The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 26, 1968 Page: 3 of 8
eight pages : ill. ; page 21 x 14 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
threshlng-lt-out
Viet letter debate continues; Seewann attacks Marsh
To the Editor:
Mr. Marsh's letter to the edit-
or in last week's Thresher de-
serves some comment, I think,
even if only for the fact that
the man seems interested in the
Vietnam situation.
In denying the parallel be-
tween the U.S.'s, excuse for in-
tervention in Vietnam and that
of the U.S.S.R. for the invasion
of the C.S.S.R., Mr. Marsh ap-
parently wants to show that the
U.S. was "invited" by a respect-
able and representative govern-
ment. To accomplish this goal,
he immediately begins at the
tail end, by extolling the virtues
of the present Saigon govern-
ment. Apparently he has for-
gotten that U.S. intervention in
Vietnam goes back as far as
the Eisenhower administration.
Mi\ Marsh's comments would,
I feel, have been much more
relevant, had he tried to show
that the government which ex-
isted in 1954 and to which
Eisenhower offered "qualified
conditional aid" was respectable,
or that the government in 1063
to which Kennedy sent 18,000
"advisors" who were permitted
to engage in combat alongside
the troops they were "advis-
ing," was respectable, or even
that the government in 1965-66
when Johnson escalated from
20,000 men to 375,000 men was
respectable.
Undoubtably, the present gov-
ernment is a big improvement
and it certainly ought to be,
since the U.S. has "nursed and
rehearsed" Saigon governments
for over a decade. Unfortun-
ately, the present government
.never "invited" us in the first
place. That was done by one of
the less respectable ones. The
present government merely ex-
tended the invitation. To have
done otherwise would have been
a serious blunder on their part,
I think.
In his second point, Mr.
Marsh apparently wants to lend
some semblance of creditability
to our SEATO pact alliances.
He tries to do this by stating
that North Vietnam currently
has eight howitzers and rockets
(divisions? companies?) in
South Vietnam and is currently
invading South Vietnam at a
rate of 12,000 men per month.
At first glance, these statistics
seem to have very little to do
with our SEATO alliances, and
at a second, more careful per-
usal, absolutely nothing at all.
One suddenly feels himself
rudely dragged into a dark, dark-
void.
Eventually though, one sees
'a faint glimmer of light
bravely oozing through the
logical traps in his argument.
Mr. Marsh apparently wants his
readers to recognize the follow-
ing three truths:
0 The creation and continu-
ing existence of SEATO are
eminently justifiable.
% The SEATO terms com-
mit the U.S. to aid a troubled
Vietnam.
9 Vietnam is indeed trou-
bled.
Truths one and two appear
to be so transparently obvious
to Mr. Marsh as not to merit
any discussion whatsoever.
Truth three, on the other hand,
being of a delusively obscure
and opaque nature, deserves the
most painstaking illumination
available. Military statistics!
How much better his time
would have been spent examin-
ing SEATO than in aimlessly
wallowing about in all that
murky statistical hogwash. He
might have provided answers
for those who feel SEATO was
too hurriedly organized a month
before Eisenhower took the first
steps toward intervention in
Vietnam, or for those who still
wonder why the most populous
Asian countries refused to sign
the treaty, why three of the
eight signatories are non-Asian
countries (U.S., France, Eng-
land) and why SEATO is and
always has been so completely
dominated by the U.S.
Had he actually bothered to
read the SEATO terms, he
might h*ive uncovered some-
thing to silence those critics
who so stubbornly insist that
there is nothing there that com-
mits the U.S. to intervene in
Vietnam. (Secretary of State
Dulles, for instance, the^creator
of SEATO, testified to that ef-
fect in the Senate).
He might have reassured
those who are disturbed by the
fact that France, England, and
Pakistan signed the same treaty
and don't feel obligated to send
even token support, or those
who are perturbed by the nu-
merous quotations from Eisen-
howy and Kennedy news con-
ferences, in which both men
state that SEATO in no way
commits the U.S. to intervene
in Vietnam.
