Letters to the Editor

THE CREW SITUATION

Dear Sir: If Mac Rollins and his "number of habitues of the Club" are as hot and bothered as he makes them out to be in the Club Bulletin article reprinted in last month's MAGAZINE it seems only decent for someone who knows something about the seriousness with which this crew business is being considered for Dartmouth to dash a little cold spray on his fevered brow. I undertake such enlightenment as this communication may obtain because I am the chairman of the committee for the Athletic Council which has the investigation of the matter in hand.

The sentiment of alumni as expressed in your columns and elsewhere is very interesting. Unfortunately the absence of any crew tradition at Dartmouth makes such opinion largely uninformed, as Mac's witty comment appears to be. We have felt, therefore, that the movement cannot be lightly disregarded and warrants the investigations we have set ourselves to make. That there is something in this crew business seems evident from the fact that in spite of its being the most expensive sport to maintain in intercollegiate athletics it remains one of the major sports of almost every large university and one of the most popular both among undergraduates and in appeal to alumni. The importance of rowing in intercollegiate and in interscholastic circles is increasing, not decreasing as is the case in several other sports, notably baseball. There are an increasing number of schoolboy athletes moving up to the colleges from prep schools where crew work has been an important item in the athletic program and they want it. This specifically is the urge behind the propaganda referred to.

The question of the expense of maintaining a crew certainly enters into any consideration of the idea. Excepting football there is not and probably never will be any selfsupporting sport in the athletic program. The question then becomes whether or not each sport to be considered is worth the expenditure necessary to maintain it in the manner desirable. So far as crew is concerned it has to be worth about $15,000 a year in cold cash. When you compare this with a round $12,000 for track or $9,000 for baseball or the same for swimming you leave yourself open for a hot argument with the crew enthusiasts. Properly equipped a crew department will keep close to one hundred men busy six months of the year which is a better average than most sports show. Compared with other sports we maintain as desirable from the standpoint of exercise, physical development, training, interest to spectators, or interest to competitors or from any other angle you care to assume there is much to be said in favor of rowing.

It becomes, therefore, just a little immaterial whether or not my idea of fun, or that of the number of habitues of the club, embraces pulling on a rowing machine all winter or catching crabs in Lake Mascoma.

The athletic council probably will not consider mortgaging the Alumni Gynasium to support a navy or commit themselves to any curtailment of their development plan to establish a crew. As a matter of fact the difficulty of adapting rowing to intramural and recreational activities may eventually kill the whole business. The deliberations of the committee I represent have not yet progressed to the point where any deductions are possible but you can't laugh the matter off with a few caustic comments about aping the universities with whom we compete on almost every other field.

A lot of crew enthusiasts are nuts but there is some real meat in this particular shell game.

THANK YOU, MR. DAME

My dear Mr. Kelly: I wish to compliment you and congratulate you on the high quality of the August number of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. It is indeed a superb number and a most appropriate one to appear so soon after Commencement.

A WEBSTER IDENTIFICATION

Dear Sid: I notice that in a late issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE there is a page of prints from the Daniel Webster collection, and a note asking for the identification of some of them. Print No. 29 is a picture of the unveiling of the statue of Daniel which stands in the yard in front of the State House at Concord, N. H. Print No. 30 is a picture of this statue.

FROM INDIA

Dear Editor: I hasten to send along my two dollars for the ALUMNI MAGAZINE for next year. I have not been a subscriber in past years, although I have kept in touch with Dartmouth through the Class Secretary. But after taking the MAGAZINE last year I have decided that I cannot get along without it. Newspapers are interesting in India in these days of talk of freedom and we watch for them daily. But once in two months I am glad to drop the daily paper and spend a few hours going back 20 years to College days.

I am in district work for the Methodist Mission having charge of the evangelistic workers in two large districts. In addition to this I am called upon quite frequently for affairs that require business ability for perhaps I am a little more of a business man than a "padre " But I have now been interested in India for nearly twenty years, and I see the great possibilities for India as a Christian nation. I am a firm believer that India has progressed in a wonderful way under British leadership and hope that her future lies with the British Empire. Although not in sympathy with the Non-cooperative movement under Mr. Gandhi, one cannot help but admit that this movement has stirred up things in a way which will bring greater freedom to the Indian people even if the future lies in the direction of a dominion of the British Empire. And yet one cannot quite conceive of much more self-government in India except as a growth over a period of long years. There are many Indians as capable of large responsibilities as the British statemen who so carefully hold on to the positions of power. But the mass of the people are too ignorant to vote, the land holder is so selfish, the young educated Indian so hot-headed, and the great religious gulf between Hindus and Mohammedans so deep that self-government seems far off. But I must not get started on politics. All I am doing now is to insure that I shall be kept in touch with Dartmouth another year.

