Editorial Comment

Fred Parker Emery

It is improbable that any other loss from the present Dartmouth faculty through death would be more widely felt by alumni as a personal bereavement than that involved in the death of Professor Emery in January. Teaching as he had done for thirty years in a department (English) which brought him into intimate contact with very nearly every student who had been at Dartmouth between the late '9os and the present day, Mr. Emery enjoyed an acquaintance beyond that of most; and it was an acquaintance so generally appreciated that, in those occasional tables of statistics which students delight to assemble, he was probably more often cited than any other man has been as the "most popular professor." There was in Professor Emery a delightfully human quality, an understanding of youth, and a capacity for inducing his students to cultivate creditable appreciations in matters of literature which fitted him uncommonly well for his chosen work. His interest in the College—of which he was himself an alumnus—was as vital and vivid as that of an undergraduate, a fact which equipped him for the not always easy task of tempering undergraduate enthusiasms with the more becoming sobriety of the alumnus. Professor Emery will be missed, and will not soon be forgotten. A full generation of Dartmouth mouth men had known him and esteemed him—and will always, while they live, owe much to his discerning instruction.

The Alumni Fund Again

One thing which the committee in charge of the Alumni Fund desire above all else is to avoid making this recurrent solicitation seem to the alumni of the College a sort of annual blister, lit is not easy always to gild the pill of contribution, but the hope and the confident expectation are that the inevitableness of the campaign, coupled with its manifest success in enabling the College constantly to grow and to progress, will accustom the graduates everywhere to look upon this feature of their connection with Dartmouth as a regular item in the family budget, like food, clothing and shelter —as regular as one's taxes, in fact, but infinitely less burdensome and less irritating.

It is felt that there is no longer any necessity to explain, and that still less is there any need to apologize for, the Alumni Fund. Without it there could be no such Dartmouth as we have today. It takes the place of income from interest on a permanent endowment, and in such a way that the individual giver feels on the average much less strain than would be entailed by a forced campaign to get the College an underlying principal fund of some $15,000,000. Notoriously the colleges of the country take in less than the cost of four years' education from the students in the form of tuition fees—and this remains true even after Dartmouth's tuition bills have been raised to S400 a year. It is impossible to adopt the familiar suggestion that the colleges charge the student fully for what he gets, because that would insure the creation of a "rich man's college" wherever it was done and would abruptly end the search for higher learning on the part of such as might eagerly desire it without the means to procure it—which would mean barring what is, ordinarily, the most promising and desirable element in every undergraduate body the country over.

Dartmouth now opens the annual fund campaign. It seeks to secure from the alumni a total of $110,000—which there is little doubt it will and also intends to come as near as is physically possible to mustering a 100 per cent representation .from the living graduates of the College. No one can expect the full 100 per cent to be attained, but in recent years the number has hung around the 75 per cent mark and should in due time come up to at least 80 out of every 100 known and located men.

The justification of this fund is found in its visible works. The present size of the College, both as a plant and as a congregation of human beings, is what it is only because loyal alumni year after year have cheerfully supplied the sinews. Divided among rising 7000 men, the burden is light, and the nearer we can come to mustering the combined strength of the entire number, the lighter it is going to be. That there remain numerous and pressing things to do is obvious to any one familiar with the place, even though we restrict the student body to (roughly) 2000 undergraduates. The proper housing of these men, the suitable pay and accommodation of their instructors, the necessary upkeep of a great and growing plant, the insurance of a phenomenal success against backsliding into distressing declines—all these things will conspire to make this fund an absolute and recurrent necessity for some years to come.

A word as to the present effort. It is imperative somewhat to increase the total quota over last year, yet equally imperative not to attempt so much as to discourage. The total adopted is probably the wisest, consistent with both the normal growth of the College and the some- what enlarged numbers due to the addition of still another class. It will be found, as usual, that some classes will exceed their assigned quotas and that others will fall below; but the main thing is to meet the situation which is sure to be constantly with us until endowment slowly grows to adequate size, and to unite as far as is humanly possible every alumnus in the work of producing the established total. It is work for all Dartmouth men—perhaps better a privilege. Every gift, great or small, is welcome and every gift counts. Best of all, one feels that it is a thing which the overwhelming majority are heartily glad to do, the more so because the fruits of it as visibly manifested are such as to enhance Dartmouth pride.

