AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
WHAT DOES the victory mean?" is the gist of the subject assigned your correspondent by the Editor of this eminent compendium. Don't ask what victory. Not in order of rank, victories of major interest to Dartmouth alumni would probably list up about, as follows: General George Washington's victory over the British; Black Dan'l Webster's victory in the Dartmouth College Case; the successful efforts of the Nawth (careful, Suh!) to prevent the bisection of this nation along the Mason-Dixon line; the victory of Capt. Myron Witham's 1903 football team over Harvard in the game that dedicated Harvard's Soldier Field; the Allied triumph in the World War; (maybe the triumph of the Supreme Court over the current federal administration in that metropolitan chicken-killing case); and, now (On Your Feet, Men!), the triumph of Capt. Jack Kenny's football eleven over the burly, free-wheeling and hardhitting eleven wearing the bonnie blue spangles of Yale.
The win at last after 51 years! The Jinx sent galloping across country with its shirt tail afire!
The escutcheon rubbed clean of its one indelible blot, the dent smoothed out of the shield! And what does it mean?
An older alumnus says it better than I can in a letter, one letter of more than 1000 letters and telegrams, splinters of the historic goal posts and pieces of the sacred sod that were mailed, brought and freighted into my literary kennel, by brothers, known and unknown, who knew that the fate of my job ad me in the Ohio State press stand, while Dartmouth made history. Watching that, at least was some compensation—the most spectacular fourth quarter, perhaps ever played in the history of American football. Notre Dame was grand, and that killing finish was beautiful, but my heart—l couldn't help itwas far back to the eastward. My operator cut his wire through Boston to New Haven, occasionally, and I listened to the clickety-clacks that were spelling Dartmouth delirium. Can you picture watching a game such as Ohio State vs. Notre Dame with the eyes, following that Dartmouth-Yale epoch with the ears, and trying to keep the emotions sufficiently throttled to preserve the clinical poise expected of alien sports writers in crowded press stands?
But back to the alumnus and his letter. I don't see any point in withholding the gentleman's name, although it's a personal letter and includes the phrase, "anticipatingthat you will make no further use ofit," meaning the letter. I take that to mean "newspaper use" and to refer to some other things he mentions. But this is a family gathering, and he has a seat at the table. Anyhow, if I'm off side, Sir, please charge it to the general excitement. Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies of the Auxiliary and Gentlemen, this is Brother Roy F. Bergengren '03 and this is the piece of his epistle, I'm presuming to quote:
"I was of that prehistoric Dartmouthwhen the Harvards generally needed anadding machine to estimate their totalagainst us and the Dartmouth summaryread like the Norwich University total atthe annual opening game at Hanover.Then, just as Dartmouth began to emerge,under the leadership of President Tucker,of sainted memory, Wally McCornack (Ithink it was) finally cussed a Dartmouthfootball squad into the notion that it couldlick Brown. Then, if my memory servesme right, there was a memorable game withHarvard when, just as the sun went down,we were ahead but lost by a couple oftouchdowns scored, after dark.
"From that time, Dartmouth was persistently seeking (and finding finally) aplace in the football sun. I imagine the reason the very ayicient graduate goes battyover the present team is because he remembers the college of his undergraduatedays when we played on even terms withAmherst and Williams and the wildest undergraduate imaginings could not encompass a favorable score against Harvard orYale.
"There is after all something to be saidfor the old grad. The football team is oftenalmost his only direct contact with the college. It is a peg upon which he hangs hiscollege hat and the symbol of his loyalty.When the team wins and he is there to seeit (or he gets the score, as I have many timesaway off, far from home and further fromHanover—the latter part of a Saturdayafternoon in some little newspaper office ina bit of a town), the years roll away, and fora moment, at any rate, he recaptures youth.After a game in Hanover, he may visit themurals and wander about a bit awe-struckin the new Library but the murals don'tbring him yelling to his feet, back in theirresponsibilities of his youth—as, for instance, does the spectacle of an interceptedpass, and a score against Yale!"
That sums up the story for the older brethren. With practically no emendations it can stand for us 40 year olders, too. The Dartmouth of our day was on the way up from, or at least out of, its strictly parochial restrictions. We had outgrown the small New England colleges, had become too rugged longer to serve as early season cannon fodder to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, without being considered heavy enough to grace a later date in their schedules.
Thus we were going through the Penn State - Syracuse - Colgate - Pennsylvania and way stations phase, forced, as the late Major Frank Cavanaugh once said about one of his teams (not Dartmouth), "to look for a schedule amongst the grubby, and usually when they were at their very grubbiest."
The bully lads of my war-time era, deny it who will, nursed a social inferiority complex concerning Harvard, Yale and Princeton. It was hard to explain and was often bitterly denied but it was there just the same. Came the dawn, as they used to say in the movies, in the form of a generous renewal of athletic relations on a basis of equality with Harvard and Yale. It was strictly an athletic gesture and it was undoubtedly tinctured with some thought of the financial angles involved, but it was really a psychological (social and cultural) gift Yale and Harvard made to the Hanover of the early '20's.
Football is an unfathomable mixture of fun and false values. In reality, it's only a game. There are 11 men on one side and 11 on the other. Victory means and means only that on a certain given day, the victorious 11 were either smarter, stronger, luckier or dirtier than the opposing troupe and not one blessed thing else. It doesn't mean that their college, as a college, is any finer, that their folks are any better, their sisters any prettier, or their hopes of eventual salvation any brighter. Yet try, as the saying is, and remember that any of that's true, especially when you're on the winning side.