Methodist Episcopal Church,Sitapur, India.

THE WEBSTER COMPOSITE

My dear Mr. Kelly: Some weeks ago I wrote you regarding one of the items reproduced in the "Webster Print Collection," as a frontispiece to the issue of your MAGAZINE for June, 1930. It may interest you to know that the photograph labelled "29," said in the legend to bear a resemblance to the Old City Hall in Boston, is actually your own New Hampshire State House at Concord, taken on June 17, 1886, just before the dedication of the statue of Daniel Webster, by Ball, still standing in the park in front of the State House. The occasion was a significant one in New Hampshire, and a large crowd assembled for the proceedings. The statue itself was presented to the state by Benjamin Pierce Cheney, and the total cost was $12,000.

I may add that many visitors, to-day, come to see the statue, and, in observing it, stand within the shadow of the great elm planted in June, 1825, by General Lafayette on his stay in Concord. I trust that I do not bore you with the identification of a building with which every son of New Hampshire should be familiar.

DARTMOUTH FLAG IN LOUVAIN

Editor Alumni Magazine: Last December I promised to send you a photo of the completed flag of Dartmouth College and it is with real pleasure that I do so today, apologizing at the same time for the long delay, which has been necessary before I could also have the Great Hall photographed to show the position of your flag.

I must again ask you to accept the expression of our deep gratitude for your help and tell you how glad we are to have the honour of adding your flag to the William Francklyn Paris collection of university flags.

The many flags which form this unique and dazzling collection is really worth seeing and I trust, therefore, that in days to come, many alumni of your college will have the opportunity of seeing their banner here.

Librarian

Bibliotheque de L'Universite, Place duPeuple, Louvain

FIRST ARTICLE IN THIS NUMBER

Dear Mr. Kelly: I personally, would be delighted if one page of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE could be devoted to a presentation of one of the courses each month. I am wondering, however, if the plan could not be introduced in a prominent fashion so that the uninitiated will have their appetites whetted and a desire created to stop, look and listen when they run on to the page in mind, rather than to skim by it as they might do on an innovation.

I am much impressed with the fact that many good ideas become lost in a fog of indifference because they were not well lighted when they started on their journey. The suggestion you have in mind needs to be originally well presented and the question I am laboriously arriving at is whether the use of only one page at the start will do justice to the job.

S Pleasant St., Concord, N. H.

RECOMMENDED

MOGREB-EL-ACKSA. By ROBERT BONTINE CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM. The VikingPress, 1930. First American Edition.

In 1898, hearing that no Christian had ever been to Tarudant, in Morocco, Cunninghame Graham decided to go. The author is a hidalgo and a Scotch laird who writes, as he has lived, like an Elizabethan cavalier. There is an ironic disdain in what he says of progress, and even toward his reader. He seems, in the revelation of his character, like a figure from a bygone age who would have been at home with Montrose on the field of Auldearn or on the forward deck of the Santa Maria facing the unknown terrors of a strange sea.

He says in his preface, "I fear I have no theory of empires, destiny of the AngloSaxon race, spread of the Christian faith, of trade extention, or of hinterlands. ... I fear I write of things without a scrap of interest to right-thinking men ... in fact of things which to a traveller, his travels o'er, still conjure up the best part of all travel—its melancholy."

Let not this modesty trick you. A gallant figure is revealed. That he never reached Tarudant, being detained by a Kaid on the way, matters not a jot. Joseph Conrad thought it the travel book of the last century. Suffice it to say that it is a book for the connoisseur of good and piquant writing, and more, for the reader who is interested in the disclosure of a keen mind combined with a romantic and fascinating personality. The introduction is by Edward Garnett.

Department of Comparative Literature.

MASCOMA LAKE "WHERE DARTMOUTH MAY ROW"

COLLEGE BANNERS IN UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN

THE DARTMOUTH FLAG HANGS BESIDE HARVARD'S