The usual plea must be filed against allowing mere procrastination to operate as a burden against class agents and others engaged in the elaborate task of solicitation. Hundreds of us wait longer than we need do before giving notice of our expected participation, and that entails an extra task for the class representatives, not to mention postage and other costs that go to make "overhead." The man who gives naturally wants the College to get as near 100 cents out of his dollar as possible, but the longer the process of collection the less the College will get because the costs of rounding up late-comers eat into the total. The present overhead is said to run close to 6 per cent and in the nature of things it cannot be much lower—but it would be terribly easy to send it up to 8 per cent, or even 10, if the delays were to be increased through mere omission or neglect to answer. This fund goes farther, of course, when the College gets 94 cents out of every dollar to use than it would go if it got only 90 cents. Besides, as the committee is always pointing out, "the merciful man regardeth the life of his class agent." Meet him half way, gentle reader—more than half way! And above all see in this annual fund campaign something that is infinitely more important to Dartmouth College than any other single thing which you, as a loyal alumnus, are likely to be able to do within the present year.

"Dirty Football"

Football, as we all know from observation, is essentially a rough game. It cannot be otherwise in a contest in which the object of one side is to carry a ball forward, very largely by having some player run with it, while the object of the other side is to throw that runner down and arrest his progress. Not only the runner, but various players assigned to assist him and cover his flight as well, are subject to be taken out of the play by Contacts, more or less violent in the nature of things, between body and body. Yet the game as a general whole is in modern days astonishingly free from what is commonly denominated "dirty" football—a distinction being taken between the roughness which is essential to the play and which is happily in most cases not excessive, and the studious roughness which is deliberately exaggerated, not merely with intent to force a player to desist from his forward progress, but with the added hope of so crippling him that he must leave the field.

So much has been said and written since the close of last year's season about "dirty football" that very probably it is futile to append any more. None the less we feel that a word of caution is due, because it is so easy in the circumstances to allege deliberate and intentionally exaggerated roughness, and at the same time so difficult to prove that it was really that. It is no easy task to draw the line between the ordinary roughness which the nature and circumstances of the game always entail, and that which is entered into by design with more than the original intent to arrest the advance of a runner and his companions.

It must be admitted that in recent years there has been creditably little complaint, by comparison with what one used to hear about—indeed used to see, for it was by no means artfully disguised in the bad old days still well remembered by oldtimers who are short of their 35th reunion. If there is dirty playing now, it is evidently more artistically done—for penalties imposed by field officials for needless brutality in the play are certainly not very common, and besides there has arisen a generation cordially admitting that such tactics are not the thing. Nevertheless, football being what it is— a game in which a degree of roughness is perfectly inevitable and wholly proper— there will be now and then a case in which there will seem, whether justly or not, to be an excess—possibly not intended for such, but inciting critics to charge deliberate intent. The needless piling up of players in a scrimmage after the whistle is blown is the most obvious occasion for this sentiment, since nothing is to be gained thereby save the possible injury of some valuable player on the opposing team who is known to be underneath.

We are not condemning football for its inevitable concomitant of roughness, nor for its inherent dangers—for it would be silly to deny that there are dangers, although in the case of seasoned players conducting themselves properly those dangers are rarely productive of serious results. The virtues of football are the ruggeder sort, whether bodily or morally considered. The idea is only to remind the reader of the difficulty of supporting a charge of undue roughness and of the propriety of trusting something to the instinctive good sense of the undergraduates themselves, they being in the main remarkable for clean-minded fairness to their dearest foes. Further, it is intended to stress the point that there is no arguing with young men once they become convinced—always against their inclination and natural desire—that some contender makes a specialty of offending in this regard. It is usually imperative to resort to the heroic remedy of abstinence from play and let the soreness pass away under the healing hands of time. This does injustice now and then. We believe Dartmouth has suffered in remote years from that very fact, just as many other colleges have done. But it is the only thing that works a cure, where argument generally fails.

Everybody Wants Education

According to a painstaking survey of the collegiate field published at the first of the present year by the BostonTranscript, the enrollment of students in American colleges of every kind for 1926 totalled 265,564, to which may be added about 100,000 in summer schools and nearly 136,000 in extension work. The regular enrollment last year is given as nearly 12,000 higher than in 1925 and the freshman enrollment in 1925 had taken a jump of 7400 over the figures of the preceding year. As an interesting comparison, the Transcript's survey states that the figures give the proportion of students in America as about 60 in every 10,000 of population, whereas the proportions in France and England are respectively 13 and 15 only.

Much has been said in these columns and in those of other publications inspired by President Hopkins's terse dictum of a few years ago that too many are going to college, and by this time it is probably understood by all but the thoughtless that this is a relative, rather than a positive, assertion. Too many are going to college who ought not to spend their time there—and too few are going who would reap a greater benefit. But it is apparent that not only is the present enrollment of all the American colleges greater than ever before, but also it is a probable forerunner of still greater increases.