Mr. Marsh continues by at-
tempting to convince his read-
ers that there may well be some
validity in the Domino theory.
And again with military statis-
tics! The four divisions guard-
ing the Ho Chi Minh trail in
Laos are as much dictated by
military necessity as are our
air-bases in Thailand. Both are
equally irrelevant to any rea-
sonable discussion of the Domi-
no theory.
He might instead have given
his readers a long list of Asian
countries that have turned com-
Bacon justifies integration record
To the Editor:
"Rice University is racist,
and has been adamant about
ignoring it," to quote someone.
However, integration is now
here at Rice; it will be from
now on; and it will probably be
a good policy in^the long run.
One must remember, never-
theless, that in an age when
society openly condoned segre-
gation, a man with a dream for
the world, and indirectly mur-
dered for it, chartered and
funded this university. His wish-
es, and we must certainly re-
spect his right to them, includ-
ed the desire that Rice remain
segregated.
As a private institution, how-
ever, Rice has come under gov-
ernment pressure from without
and constructive criticism from
^nvithin to reinterpret W. M.
Rice's wishes to be primarily
for a first class educational in-
stitution (whatever that can
be?), rather thafi a school-for
the 'white.'
So be it, we have integrated.
But the fact that we did so
years after the 1954 Supreme
Court puling is irrelavant (sic).
' Fortunately, Rice is still a
^private university, capable of
making its own rules, subject
only to itself.
But, Rice—'Shameful' — Oh,
really!
BOB BACON
Baker '70
munist since Red China did in
1949. That would have been
challenging, I think, especially
since many people claim that
there aren't any. He might also
have tried to provide an answer
for those who seem to think
that Asian countries are more
influenced by their own intern-
al social, economic and political
make-up, than by anything that
can possibly occur in foreign
countries.
The remaining part of Mr.
Marsh's letter, when considered
as a whole (like about six feet
deep), is filled with all kinds
of rambling, loosely organized
blithering. In his narrow-mind-
ed argument that Senator
Inouye of Hawaii could not pos-
sibly be inhuman, he cites the
fact that the man lost his arm
in WW II fighting the Nazis.
Now I never heard of Senator
Inouye and couldn't really say
whether or not he is inhuman,
but I am certainly not going to
rule it out simply because the
man lost his arm fighting the
Nazis!
His "reasonable rebuttal" of
Dinh's satement that the U.S.'s
use of napalm has unified the
Vietnamese in the Revolution
seems to me to approach asymp-
toically, via the complex in-
variable elliptic plane, a lot of
"mindless slop" (to borrow a
phrase). Simply because one
old peasant ignored one of the
many bombing runs to concen-
trate on his more immediate
duties doesn't show t^at all
Vietnamese are that way, no
more than the fact that one
American demonstrator bit a
policeman's leg shows that all
Americans bite policemen's
legs.
Wouldn't it be something if
all Americans really did bite
policemen's legs! The country
would go to the dogs! There-
fore, I was very pleased to find
that Mr. Marsh has decided to
take a strong stand against
that sort of thing-. Let's face
it, demonstrators, he's right!
That sortvof thing is just plain
nasty! Shame on you! And that
goes for all the rest of you
disgusting hippies and yippies
whose "feeling against the^use
of mechanical w e a p o n s ( na-
palm ? ) is in fact subconscious
racism projected onto the Viet-
namese" and who try to "trans-
fer aggression against parental
control over to the police"!
Shame, shame on you! De-
stroying a young man's faith
in his generation! Biting huge
chunks of flesh out of police-
men's legs! M-o-t-h-e-r B-e-a-r!
And then to ask to be treated
like human beings! After bit-
ing huge chunks of flesh out of
policemen's legs!! Lord have
mercy!
They ought to be shipped to
Vietnam to help napalm North
Vietnam's pregnant women and
fat, chubbie little old babies in
just retribution for the bloody
butchery of South Vietnam's
pregnant women and fat, chub-
bie little old babies by North
Vietnamese terror attacks. The
damned yellow little monkeys
have got to.-be taught,either to
start taking the pill or stop
reproducing so indiscriminantly,
don't they, Mr. Marsh?
