1895

Joel Harley responds to the questionnaire mentioned in last month's issue as follows: "1. Family gathering at home. 2. Wonderful! I hung out our big flag next morning. We hope it's the end of the La Follettes' piracy. Forty years is a long time for one family to feed at the public trough."

Joe Ford: "1. Sober. 2. Kick in the pants for all Democrats."

Sliver Rice: "1. Nursing wife—acute kid ney infection. Getting well slowly. 2. Fine, but not enough."

The following named men responded to the question, "What is your reaction to the Munich Pact?": Mason, Morrison, Lane, Baketel, Wilson, Lord, Rossiter, Loud, Thompson, Newhart, Crosby, Cleaveland, Watson, West, Gile, Marden, Harley, Ford, Rice.

Answers to this question, however, are anonymously given as follows:

1. "My 'passions' make me wish Chamberlain had called Hitler's bluff; my judgment makes me realize the awful responsibility on C. and I find it hard to blame him. The reaction since then may work out for the best."

2. "A hit for Hitler."

3. "On the surface it appeared to be a stupendous blunder, not to say an act of cowardice on the part of Britain and France. Time will tell. The end is not yet."

4. "Too early to tell. First impression one of disappointment and chagrin. No one who is in it wants war today. We are all still paying for the last, and what did it accomplish?"

5. "Personal reaction more or less neutral, in the sense that I consider the matter less our business than some people do. It appears to be a successful, bloodless coup on the part of Germany and a diplomatic submission by England in an attempt to restore in part territorial conditions existing before the World War."

6. "Only a postponement, but even in six months the disturbing villians may die or their poor benighted people may see a great light."

7. "Appeasement, eh what?"

8. "???"

9. "Too much for a postcard. I think Hitler's bluff could have been called with- out war and such a moral capitulation."

10. "Eminently 'unfair'. Any structure with that kind of a foundation MUST ultimately fail."

11. "Only made a bad matter worse. If France and England had stood firm, I believe Germany would have given in, now Hitler is more cocky than ever."

12. "Rotten."

13. "I fear the effects will not be lasting Hitler will bluff again and again until he and his kind dominate Europe. Then we can look for trouble."

14. "Generally speaking, I'm a pacifist, but not a cowardly mollycoddle. Said pact seems to me just to have deferred the Evil Day—a day probably to be far more evil when it comes."

15. "Hitler got away with a colossal bluff, and England falls to the rating of a second-class power, France to practical vassalage."

16. "I think Hitler was bluffing as usual."

17. "Best move for present."

18. "In regard to the Munich Pact, I only know what I read in the papers, and am so much absorbed in the comparatively small field of the leather and shoe business that I haye little time for foreign affairs. However, I feel that out of the blundering course of politics there eventually come some important improvements."

"Dud" West gleefully reports that he has another grandchild, a girl this time, bom January 28, "An eight-pound girl," he says, "very fat, and to us, very beautiful, yclept Julia Margaret." He and Mrs. West are planning a trip to Lincoln, Neb., to see their grandson, Bobby. They are already arranging a trip East for our 45th reunion next year.

Secretary, White River Junction, Vt.