GRADUS AD PARNASSUM
On Serving Two Masters . . . Correspondence . . . Who'sWho Among Contributors . . . Kimball Flaccus'Long Poem . . . Baseball's Evils Corrected
The most recent issue of the University Club News of Boston carries an editorial on the dual interests of Pudge Neidlinger '23 who, truly enough, is president of the Dartmouth Athletic Council and coach of Princeton hockey. The comment follows:
This business of friendly intercollegiaterelationships can be carried too far. Atleast it's too far if not to your advantage.Now, of course, it was all right when theYale water polo team, after beating Dartmouth at their first encounter followingthe latter institution's adoption of thesport, spent the next morning in coachingthe losers in the game. That was fine because it represented the epitome of intercollegiate cordiality. But it's a balloon froman entirely different hangar when the chairman of the Dartmouth athletic councilcoaches the Princeton hockey team so wellthat the Big Green has to take a smartpasting on the end of its shiny proboscis.Next thing we'll hear is that the retiringpresident of Harvard has been engaged asthe coach of the Yale chess team. Andthen what?
Perhaps Hanoverians are wrong in reading into this light squib the inference of serious criticism. If this impression is received by others may we entrench ourselves, and Pudge, in an unassailable position by pointing to the smooth functioning of the Athletic Council as exhibit one, and for exhibit number two we behold two Princetonian hockey victories over the Big Green this season! Perhaps things aren't so bad as they might seem.
Neither the Dartmouth National nor Savings Banks have shown any signs of stress in the dark Ides of March just past. President Perley Bugbee assured everyone that there was no cause for alarm. There has been little, if any, hoarding in townfaculty folk are not tempted to hoard, unless it's pennies!
Nat Woodward addressed the annual Town Meeting, March 14. Little of what he said could be heard but amid great gesticulating he did continually refer to "The Honorable Mr. Bugbee"—which indicated that Nat's speech had something to do with his mythical fortune. Later Nat expressed his disappointment in the Democratic Party. Said he: "God, we might've expected to have the banks closed. In 1892 my brother Lulan went down to White River to have a check for $1,500 cashed and they wouldn't give him his money!"
Someday somebody is going to take basketball away from the officials and give it back to the players, or this is to be hoped for, at least. Three imported gents, supposedly of eagle eye and omnipotent judgment, do their best to call fouls of a dozen different varieties on ten players charging around on a small floor. That they are seldom successful is not their fault, they are only human. If the rules are to be sacredly upheld the game needs at least ten officials, of whom several should sit high in the stands and blow whistles from such vantage points. One or two referees and umpires can supervise even the most hotly contested games in hockey, baseball, football, track, soccer, lacrosse. Seems as though fouling in basketball could be curbed and everyone could be spared the continual whistles and interruptions of play suffered in a fast league game.
The penalty of a free throw doesn't seem very severe for a willful attack on an opponent in the form of holding, tripping, or worse. If the hockey system of removing the offending player from the game for two minutes were followed there might be less temptation to foul, and consequently there would be fewer referees needed—a privation which we would all try to endure.
The Pictorial has produced another, its second, issue of the year's activities in picture form. It is nicely done and much superior, as was the fall number, to anything the magazine has previously brought forth. Good pictures of Dartmouth life and Hanover scenes tell their own story.
For understatement our hat is off to our respected friend, the Harvard AlumniBulletin, for its item in the class notes section of a winter issue, under the class of 1904: Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States on November 8.
"Don't look at the camera" shouts Director Bentley, as a scene in the new Dartmouth movie gets under way. With all the cast trained to resist this almost overwhelming temptation someone else has almost always spoiled a part of some shot. George Gitsis looked, so did John Poor and Eddie DeCourcey. But most of the actors went through their parts in professional manner, including: the President, the Dean, Jim McCallum, and Charlie Lingley.
The completed movie, following four boys through preparation for mid-year examinations, then exams, and then to getting ready for Carnival and the actual Carnival festivities, will be ready for sending to alumni clubs and individual alumni by the middle of April. It isn't a play, but is an attempt to do more carefully the news reel type of home films that-the Secretaries' Association has been producing for several years.