We defeated Harvard long ago, with Witham carrying the ball and the immortal Heinie Hooper plowing great swaths through the Harvard line ahead of him. The Dartmouth of that day blew the town wide open that night.
In this year of grace, a fighting Dartmouth line tore the Eli strip to shreds, and a gallant troupe of Dartmouth backs gal. loped through the fissures. The dream of every Dartmouth man since the dim 'Bos came true and the most famous football jinx in all history was scalped and drawn and quartered.
I suppose most of the brethren heard what happened, but for the benefit of those who didn't, here's a brief scenario.
The celebrating crowds in New Haven kept the town awake most of the night, but none of the anticipated trouble arrived. There'd been tall tales of many buckets of green paint cached near the Bowl, just in case If that was so, whoever placed them there forgot to go after them. As soon as the New Haven police heard Dartmouth had won, 110 patrolmen were rushed into service. They had nothing to do but the heavy looking on. There were no riots, nor fights nor dismantling of property. Everybody celebrated vociferously, but it was stickly a family gathering. No defiance was hurled. No gloating nor belittling was indulged in. Mr. Ray and his merry mates were hoched and hurrahed, but every once in awhile somebody took Time Out to lead a cheer likewise for Yale.
In Hanover, where half the student body had been forced through lack of cuts or cash to stay, a great bonfire blazed on the college green. The bells of Rollins Chapel boomed and banged for four solid hours and even the great bell in Dartmouth Hall, silent, save for one test, since the fire, added its official voice of rejoicing to the happy celebration. The Nugget—the town moviethrew its doors open free. The entire village, students, townspeople and even the surrounding villagers and countrymen who hastened to drive in celebrated in the streets until midnight or thereabouts.
The world wide alumni reaction was amazing. Telegrams and cables poured in from every land. One elderly alumnus called up by telephone from Australia. Every Boston newspaper office was swamped with long and near distance calls. The game wasn't broadcast, but word of the historical score began to get around in the late afternoon. My own paper had to put four extra telephone operators to work. They handled more calls than have poured in about a football subject since the day Knute Rockne was killed.
And what does it all mean? It means that the Dartmouth spirit, that precious nexus which you of gray hair knew in your youth, that we of my day still considered the finest thing about our school and yours, suddenly flamed heaven high the world over after having smouldered too long. A good football team and a great win suddenly touched it off at last. It was the old time religion, the faith of the fathers whether in defeat or victory, we are loyal just the same" .... but for the moment, we were outstandingly and thrillingly victorious!
Don't say that's not worth something? I've another letter here. It's from one of the alumni fathers—one of the alumni who has a son in this year's freshman class.
"I'd worried a little about my boy" he writes, "Times aren't what they used to be.The kids get isms and theories even in highschool. Mine was no fresher than the rest,I suppose, but the cynicism of him and hiscrowd had me worried. I wanted him to goto Dartmouth. Still I wasn't too sure. Thespirit up there seemed to me to havechanged just a little—maybe a lot. I wantedhim to know the things I knew as a youthloyalty, school spirit, devotion to an ideal.There didn't seem to be so much of thatany more. It wasn't fashionable, or something.
"But he went to Dartmouth with thisfreshman class. Yesterday I had a letterfrom him. Part of it said '. . . . and thenthe band came over in front of our building. It played the football songs. There wascheering. Then the band began to play"Eleazer Wheelock." It played it very softlyand slowly. There wasn't a sound from thebig crowd, just the soft music of the band,and, Dad, it did something funny to youinside. I don't think I've ever in my lifefelt just that way before.' Thanh God, Isaid to myself as I read that. The boy'sfound the beginnings of the religion ofliving. He's found something bigger thanhe is."
The win means that Dartmouth men, the world over from greenest plebe to grayest grad, had sudden occasion to remember their college and their college friends most happily, to call each other up and exchange congratulations, to stick out their chests and feel proud for an hour.
That's all, but that's much. As Alumnus Bergengren noted, no mural and not even the most brilliant monograph upon chemistry can bring forth the same reaction.
As to what it means, further, I might add this report from New Haven. It was Coach Pond of the Yales speaking and the Dartmouth game was the subject.
"Thank God," the Yale mentor said, "that that's over (meaning the celebratedJinx). The thing finally got to be worse onYale than it did on Dartmouth. Every Yaleteam lived in mortal fear of being the firstteam in history to lose to Dartmouth andwould walk around all week, if not longer,with the jitters. It got to be so bad that wedidn't dare even mention Dartmouth. Wehated to lose the ball game naturally, butthere's some balm in the Gilead just thesame. From now on Yale versus Dartmouthwill be only just another football game onthe schedule and not a sort of Ark of theCovenant to be defended at all costs."
"Just another football game " That's our badge of equality at last!
Charge the glasses, gentlemen, after a trip as tortuous as the celebrated one in the Old Testament where some gent named Balaam traveled all the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, or vice versa, on his er-ah donkey, we've arrived! P.S. Wasn't it swell?
There Will Be Changes at Hanover!
The Devastating Spinner Play Which Yale Couldn't Stop John Handrahan, Green fullback, is shown making a sizable gain on the "mousetrap" spinner which worked all afternoon in the Yale Bowl. At the extreme right, Yale's weak-side tackle has been blocked out of the play by Kenny and Camerer, leaving a huge gap for Handrahan to romp through.
