Letters to the Editor

FAMOUS HANOVER WALLPAPER

Through the kindness of Dr. Henry H. Piper, Secretary of the Class of 1876, the editors are reproducing here pictures of the wallpaper from the old Young House in Hanover. It took a whole new building in Hanover to exhibit the old Sanborn House wallpaper, and at the Boston Art Museum it was necessary to build a whole room for the special purpose of exhibiting the Young wallpaper. Hanover wallpaper has always been noteworthy and many of the alumni will remember living in private houses or in Sanborn Hall itself where the charming old designs were to be found. It might have been better, perhaps, if the wallpaper in the Boston Museum could have been preserved in Hanover, but after all, the present location is available to thousands of persons who could never get to Hanover.

DARTMOUTH IN CHINA

Dear Friends I wish to express to you my very deep appreciation for the publicity that you gave to the Dartmouth-in-China project in the latest issue of ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Keith Drake showed his newspaper ability of making "much ado about nothing," but we will forgive him and hope he will visit Paotingfu again some day.

Our school is going along nicely, considering the limitations of our equipment. Our new twelve-room recitation building that was built last year is meeting a long felt need and we hope some day that we can get funds for an assembly hall, a library and an administration building.

The Principal of the school, Mr. Yang Sheng Wu, needs a rest and I hope arrangements can be made within a year or two for him to visit America. Of course, he will spend some time at Dartmouth and I believe when you become acquainted with him that you will agree that Keith Drake was not drawing entirely on his imagination in what he said about Principal Yang. He is a rare fellow and I count it a rare privilege to be associated with him.

The announcement of Gene Clark's death in the same number of the MAGAZINE that carried the Dartmouth-in-China article was a personal shock to me and his absence must be an immeasurable loss to those of you who have been intimately associated with him.

The present situation in China is beyond my comprehension and what it will all amount to I have not a ghost of an idea. It looks now as if another government is to be set up in Peiping, but whether there will be much fighting between the North and the South remains to be revealed. We do not anticipate fighting in this area, but since the unexpected usually happens in China we do not pretend to pose as prophets. We only hope for peace and continue our work.

American Board Mission, Paotingfu, China.

WE WOULD WELCOME SUCH ARTICLES

Dear Sir I have just been reading with unusual interest the May issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, and particularly the article on Beaver Meadow. I am somewhat familiar with the situation there twenty years ago, and have been proud that the Dartmouth students have done their part in rebuilding the community. Why could we not have more articles describing such work as that, for there must be other interesting work done under the auspices of the Christian Association? I have recently talked with a friend on the faculty who has told of helping in the educational work and teachers' conferences of the state. There must be a good deal of extracurricular work done by the faculty, which would be of interest to the alumni bodies.

Bureau of Railway Economics,Washington, D. C.

WHAT KIND OF A SHELL GAME IS THIS CREW BUSINESS?

Under a photograph of Mascoma Lake, some unknown writer in the current issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE covers a lot of territory in a short time by saying "The crew situation at Hanover seems solved by this photograph." Solving such a complex question as the establishment of a new sport (and a sport withal which is perhaps the most costly per capita to maintain) by the simple removal of an old and generally disused bridge seems to us to hint of necromancy or prestidigitation. If this crew business is as simple as that no doubt Mr. Hoover can get the naval treaty passed by means of mirrors.

We, and this includes the opinion of a number of habitues of the Club, wonder just what this whole crew matter amounts to. The ALUMNI MAGAZINE writer says "the general desire for a crew and the number of possibilities that a crew would bring may probably lead to some action in the not too distant future." What is "the general desire?" Who is responsible for it, and about how general is it? After all a "general desire is ordinarily about as good as a last year's bird nest. Specific desires more commonly get and bring home the bacon, which leads us to ask whose specific desire is it that is stirring up the present smoke screen in regard to a crew?

The ALUMNI MAGAZINE article paints quite a picture. Come April 1, the ice goes out of the lake. Probably at the sound of a cannon, fired from the railroad station at Enfield, busses start from Hanover in a mad half-hour race to see who gets the first shell in the water. Soon there are eight-oared, four-oared, two-oared, class, fraternity, recreational and dormitory crews scuttling over the placid though still coolish waters of the lake. Crying a loud song of the Volga boatmen, the crews from the Lebanon and Enfield high schools join the merry frolic. Coxswains shout encouragement to their sturdy boaters. It all looks like a Currier and Ives print of the upper reaches of the Harlem River about 1880, and has about as much chance, in our humble opinion, of coming true as you have of seeing Bishop Cannon leading the congregation in singing the stein song.

Hans Christian Andersen's only rival goes on to tell about the scads of regattas, class days, rowing carnivals that would bring the same crowds of people in the spring that now visit Hanover only during the football season. As he says "the railroad lies about 100 yards behind the ice-house shown on the shore." Well, what of it? The only value a railroad has to a crew race is that it's the only way you can witness one, and that, according to friends who watch the Poughkeepsie affairs, is a doubtful blessing what with cinders in the eyes and the sometime wavering aim of those who somewhat carelessly toss glassware off the cars.