Dear Sir: As I read Senator Moses' article on "The Young Man in Politics," it recalled to me quite vividly the meeting of the New York Alumni Association at its annual gathering in the winter, X believe, of 1930. Our honored visitor that night was Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Governor of New York.
Others there may recall his plea for the college man to enter the political scene, how much he was needed there, how much he might contribute.
Now that he has risen to the highest place in our government, I wonder how many others remember that earnest and sincere call of Franklin D. Roosevelt?
HARRY GOLDMAN 'l6.
207 No. Washington St.Green Bay, WisconsinMarch 9, 1933.
Carroll A. Boynton '33 decided several months ago to find out just how popular aviation as a career is, as far as Dartmouth men are concerned. First writing to class secretaries, he assembled a list of names and addresses of alumni who were reported to be interested in aeronautics. From these unsuspecting victims information was pried loose as time went on and often as a result of more than one persuasive letter of inquiry. The article in this issue of the MAGAZINE is the first authoritative collection of this interesting material. Errors of omission could not be avoided but the editors and author hope to receive such additional information. Mr. Boynton has been active in the student group interested in aviation. This has been his hobby in college and his work during summer vacations.
Red Loudon '14, first winner of the Barrett Cup, also widely known as "Dartmouth's Greatest Red-Head," brought an interesting historical relic with him when he came East from Minneapolis for the Alumni Council meeting in New York last fall. It is a much worn piece of paper bearing the date, handwritten in ink, of October 20, iB6O, Hanover, N. H. It represents a bill of A. D. Palmer, a student, to Mrs. A. L. Paige for board and room. These were the good old days! The items: 9 weeks board @ $2.00 $18.009 weeks room rent @ .88 7.925 days room rent @ .88 .63$26.45
Add it up and it becomes evident that someone's arithmetic was off. Ten cents was a lot of money and is again becoming a thing to be admired. Mrs. Paige wasn't overpaid in any case and in this case she certainly wasn't paid enough.
It has been Dartmouth's good fortune to benefit frequently from enrollment in the College of undergraduates possessed of poetic talent. There have been many students of ability as "versifiers"—cleverly adept at combining rhyming words in an even meter. Much more rare is the undergraduate whose feelings find their way, inevitably, into verse. Such a man sees Hanover, Dartmouth, the New Hampshire countryside, as it is dreamed of, but not often expressed by lesser mortals—we who see and know the subjects equally well, but can not speak. To the true "Dartmouth Poet Laureate," a rare genius, these things of the spirit that are Hanover's are so clearly seen and so easily and strongly written that we wonder at our own ineptness in describing them, while admiring the masterful pen of their poet. Not in many years have we had a student who might aspire to Richard Hovey's mantle with such justification as must be granted Kimball Flaccus. Part One of his long poem, "Northern April," is published for the first time in this Undergraduate Number. The entire work will soon be completed and will be included in an anthology of Flaccus poems, of which "Northern April" is the climax and capstone of undergraduate days. His own critique of the work and of his year as a Senior Fellow precedes the poem as an introduction to it.
Mr. Flaccus divides the poem into three parts, as follows: Part One is the Place (all of which is printed this month); Part Two is the Personality of his creation; Part Three is concerned with Belief. The blank verse style used in "Northern April" is unique, a form of his own making. One feels it to be similar to Whitman, but more carefully done. The author explains his use of alternating masculine and feminine endings as a way of giving the poem the musical, rhythmic swing that the reader cannot fail to hnd in it.
Among other contributors to this issueare included such well-known campus satellites as Ev Hymen, just-retired editor of The Dartmouth; Dick Jackson, scholarcaptain of hockey; Max Waldsmith, talented young painter and sculptor; andStan Silverman, Jack-O editor whose revamping of the Pumpkm promises to bewell worth watching.
Not in every mail, but in many mails, the College receives some strange missive sent with high hopes and perused at this end with amazement or amusement, or both. Here's a note that came from Los Angeles, addressed to Dartmouth College: Dear Sir:
To aid the baseball players from becoming spiked or bruised or injured I suggestthat you buy and adopt my good idea thata player is not allowed to slide into anybase and the home plate, and for this goodidea kindly telegraph one hundred dollars($100.00) the same day that you receive thisimportant letter, for which I thank you.
