MAKING UP FOR LAST YEAR

IN A LETTER addressed to his 1904 class agent President Roosevelt accompanied his contribution to the Harvard Alumni Fund with this note: "Here is my check for the Harvard Fund. I am delighted to hear that the returns for 1934 as so good. It has always seemed to me that the Harvard Fund is the most important of all Alumni organizations."

Dartmouth men will be glad to learn, either through their class agents or from these columns, that gifts are coming to Hanover in greater numbers and slightly larger amounts this year as compared to the 1933 campaign. Whether or not the present increase over last year can be held up to June 30, when the drive ends, is another question. Even more pertinent is the question: Can the Dartmouth Fund close its books at the end of next month with a materially higher record of contributors and total gifts? In view of the good start already made we cannot be satisfied with anything less than a distinctly better showing than last year.

In spite of the thoughtful reluctance of either the committee of the Alumni Council charged with the operation of the Fund or the College Administration to set quotas or to otherwise apply pressure toward swelling the contributions in bad times, there is pressure that needs no control or direction. It is born of the poignant regret that came to many Dartmouth men when they were forced to mar records of long giving to the Fund. There was a vital gap between the ends of their personal expenses and income. Failing to make them meet, the check to Hanover had to be cut, or even omitted. Such men do not need to be urged when they are able again to join their help to that of other thousands who have found solid satisfaction in the fact that they have always done their best for Dartmouth. This is the sort of "pressure" that alumni feel this year. "The heart knows reasons that reason will never know."