Letters

More About Mr. Qua

To THE EDITOR:

Mr. Qua is certainly to be congratulated for raising the questions he does in "Old Grad Looks at Siwash" and the editors of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE are entitled to an even louder cheer for publishing his article. After the syrupy diet that alumni magazines through necessity or desire generally see fit to provide, it is a relief to have a generous dash of vinegar and an ample pinch of salt. What matter, in view of such blessings, if Mr. Qua has found a worm at the heart of the rose?

In my opinion, however, he has found the wrong worm. I do not quarrel with his right to believe that the college should teach the eternal verities to its students rather than encouraging them "to roll their own," or that the time for a searching examination of our social order is at an older age, in other words, an age less hospitable to what the Japanese call "dangerous thoughts." To explore the implications of this outlook would require a course at "Siwash"; and besides Mr. Qua in his own article disarmingly announces that he has already listened to the scripture on the other side.

I prefer to go back to History 1 at Dartmouth. I don't question Mr. Qua's factual knowledge of the subject; obviously he has "the dope down cold." But if my recollections of the course are sound, it also aspired to give a rudimentary training in the handling of evidence. My mentors of those days insisted, in the first place, that the testimony of more than one witness was required to establish the "truth" of a fact; and, in the second place, they were equally insistent that the fact, to have any validity, must be considered in its context. We novices must regard the whole rather than the parts. To make the reactions of a single student, no matter how "exceptionally intelligent," formed after only a few weeks of a course that lasts through the year, the basis for attacks upon Social Science I-S seems to me a be- trayal of the masters whom Mr. Qua admires so much in retrospect. If he had had the opportunity to examine the syllabus for the course, as I have, he would realize that Gauss is only an intellectual cocktail at the outset of what is essentially a thorough course in the history of the western world since the mid-eighteenth century. It may well be unwise to start at such a recent date; its selection, however, if Mr. Qua will take the trouble to investigate, is not solely a matter of the "Profs, all got together" but of pressures by administrators, undergraduates, alumni, and parents,—no doubt, all benighted.

Mr. Qua's slanting strictures upon the instructorial staff seem born of revery and, perhaps, an unwillingness to grant either scholarship or intellectual integrity to those who do not follow his "party line." I think I can spot a "Professor Umpdedunk" as quickly as any man. Let me assure Mr. Qua they are more likely to be found in the arts than in the social sciences. I do not know every member of the staff of Social Science 1-2 but I am well enough acquainted with its personnel to know that anyone who implies it is recruited from "Professor Umpdedunks" has not informed himself accurately or thoroughly on the premises.

Department of History,Bowdoin College,Brunswick, Maine,January 31, 1940.

No Fossils Wanted

TO THE EDITOR:

I am enjoying my DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE (taken for the first time!) immensely.

Mr. Qua's article sends me to my pen in haste, as may have been planned. If I may help "preserve this excellent relationship," I should like to suggest that this alumnus of thirty-eight feels that his elder is making a mountain out of a molehill. His very glib article seems valuable chiefly for bringing up again the important question discussed in his third-from-last paragraph. But either he is, as he suggests himself, of that timid, senile nature which has been constantly upset since 1917 by "Red" bogeys; or (and I hope it is this) he doesn't understand young people enough to know that they distort naturally,- and especially and purposely emphasize the distortion when led on by an obviously "easy mark."

As an interpreter of the past to the young, I'm sure that the professor in question is misrepresented. Even so I'd hope my son would fall in with him rather than the fossils Mr. Qua might like to have at Siwash.

Los Olivos, California,January 13, 1940.

Mental Indigestion

TO THE EDITOR:

At the time Francis Qua's article came out in the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE , I wrote him a letter in which I said:

"May I congratulate you on your article in the January DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE! It expressed ideas which I have been expounding in public and in private for a number of years.

"I feel, as I'm sure you do, that undergraduate minds are being given ideas much too big for them to digest. I believe the proper function of the college is (a) to lead youngsters to appreciate the good things in life—music, literature, art, sculpture, etc.- so as to create in each one of them a reservoir of happiness upon which they can draw at will; (b) to develop in them a disciplined mind, capable of being used as an efficient tool; and (c) to offer to them a smattering of the more interesting facts (not theories!) about the world in which they live and the people who share that world with them.

"I believe it is thoroughly unwholesome for adolescents—who are eager to find the right and to turn away from the wrong—to be given a lot of half-baked ideas which, whether or not time may prove them sound, are as yet untested. I have thought, for a long time, that the most shameful indictment of our educational system is the tragically large number of suicides and of mental and nervous collapses among college and high school students; and I sometimes think these may result from a sort of mental indigestion produced by trying to assimilate theories which are too often stated as dogmas.

"Thank you for writing this article. It needed to be written!"

Since his article may have provoked letters to you, pro and con, I'm glad to be counted among those approving what he wrote.

