artillery, poured all their terrible weight of metal into the enemy positions. The smokes were every co lor, from the black of the big bombs to the poison yellow, violet and red that our men used to mark their positions. The air chatter was the Strang est feature, between 'Darons Six" and "Alpha Six" or "Bravo Six," between "War rior" and "Zulu," between "Blaster" and "Dragon Six." For in the heat of battle and it was a very hot fight, indeed these exotically named personages exchanged their mysterious remarks in the most perfectly flat Ameri can tones, never sounding tense, although verging on en thusiasm when something was buttoned up, and one said 'af firmative" and the other re plied 'real fine." "A bit more support wouldn't do any harm," said the general and called the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Cavalry from its tranquil washing. Looking like mechanical beetles from the a i r, six flame-throwing APCs limber ed out of the cavalry camp toward the scene of the en gagement. The third assault was made just before dusk fell, when the APCs had arrived with a new, particularly lively con versationalist, "Romeo 31." Before ttie assault, the APCs' long jets of bright vermllllon fire covered the enemy posi tion, and some of the Viet Cong broke and ran. The gen eral's helicopter asked "Dra gon Six" for permission to open fire. The door gunner, Spec. P. E. Clark, who looked as though he ought to have b"nn In high school, took quiet ai it the tiny figures stumb lib desperately through the rice stubble. 'I got two," he said, ac curately and laconically. But now the chopper's gas was all but gone, and we had to head home to the divisional base camp. Next morning, we went out again to the battal ion command post. The final breakthrough had occurred at 10 p.m. and the sweep through the enemy position had con tinued until long after mid night. Everywhere, soldiers were sleeping. Yet "Dragon Six," the battalion comman der, Lt. Col. Alfred M. Bracy, was still at work after two hours' sleep. As so often, with the men of our new professional army, 'Dragon Six" in the flesh ap peared to have come straight from central casting a wiry, ramrod erect man, with white-blond hair against a deep-bronze tan, wholly in charge of himself and the sit uation despite the. fatigue lines deeply etched Into his young face. He told the gen eral the story of his battle, shortly and quietly, as though it were all in the day's work, except when he said this out fit or that had been 'out-' standing." He had lost 11 men; and the Cu Chi local force battalion had lost 87, including Spec. Clark's two. "Maybe they're sot quite In the woodwork yet,'' said Gen. Means, at we returned to the helicopter. And he wis bang right; for enly a few kilometers away, the smokes of war plumed up again; and this time it was an even big ger show, with ARVN ele ments and 'Mohawk' the 4th Battalion ef she 23rd Reg iment tangling with Impor tant elements of the 272nd Regiment f the Sih Viet Cong Division. It was also a much rough er, longer show, cruel, hard fighting for the men on the ground, and not wholly lack ing hairy moments even in the Air. Once, in fact, the gener al's chopper all but ran into an upward-zooming fighter; and twice lt received sharp bursts of ground fire, swerv ing and bucking in response like a bee-stung bronco. (This, by the way, turns out rather surprisingly to be the unique instantaneous cure for a middle-aged summer cold; the abrupt adrenalin flow no doubt does the trick.) In this fight, 32 of our men fell, an the already battered 272nd Regiment lost above 240. So it was not really a very quiet time. Yippee a new confrontation Chicago (CPS) With the entry of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy into the race for the democratic pres idential nomination, general interest in the Chicago con vention this summer grows each day. But the New Left interest in the convention was born long before the race for the nomination gained this sem blance of conflict. Debate within the New Left over whether or not to go to Chicago to demonstrate and' what forms the demon strations should take has been going on for tome time. At least one group, the newly formed Youth Internatioanl Party (YIP) will definitely be in attendance. The rw party, popularly known as the Yippees, has an officn in New York and is setting one up ih Chicago's Grant Park. "The New Left invented the teach-in, the hip pies invented the live-in and the Yippees have invented the "do-in," he says. Each day a pot will be passed for money with which to buy food; there will be bands (Country Joe and The Fish, Arlo Guthrie, the Fugs among others), Timothy Leary. Allen Ginsburg, and many others have indicated that they wiH attend; the Beatles have been invited. The Yippees will hold a press conference announcing an end to the war, will nomi nate a pig made of vegeta bles for the president and eat him. The Yippees' Idea Is the demonstration of a cultural revolution, the 1 1 1 u s t r a tion the community is possi ble, even in Chicago, and the Introduction to a new and healthier style of life. The Yippees admit no way of es timating how many of their people will be in attendance, but estimates range from 75, 000 to half a million and more. Other groups of the New Left have been opposing a mass confrontation in Chica go largely on a political level somewhat apart from the substance of the Yippee ap proach. Mike Spiegel and Jeff Jones of Students for a Democratic Society argued recently in a position paper on alternatives to the mass confrontation that such activi ties were not only unneces sarily physically dangerous, but might well be turned against the radicals by John son forces or might be used by the liberal peace forces of Robert Kennedy and Eu gene McCarthy. Jones and Spiegel argue that it would be politically safer as well as more pro ductive to concentrate on draft issues rather than re moving the radical base to a mass Chicago confronta tion. Their approach basical ly would ask organizers to stay home to work on draft resistance and to promote local political issues, trying them into the national Demo cratic party organizing ma munities around the country to coincide with the conven tion. If the style and rhetoric el the Yippee and the Jones Spiegel arguments seem far apart it is because they are. The hippie movement and the SDS-type of mass-based radi cal pontics are alike in their challenge to established American power and culture. Their constituencies, how ever, are quite a bit diffe