CARNIVAL ELICITS COMMENT

That the Winter Carnival is attracting serious attention outside, as well as within, college circles, is evidenced by the comments to which it gave rise in the metropolitan press. We quote below from one of four articles written for his paper by Mr. Lawrence Perry of the New York Evening Post, a visitor to Hanover during Carnival week. To this comment we add a short editorial which appeared in the BostonHerald for February 16:

"The closing of the programme of winter sports at Hanover did not mean the relegation of ski and snowshoe to dark closets, there to remain until another winter carnival at Dartmouth calls them into use. The visitor, of course, had no idea that the manifestations of outdoor activity were altogether confined to a picturesque three-day period; but there was none the less, some curiosity concerning the precise degree in which the carnival reflected the normal reactions of the student body toward the blazed trails and the snow-covered hills and valleys. The answer came today : Dartmouth has no intention of entering upon a period of hibernation. The outdoor tendency is organic. The recent days of sport, far from standing as an exception to a usual order of things, a piling up of extraordinary effort, served merely to give point to an established condition. Dartmouth goes out into the winter, not for show, not to erect a spectacular illusion, but because of deeply-rooted love for the ice-locked open spaces. Early in the morning, when most of the throng of visitors had departed, or were preparing to do so, a group of students shuffled past the Hanover Inn on skis. They were equipped for distance work. On their backs were rucksacks; toques of many colors covered their ears; on their feet were lumbermen's moccasins and double pairs of woolen socks. They were bound for one of the log-cabin trails which stretch away to the White Mountains, and were not due home until late in the evening. On the southbound train out of Norwich was another group, packs on their backs, ski and snowshoe in hand. They left the car at White River Junction, adjusted their traveling gear, and headed for the forest. They were due back in Hanover some time in the late afternoon.

"Visit a dormitory room, a fraternity house, a club, and there in doorway or corridor will you see stacks of skis, snowshoes, and skates. Wherever you drive in a sleigh, however far into the country, you never lose on the flawless white of hill or mountain side the narrow "spoor track" of the expert skirunner ; the wide, wabbly trail of the tyro, and the web-foot path of those who go abroad on snowshoes. The Dartmouth student, in brief, has unlocked the winter. When lessons are prepared—and very often, it may be feared, when they are not prepared-he fares forth into the still heart of Nature, filling his lungs with the purest air that blows, and his soul with the inspiration of scenery that is unsur-passed, sitting over genial log-fires on the hearths of the trail cabins, and learning the real beauty of companionship and the value of inward communion. Yet it was not so many years ago that Dartmouth, together with all of Vermont and New Hampshire, retired into a cocoon when the mountainsides turned sere and the wind from the north brought enveloping snow."— New York Eveninq Post.

"Those returning from the winter carnival at Hanover—alumni, parents, sweethearts, prospective students and all—agree in their unqualified enthusiasm regarding the success of that unique affair. From its small beginnings of a very few years ago it has become one of the big institutions of the intercollegiate world, in both a social and an athletic way. It was typical of the Dartmouth spirit that found a way to change from pity to envy the feelings of those who have looked on Hanover as a clearing in the north woods in shivering proximity to the Arctic circle. The rigors of winter in northern New England have given live Dartmouth men just the opportunity they wanted to show how easy it is to surmount insurmountable obstacles when you start climbing in 'the right way.

"The indoor hockey matches, the glee club concerts, the proms, the ping pong tournaments, the pink teas and other indoor sports, with which most colleges while away the dreary weeks between football and baseball, are all well enough in their way, but how little they weigh in the scale of youth against the winter games and the general festival program of the glorious out of doors in northern New Hampshire. It may be that our age is overdoing college sports and social functions, but far better curtail the fall and spring program than lose anything of the kind that Hanover has been revelling in of late. But, unhappily, few of our other colleges can venture such a carnival. It will remain Dartmouth's own. For that, thanks to nature, and to the needs of the Indians a century and a half ago. But for the way the supposed disability of isolation and a real winter environment has been turned into an asset and a triumph, thanks to the invincible Dartmouth spirit."—Boston Herald.