Sentimental Rot?

Dartmouth Night was impressive, as it always is, and old grads and undergrads thrilled anew at being Dartmouth men. Quite different from the "Sentimental Rot" effusion of last year was The Dartmouth's editorial the day before the game. It said: "One year ago an editor of The Dartmouth stamped a sentimental night with the phrase, 'Sentimental Rot.' There may have been a sort of truth in the editorial, but a coldly rational truth, a truth that does not reckon with the warm surge of emotion that grips the marchers on Dartmouth Night. Sentimental Rot? Listen:

"What Dartmouth undergraduate stays in his room when 'he hears the band blare outside, when he sees Dartmouth College swing by in close-locked ranks of eight or ten, when he hears discordant voices bellowing out songs from Dartmouth's heritage of music? How- ever analytic and rationally contemptuous, he is human and the social urge is hot within him. He dares not be outside the twisting snake of students, a pageant of humanity dimly lit by swirling, oil flames and wreathed in their heavy blue smoke. Sentimental rot was the subject of an ill-timed editorial nothing more."