Letters

Corey Ford Says

To THE EDITOR: Thank you for your letter, and for the nice presentation you gave the article in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, and I have already received invitations to join practically all the Dartmouth classes since Slavery days (I had such a nice note from a chap named Webster of the Class of 1801) and the only thorn in the ointment is the fact that, in referring to the author of "Dartmouth Undying," I said McDowell instead of McDuffee. My only explanation is that, instead of McDuffee, I said McDowell. How this slipped past Parker Merrow and you and myself I do not understand; for I know the name McDowell I mean McDuffee—as well as my own.* As penalty I have made myself write it one hundred times; and I can guarantee that I'11 never make a mistake and use the name McDuffee again. I mean, McDowell.

I hope I'11 have an opportunity to say hello to you Saturday at the Big Cornell Upset. Don't take that prediction too lightly. After all,- people laughed at me when I predicted that Roger Babson would win the election by over four hundred electoral votes.

Freedom, New Hampshire. [Editor's Note: See page 27.]

"Yes, Corey, You Can"

To THE EDITOR: Replying to the question on page 13 of the November issue, "Can I get in?" asked by applicant Corey Ford, may I express one reader's hope that the answer will be, "Yes, Corey, you most certainly can."

Most everyone who knows Dartmouth through experience creates "a genuine feeling for Dartmouth, a regard for what it stands for, a sincere desire to serve it " But few, I am certain, could express themselves as Corey Ford has done under "Assets? Only one;" where the Dartmouth spirit and tradition is put into simple and precise words.

Intellectual Sabotage

To THE EDITOR: How different Armistice Day seems in 1940 from the one in 1937! I remember so well what militant pacifists we undergraduates were then. I remember how unreal it seemed when Professor Jim Richardson recalled for us the Dartmouth campus of 1917-18. Impossible. It might have happened to the people of Professor Richardson's time—but not to our undeluded, intellectual generation.

That was three years ago. But now! How things have changed. Enlightened or otherwise we find ourselves becoming the new war generation. The Armistice is seen to be truly only an armistice.

In some ways that is not so bad. We have at least joined a great company of Americans. Our fellows are the nameless doughboys of 1917; they are the buckskin pioneers of the west; they are the shirtless, sweating men of john; Paul Jones; the Minute Men with their tricornered hats and long-barrelled muskets are there too. We could be in worse company. In disappointment President Hopkins has often commented on the cynicism of college maen. But that cynicism is not our peculiar acomplishment. It was given us-if we missed netting it from business-minded parents—by the colleges themselves. Our cynicism is after all only a more sophomoric brand of that found in almost all of the classrooms.

I believe this. I recall a lecturer who went to some lengths to point out that the cut of washingon's jaw was not so much a sign of meat determinaion—as was commonly taught in the grades—but merely a lack of teeth. The lecturer had many such pearls to scatter; unfortunately we did not recognize them to be pearls of paste. What that lecturer forgot was something any fifth grader could have told him—and should have: that this same Washington, for all his dental deficiencies, rowed a small band of half-frozen but determined colonists across an ice-choked river to win for America her independence.

Of course this art of "debunking" is not peculiar to Dartmouth. Unfortunately it is an infection which has spread through all our educational institutions. It is here in Wisconsin; it was certainly virulent in the lecture halls and on the floor of the debating society in Cambridge, England.

My respect is for the fifth grade histories which at least recognize the simple truth that there have been giants in the earth—and that we would not now be living as we are were it not that America happened to have more than its quota of giants.

I hope that this era of intellectual sabotage will soon come to an end. It is long past time. America cannot find greatness in the future unless it finds greatness in its past; it cannot build with crumbling stones—the real tragedy is that greatness is there; the stones are wonderfully firm if only we would stop soaking them in acid.