ED SEEWANN
Hanszen '68
(The sentence in Mr. Marsh's letter
referred to by Mr. Seewann should
have read, "There are eight infantry
divisions, equipped with AK 47's, and
about two armored divisions, with both
howitzers and rockets, of the regular
North Vietnamese army currently in
South Vietnam." The Thresher apolo-
gizes for its typographical error.—Ed.)
East side story
By JON GLAZIER
On Saturday, September 21, Austin is clear and hot but
not with Houston's oppressive heat. The west side of town
around the University campus swarms with returning UT
students and UH students here for the Saturday night foot-
ball game. Across Congress Avenue in Austin's predomi-
nately Negro east side, students are returning to Ilouston-
Tillotson College, and delegates are arriving for a statewide
convention Saturday of the Student Non-Violent Co-Ordi-
nating Committee, SNCC. Sunday a combined meeting of
SNCC and Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, is
planned.
Down E 11th Street, away from the Capitol, the Uni-
versity and white Austin, past the Stop and Go supermarket
and across from Jack The Killer Shine Parlor, is the Victory
Grill. Inside sit the usual gathering of Saturday morning
beer drinkers and today, along with them, sit white news
reporters and black cameramen.
It is 1 pm and the convention, now three hours behind
schedule, is beginning. White reporters wait in the front
while black cameramen follow SNCC delegates dressed in
flowing, colorfully striped shirts called dashikis (from the
Swahili for "freedom") into the banquet room at the rear.
Peace and Freedom Party Presidential candidate El-
dridge Cleaver and his wife and Phil Hutchines, national
SNCC chairman, reputedly will appear.
The delegates are scheduled to discuss court cases of
several members awaiting trial in Austin, Dallas and Hous-
M ike M.-Kinn y
ton for actions resulting from demonstrations. A delegate re-
ports "they understand the necessity of getting on the move
and getting on the move now. If I'm living in Houston, I'm
not going to sit while my brother in Dallas is getting thirty
years'."
After the day's meeting, Austin SNCC's Minister of
Education speaks of SNCC and the Black Power movement.
He says that although not as militant as the Panthers.
"SNCC doesn't believe in turning the other cheek. Revolu-
tions are not won by turning the other cheek; the NAACP
believes in turning the other cheek."
"We want unity in the black community: once we are
united we can deal with the white society," he continues.
This ideal is substantiated by a Negro who says he has re-
fused a job downtown until his black brother can get the
same job. SNCC refers to this denial as the "I won't he your
tokenj,' attitude.
Sunday, the Victory Grill has a different atmosphere.
Today is to be a combined meeting of SNCC and SDS and
there are SDS members there since 10 am. They are clean-
scrubbed, white middle class, and intense, or long-haired,
work-shirted, and intense. They come in little groups and
hand out reams of literature to SNCC members, bystanders,
and each other. For the most part they are well informed
of the many differences in theory among their own New
Left organizations, although often hazy on specific methods.
They come to talk and they are good at it. An Austin lawyer
is there, as is a dismissed New York University professor
on his way to Cuba.
An SNCC organizer from New York tells the combined
group, "We are both political organizations and we must
move together against the oppressor." Speaking now to the
predominately white SDS group, he says "Indians, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and now the blacks. What are they going to do
when there's no more blacks 2 Then they start on dissident
whites."
There is much discussion and a plan of sorts is decided
upon. Both groups leave the banquet room, pass through the
Victory Grill with its-' Abraham Lincoln—John F. Kennedy
calendar and outside to East Austin. SNCC members cross
the street to the Derby Lounge or walk down the narrow
streets to homes of friends. SDS members get into their
VW's and drive off under the hazy Austin sky.
the rice thresher, September 26, 11)68—page 3
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Bahler, Dennis. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 26, 1968, newspaper, September 26, 1968; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245036/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.