The first thing that strikes the thoughtful reader on viewing these statistics is that they manifestly prohibit the adoption in the United States of a theory of education comparable to that in countries where a much smaller and presumably more generally hand-picked proportion of the public seeks university or college training. In other words it is impossible with such prodigious numbers to attempt the sort of education which would stress the higher scholarship attainable by a very few among so many. This, as has been remarked before, is not necessarily a thing to deplore in view of the peculiar conditions which obtain in a country like our own. It is our belief that the exigencies of American life require an attempt to raise the intellectual standards of vast numbers of young people as much as the circumstances allow, rather than an attempt to put an uncommonly high intellectual polish on a chosen few, capable of taking it. None the less a skeptical mind may be pardoned for inquiring whether we can do even the former very successfully if the numbers to be dealt with continue to augment—perhaps whether we can hope to do it very well even when the number is what it already is. The difficulty is two- fold. In part the number to be educated is so vast as to be unwieldly, and in part the task requires such a huge army of educators that it is difficult to guarantee their adequacy. The question is in more senses than one academic. The facts are what they are; and the best must be done that can be done, even if it be short of the ideal.

Naturally a great proportion of the increase is due to the growth of state universities by which the scope of free public education is extended upward. California in this class leads the list with an enrollment of 17,000, with Illinois and Minnesota showing respectively 11,000 and 10,000. New York University with a somewhat different set of conditions goes as high as 18,199. Universities of the sort more commonly in mind when one uses the word will find in Columbia's 12,643 a monumental record. The record for increase is, however, spread throughout the whole list of public and privately maintained colleges, so that as the eye runs down the column it fails to find an instance of exception. Dartmouth is credited with 2253 and Princeton with 2301—a fact which might be brought to the attention of such as refer glibly to Harvard, Yale and Princeton as "the Big Three." Harvard is credited with 7993 and Yale with 4960.

"Everybody Wants to Go to College" is the Transcript's general headline for its survey, and it is not inappropriate. Whether every one wants to go because of a genuine thirst for mental improvement is perhaps doubtful—or rather isn't doubtful at all, because we all know that a considerable part of the total represents the young people who go because it is increasingly the established thing to do. Even so, it may be doubted that it is a bad thing for the country, save in the instances where it promotes insatiable discontent with the individual lot, or leads into unsuitable walks of life men and women who are incapable of acquitting themselves there with either credit or profit. In the main, one suspects, it does good. Not as much good as might be wished, but enough to count.

The Winter As An Asset

Those of us to whom the activities of the Outing Club are a matter of hear-say only will have some difficulty in visualizing the additions made from year to year to the physical plant of the society. It is probably understood that the theory of the Outing Club is to convert the great asset of the Out-of-Doors into something advantageous to both the students and alumni of the College—more especially that rigorous but healthful winter season, which in former generations constituted a positive drawback.

If you are of those who knew Dartmouth 40 years ago—the days when bathing was infrequent and when from December to March the students were mostly hived in hermetically sealed rooms —the present customs would seem unprecedented, but no doubt wise. Dartmouth no longer dreads, but welcomes with eagerness, the season of cold and snows by going out to meet it and actually revelling in it. It has been found by questioning undergraduates that very considerable numbers, if not most of them, rate the prospect of out-door life in winter among the major attractions of the place. A change indeed from the older days—days which some misinformed old grads are sometimes heard referring to as if they produced a hardier race than is possible in these times of central heating, water works and universal bathrooms.

As a general thing the Outing Club musters in its membership 80%, or more, of the undergraduate body, and the activities, while most notable in the winter season, are by no means confined thereto but extend throughout the year. To alumni, perhaps, the best opportunity for becoming acquainted with the trails and cabins now maintained as a part of the equipment will be found in the summer or autumn motoring season; but to the casual understanding this is primarily a winter business, and a most commendable one since it changes the ancient handicap against Dartmouth into an allurement and an advertisement.

The news sections of this MAGAZINE. wiII doubtless carry information as to new installations, such as the new cabin donated by Mr. J. W. Newton, the rebuilding of the Great Bear cabin, mainly by contributions from the class of 1906, and the enlarged activities involved in winter expeditions to Mt. Washington. It is to be recommended, however, that alumni who may visit Hanover during the open seasons of summer and fall familiarize themselves as chances offer with the mountain trails and the remoter hospices providing shelter, in order that a better idea of this highly important phase of the life of the College may become common among those who too seldom visit the North Country during the depths of winter.