The picture which is thus painted of the success of crew and rowing at Hanover seems to us to be altogether too rose tinted. In the first place, and practically, there is the matter of expense. Unless we err greatly in our memory of Professor Beetle's remarks to the secretaries, it will take somewhere around $250,000 to handle crew at Hanover as it should be handled. This is important money, even in these days of $5 football tickets. It is true that a friendly Harvard graduate has promised to give the college a shell but what, we ask, is one shell in the picture we have given you of the numerous crews that will foul oars on Mascoma Lake? Shells are pretty expensive playthings being rather fine examples of craftsmanship. Plus being costly to buy they are easy to ruin, and many a careless footstep has sent them to the bottom.

Rowing demands a tremendous amount of preliminary training, which is done on a mechanical contraption in a tank. All winter long can't you imagine what fun it is going to be to go down to the bowels of the gymnasium or more likely of the new crew building which will be necessary (and expensive) and pull on a machine? All the sport of putting on riding clothes and getting aboard an electric horse. And then yeoheave-ho for the far reaches of Mascoma!

Then when all this money has been spent, and we have a new rowing building in Hanover, a boat house at Mascoma, shells for at least a dozen crews, a couple of launches, and coaches to give the requisite instructionhow much money has been spent, and what have we got?

We have a sport that never, even to a penny, can be self-supporting, and that will always be a deadweight drag on everything else. But, and don't for a moment forget this, we've saddled ourselves with a so-called "major" sport one that must have the finest in paraphernalia and personnel because we will be competing with only the leading institutions. We must keep up with the Joneses.

And at the most, probably, we will have not over six crews 54 men getting any benefit from this really great expenditure.

At the same time that this agitation for a crew is being raised, there are several still, small, socially unimportant voices being heard in Hanover. One calls for more tennis courts, another for more squash courts, still another for more places to play handball.

The building of the hockey rink put out of commission several of the never too numerous tennis courts, courts which have not, to our knowledge, been replaced. As between a dozen tennis courts, and an eight-oared shell, which would you say was of the greatest value to the greatest number? As between a few squash courts somewhere in the gym, and a tank full of stagnant water muddied by eight rowing machines, which is more likely to meet with the approval of the students? As between handball courts in the basements of the dormitories and a dapper white launch on Mascoma Lake, which is apt to bring a greater return on the investment?

For several years we have been listening with interest and satisfaction to the increasing story of intramural sports which were instituted with but one idea in mind that of giving the maximum number of students access to athletics. For the same length of time we have been hearing that what handicapped an extension of such intramural activities was the limited funds which could be credited to them from the gross athletic income.

Now comes a proposal, apparently made in all seriousness, that rowing, notoriously the most expensive amateur sport in existence, be brought to life in Hanover. If we have not money enough to expand the intramural program which assuredly reaches a large number of students, what logical justification can there be found for spending what money there is in rowing? For by no stretch of the imagination can rowing be called a sport for a large group of students. It is for a very small and selected group.

There is still another reason why rowing appears to be one of the last things which Dartmouth should dally with. Not long ago some sport writer wrote of a man who had been a two-letter man in his college, but who found, when he got out and into business, that his football and his rowing in which he had excelled were of no use whatsoever. Golf, tennis, squash—half a dozen other sports he knew little of. He complained that, done again, he would devote his time to those games of which he later could make use, either for companionship or for conditioning.

Neither as a reasonable use for a large sum of money, nor as a sport in which many students can participate, nor as a game which is useful later in life does crew seem to fit into the Dartmouth picture.

In fact the only real reason for considering it seems to be that of aping other large in- stitutions of feeling that we must, if we are to associate with them on an equal basis, have a crew. If that's the reason, then we should expect the University of Virginia to put up a ski-jump, and import snow from Canada so that they will be able to hold their heads up among those colleges where winter sports are a part of the student activities. Why not admit that only if, when and as our other sports are more adequately taken care of should crew even be considered and until that time forget the lure of an eight-oared shell!

In the Bulletin of theDartmouth College Club of New York.

THAT MEDICAL SCHOOL GROUP The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine: Referring to the medical group on page 446 of the May MAGAZINE I have no doubt that the middle figure, seated in front, is Dr. Charles G. Dewey of 1881, 1886 m. The second to the right (as I look), with the cane in his left hand, is almost certainly Dr. George W. Rawson, 1888 m, now of Amherst, Mass. Probably you have already learned more about the picture than the above tells. But "whatever is everybody's business is nobody's business," so I venture to send this comment. M. W. ADAMS,

West Townsend, Mass,

SEASONS WALLPAPER, 1800, HANOVER, N. H, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. Panel 2—Summer

SEASONS WALLPAPER, 1800, HANOVER, N. H Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. Panel I—Winter1—Winter