I shall never forget the example of courage and optimism which I found in that little island, Finland. They are a people united and determined to be independent because they know the greatness developed out of sight under the stress of five centuries of oppression. Their past was their present and future. Once when I was having tea with a and his family, his little son aPPeared outside the window. He was skiming on skis through the flower beds, and now and then he would dive to the ground shoot an imaginary enemy with a wooden gun. I remarked that war must be a terribly mysterious thing to a child.

He answered: "Our only fault is that we are too small a country. "Then he added withwill have " But wait! In ten years every woman try sorls. We shall be a great country yet,"

And they will, given one chance in a hundred. They have the stuff of greatness. It is not a blind faith in themselves, nor one built on prejudices. Theirs is the furthest perception. They understand and are proud to be of a race which has struggled exclusively for the finest ideals of mankind. they are proud still to be struggling for those ideals: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Well, these are a few of the thoughts which

keep troubling me as November 11, 1940 approaches. Changes are coming soon—that is sure. I think those changes can be for the better as we learn to see that, being Americans, we carry a responsibility from the past to the future.

And there can be joy in the carrying, too. Madison, Wis.

Unattainable Ideals

To THE EDITOR: The young man's morale—there isn't any. That's what the older generations are saying. We could use, they maintain, some of the intestinal stamina that built the Nation.

Maybe they're right. Today's youth could probably use a lot more moral fibre, but I'm not so sure a lot of us haven't got some. A vital question is, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to devote it to our Nation—our hemisphere, or are we going to spread our defense all over Europe and Asia?

Recently, with some sixteen million other young Americans, I signed up to defend this Country. The Country will need us. Since I am now a citizen of voting age, I will also assume shortly my duties as a taxpayer to help liquidate the skyrocketing national debt which now stands at some fifty billion dollars, and places perhaps the most severe strain on the economic structure of our democracy that it has ever known.

But I did not, when I registered, sign up as a chicken heart in a practical world, to jeopardize our democracy by shipping either the human or material resources that our forefathers created, from our land to the warpaths of Europe in order to save the world for something or other.

And just because I believe in our democracy before I believe in Europe's old dynastic slaughterhouse. I hope that the term 'spurious liberal' does not apply to me. I prefer, rather, to think it applies to Mr. Ned Dearborn '89 for writing that because a thousand Dartmouth students signed and sent to President Roosevelt a protest against our entering the European War, that Dartmouth's banner should "be changed from solid green to sixty percent yellow and red." It is Mr. Dearborn's type of unattainable idealism that maintains that the problems of the world can be solved, and American democracy can again be saved only by a fanatic willingness on the part of' young Americans to die for one group of foreigners and kill another group of foreigners.

I would classify as spurious liberals that whole group whose unattainable ideals would push this country into another 1917. Unattainable ideals, because after this war is over we'll still have a globe full of imperialistic nations, and they'll still be hell-bent for superiority, competing, as always, for last place in the respect of the people.

Unattainable ideals, I repeat, which within our own experience shot us into a war to save the world—and ricocheted us back, blood-poor and money-poor. And what did we get? We got Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito, an internally unhealthy economic situation, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I agree that our youth need more moral fibre than they have. It will take plenty to defend this country. But that moral fibre has another job that's just as big. By trouncing the Dearborns the spurious intellectualsit has to save our Democracy for the world.Burlington, Vt.

Top Ranking

To THE EDITOR: The following was published in the September issue of the Marine Corps Gazette:The following are the leading five collegesin reference to the number of platoon leadersfurnished and platoon leaders commissionedsince the initiating of the platoon leaders'idea for the procurement of Reserve officersfor the Corps: „CommisCollege Furnished sioned Dartmouth 61 27 North Carolina 53 20 Boston College 41 15 Washington & Jefferson ... 43 12 University of Virginia .... 72 9

This top ranking for Dartmouth can well be looked upon proudly by all those who have known or been connected with the College. ERIC T. BURGESS '29. Ist Lieut. VSMCR (O).Philadelphia, Pa.