rent. They are not, moreover, the only constituencies to be represented in a radical chal lenge to the Democratic con vention. In December the na tional Mobilization Commit tee initiated a number of meetings toward planning for the summer, out of which emerged a loosely-structured committee which has planned a large-scale convention to take place this weekend near Chicago. . The meeting will involve a . white and parallel black set of conferences involving, according to Reanie Davis, a Chicago organizer and one of the committee members, from 250 to 300 people. Lead ers of such group as Wom en's Strike for Peace, Studsnt Mobilization, SDS, SNCC and many others (including YIP) will be in attendance to dis cuss tactics for the summer. Whether a unified group tac tic will emerge Is not clear. What It clear is that the city of Chicago may be brac ing for the worst. The mid western megalopolis, com plete with Ita filthy sir aad water, Ugh political machine, aad, perhaps moat relevant of all for this summer, its large and bitter Mack ghet to", Is bracing for the worst. An attempt hy a fecal sheriff to establish a civilian "riot posse" hat been pretty much squelched by the courts, but the chemical mace hat been approved for itandard use by the Chicago police. Many Chlcagoant doubt Hint Uttm pint.- T-i-l. will grant the anti-war forces permission to use Grant Park. But, at YIP leader Rubin hat asked, "with hundreds of thousands of us, what can they do?" A good question, though probably not the most im portant one to be asked about either Chicago or this summer.- Th rl question is what Ihe various elements of the radical left, black and white, political and anti politi cal, are going to do and how many people they will be able to reach. Al Spangler Military victory: we have no right It is pretty clear, from Kennedy's remarks last week, that the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese have made respectable anti-war politics possible in this eountry by winning the war in Vietnam. No tilter at windmills, Bobby let ut know where it's at. Strange Day Of course, Kennedy comes on at first as our generation'! idealist politician, the man who will turn this country around toward a "new day." But when someone in the audience last week sug gested, rather cruely, that the proper way to end the war is to "bomb Hanoi," did Kennedy tell the lad that we haven't any right to do that? No. What he laid, at that juncture, wat that he wished we could end this war militarily, the way we ended World War II, but that we can't. He pointed out that we are bombing Hanoi, and It't doing no good. The "new spirit" it to reminis cent of the old. As far as he goes, Kennedy it right - we can't win thlt war militarily, unless winning It means killing most of the Vietnamese people, in the way that saving a village 1tai come to mean ita de ttruction. But the real issue is whether the United States has the right to try to win the war at all, and this is an issue we will not hear Kennedy discuss, at least directly- He assumes that we do have the right to be there. Our military presence in Viet nam will be called a "mistake," not an injustice. It was thus no surprise to discover, during the questioning period after his speech, that Kennedy disagrees with the findings of the National Advis ory Commission on Civil Disorders. The coun try's racial troubles are not due to white racism, he told us. This is what many of us wanted to hear. Just as we don't want to hear that our gov ernment is committing an injustice in Vietnam, we don't want to be called racists. And we weren't. Is every body happy? !tNiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiifliiiiiiiiiiiiiinmiHiiiiniitiniiiiiiniiiiii!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiii!i!mniiiiimii Campus Opinion Dear Editor, I write in answer to the opinions expressed by the editorial in the April 3 issue of the Daily Ne braskan. I find it sad that you neglected to think about and consider several basic facts. One of these facts is that the editorial while pointing out that "no matter how liberalized the ROTC program becomes" it does not "help foster the university's basic ideal of free inquiry," does not indicate that some individuals pursue ROTC as part of their own "Ideal of free inquiry." Another fact is that an "easy and cheap" ROTC program saves the American taxpayer money: that an "easy and cheap" ROTC program provides interested students with a method of learning many basic, organizational skills; that an "easy and cheap" ROTC program offers diversification to an educational system of ten-times termed restrictive; that an "easy and cheap" ROTC program provides intelligent, educated officers to this nation's army, a defense mechanism recognized by the loudest war "doves" as a necessity to the country'! future; that an "easy and cheap" ROTC program adds to a man's college education is the tame manner as speech, home economics, journalism or any other 'specialty" school of learning. Another basic fact is that these young, educa ted officers constitute a liberalizing part of today's armed forces. These officers, because they are taught in a non-military environment and, as a result, are able to associate with even the most radical, far-out factions of society, instill a love of country and an understanding of its social var tables in the military that I fear would be lost in a strictly military-orientated training ground. I fear that the editorial expouses the establishment of a military clique oriented only In military ways that would prove quite harmful to society. Jim Belmont Dear Editor: OPUS DILECn Oh, you're tousle-halred, good looking, That's why we're In love with you Pretty Bobby, pretty Bobby You're a hit with teeny-boppers And a million mothers, too. Pretty Bobby, pretty Bobby It doesn't matter that your politic! Are strictly second-hand, Or your speeches don't tay much about The things for which you stand, And the castles that you conjure up Are built upon the tend. WE THINK YOU'RE GRAND! It't that charming BAAaton accent That we're all attracted to Oh pretty Bobby of mine. E. F. Roberts vt tu k. n Daily Nebftskan tF-iPHONcSr dihr TH5t, Hmn m-xm. tmtnm m-tm rmi m7. wtau rhru, M rHttftTSTi rwr wtp rturint vpcUmi and nmm Mrkxt. fcy to ttwlaat! u2 Mmukmw smut Mfc TM Kni Editor M it Nts nw Kttw .im, KTrwZ Mm Sorte. . KMNMUAt JOT leM(lait NUht Nw Editor lorn Wwsaari AuMataat Ntc feMftw Owrtt KMUntta. , 'i Sparta luor Bmw (mil. inin turn Bwa n Nattoaol Ad Kuutr Uwta llM-hen MHw nHn! lUvterl ifM H mi "i