Honorary Degrees

It should perhaps be made clearer to the alumni of this and many other colleges that the matter of honorary degrees, bestowed at Commencement on ten or a dozen selected persons, by vote of the trustees, as a mark of special academic distinction, involves a certain embarassment because the urgent suggestions from alumni so generally outnumber the available opportunities. President Hopkins, in recent letters to inquiring alumni, has pointed out the existence of a very considerable waiting list and has stressed the fact that in the circumstances no one should regard the omission to pay honor to his own suggested candidate as necessarily implying either indifference or disregard. The president and trustees have no easy task in making every year a list of recipients of this collegiate honor which will be at once large enough and small enough. The honorary degrees are terribly easy to overdo, and the arrangement of their personnel is no trifling task.

In one's dispassionate moments—that is to say when one has not particular suggestion of one's own in mind and is therefore free to treat the honorary degree list with critical candor—one naturally takes the position that every college should be distinctly exacting—"fussy" if you will—in selecting those whom it desires to honor. Most colleges have been criticized for not being sufficiently so— our own among them on occasion, although it is a reasonable belief that the recent record everywhere has been greatly better than the old and invites little if any reprobation. But none of us is likely to be so sternly critical when he is sponsoring a suggestion of his own; and as so many do offer such suggestions, it is in order to remind such of the fact that every year the number of degrees which it is desirable to award, honoris causa, is sure to be much smaller than the number of men (and women) put forward by friends and admirers as exceptionally worthy. There has to be a sort of selective process for choosing among them, and the number not chosen is pretty sure to be the larger one. No disparagement to those who are thus delayed, of course, is necessarily implied.

If the College were to acquiesce indiscriminately in the manifold suggestions for the bestowal of its blue ribbons, it would have to make some fifty candidates a year into "doctors" and "masters" of this and that, speedily depriving the honorary degree of any appreciable distinctinction. It has to pick and choose, with a limit in view which shall suffice to make a degree of this kind worth the taking, and keep it in the category of covetable honors.

The Official Song

Debate as to which should be recognized officially as Dartmouth's principal song—the kind you stand up bareheaded to sing—has been renewed, the choice lying between the old familiar "Dartmouth Song" which has reigned for some 30 years and the somewhat more elaborate "Men of Dartmouth" which has been appreciating in popularity to the point of attaining a place in the Commencement programme. It now appears from a communication lately printed in the Daily Dartmouth that President Hopkins, as a matter of purely personal taste, likes the "Men of Dartmouth" much better than the song previously regarded as the official one, and inclines to advise its recognized use on occasions when the circumstances call for the Dartmouth song to be sung.

Opinions will differ, of course, but we incline to the President's view of this matter. There are naturally shortcomings in each of these familiar songs. The one preferred by Dr. Hopkins—Richard Hovey's stirring poem set to admirable music by Mr. Wellman—is not without its defects. One always boggles at the idea of "wind in the circulatory system," if not at that of granite where the brain should be. Nevertheless the greater part of this ode strikes the present editors as superior in poetic quality to the words of the other song, and the music has infinitely more swing to it. Possibly it is easier music to sing. One knows how hard some national anthems are from that viewpoint—notably our American "Star Spangled Banner"—and how little inspired are sometimes the sentiments sought to be voiced.

The thoroughly ideal official song, whether for a college or a country, is so rare a bird that one may almost deny its existence. Either the words, or the music, or both may fall short. It is a large order which demands inspiration equally for poet and of course we all know that to be worth its salt an official song has to be the product of inspiration. M.ade-to-order anthems almost never satisfy; and one fears that was partly the trouble underlying "Come fellows let us raise a song, and sing it loud and clear," although a precisian might question the adverbial forms in the second phrase.

It is apparently necessary that we have a recognized official Dartmouth song and that it be worthy of the College in as many simultaneous ways as possible. The President hesitates, as he informs the Editors of the Daily Dartmouth, to make any dictatorial ruling concerning the adoption of "Men of Dartmouth," but he is evidently hopeful that public opinion may come to some such conclusion. That motion the MAGAZINE inclines to second. At least there will be no temptation to wind up Mr. Hovey's ditty with a "Wah-hoo-Wah" followed by a frantic attempt to get back on the proper key for the ultimate "R." The custom of winding up the older song—older at least as a combination of words and tune—in that way has probably done more to under- mine it than any intrinsic defect. One was always worrying about that final "R"—and the necessity of agreement on its pitch among so numerous a host!

Not being expert in such matters and speaking subject to undergraduate correction, we believe the "T-I-G-E-R" has been eliminated within a year or two as the close of the official cheer. In that case the retention of the older song involves a certain anachronism which is absent from the hymn by Hovey. At all events the latter has always seemed to us more of a song, all things consideredit has more character. Distinctly the MAGAZINE must second the belief of President Hopkins.

Outing Club Party on the Mount Washington Carriage Road, 1925