124 Chestnut Hill Road,Chestnut Hill, Mass.,January 25, 1940.

Mew, Untried Fields

To THE EDITOR:

The article of Francis M. Qua '11 struck a responsive chord in the writer's mind and impels commendation. Entirely apart from its scintillating English, its content will bear examination by the College authorities. The older I grow the more I look to the mental attitudes of men who are placed in positions of power. Youth acquires these attitudes in its plastic period and carries them into all its subsequent activities. Lack of respect for constituted authority, scepticism of the motives of the leaders of business and industry, disregard of property or other rights, find their results in the action of those, all too many, who are today administering the various agencies of government, local, state, and federal.

If men are to be leaders, they need more than the critical and sceptical faculties. Proper and deep appreciation of the work of those who perhaps built wiser than they knew, of the well springs of human nature, of the relation of the things worthwhile (presumably to be kept till better are tested, tried and found adequate) to the historical past, would be far more to be desired than a critical attitude, seeking to enter new and untried fields, on the theory that revolution is the ormal and desired course.

1 Hanson Place,Brooklyn, New York,January 24, 1940.

Youth on His Own

To THE EDITOR: Anent the Qua-Siwash discussion; the gentleman seems to be unduly alarmed. Perhaps he has not kept pace with changing views as to youth, as to education; change is the order of the day. There is nothing so changeless as change.

The White House Conference on the American child is thus interpreted by the Washington Star. "The value of the child has been brought closely into focus." Nevertheless; "There has arisen great confusion, questioning as to the value of much of presentday education, doubt as to what can be done to fit youth for a future that plainly will not be an unbroken continuation of the past.

"Youth will find a way—an old adage as true today as ever in the past. The youth of today is of better quality—certainly physically and probably mentally—than ever before."

So buck up, friend Qua, and realize that the youth of today can go on his own better than as if he were hitched to his father's coat-tails. Take to heart to words of President Hopkins in an address to the students: "The distillation of truth from error gives continually a more refined product. Thus the truth of one generation, not only may but often does, become the superstition of the next. This is true of science, of religion, of statecraft. Who then shall be given the authority to say when ultimate truth has been defined at any point?"

Brookline, Mass.February 6, 1940.

Explanation Requested

To THE EDITOR:

Will you kindly advise me if the MAGAZINE or anyone connected with the administration of the College plans to answer or explain the article in the January issue by Francis M. Qua. If the situation exists, which that article seems to indicate, it would appear that some kind of answer is necessary.

119 Exchange Street,Portland, Maine,January 25, 1940.

[As stated in an editorial comment in thelast issue of the ALUMNI MAGAtiNE, ProfessorGazley, founder and head of Social Science1-2, will later prepare an article describingthe objectives and results to date of the required Social Science course. Over a periodof time the editors will provide alumni readers with information about a number andvariety of College affairs, as well as opinionsand discussions of them.—ED]

W. K. Stewart

To THE EDITOR: After several years of being on the reading side of the MAGAZINE, I am constrained to take my typewriter in hand and say something about the splendid article about W. K. Stewart that appeared in the December issue. It would be in the nature of gilding the lily o add anything to H. West's excellent characterization of his inspiring chief, and yet there is a phase of Mr. Stewart's work which impresses me as being worthy of mention. I refer to the sound scholarship which he has demonstrated in originating his courses in Comparative Literature. I was one of the many who have been accorded the privilege of attending these courses. At the time I was impressed with the job which Professor Stewart had done in digging into the vast quantities of material from which came the substance of his course offerings. And in recent years, when I have been so fortunate as to enter the teaching field myself and to experience to some slight degree the rigors of original research, the enormity of his labors has been borne in on me in greatly increased measure.

It takes something of the intellectual pioneer to strike out into new fields as he did, to conceive of the adaptability of the works of the great thinkers of the past to the needs of present-day undergraduates in the manner in which Professor Stewart presented them to us. He had to chart his own paths for none before him had seen the vision that must have been ever with him impelling him onward. I recall hearing him tell, in his own modest manner, of the countless hours of research in the British Museum, patiently and yet enthusiastically extracting from the welter of material available, the stuff of which his inspiring courses were constructed. That is scholarship, intellectual pioneering, and Dartmouth men for the past four decades have been fortunate that among their teachers there was a man so liberally endowed with this rare quality. And as one who has" tried in a small way to do something of the same sort of thing in a field quite remote from that in which Professor Stewart has found his niche, I am happy to acknowledge his eminence as a scholar.

Miami University,Oxford, Ohio,February 1, 1940.

Noted Names

To THE EDITOR: I enjoyed your article on Harry Wellman who was as busy while I was in college as any man I knew. Also appreciate your tribute to Gene Clark, my old German professor—one of the finest personalities it has ever been my pleasure to know.

Enclosed is newspaper clipping about Charlie Zimmerman '23. It shows him to be a doer. I have had the pleasure of getting out some of his printing and know his broad views on helping insurance groups in Chicago at meetings of other salesmen than from his own company. This was one of main reasons he was elected to head the national groups of insurance salesmen. You may care to run an article about him in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

Central Envelope & Lithograph Cos.,1419 Greenleaf Avenue,Chicago, Illinois.

[See note in Gradus Ad Parnassum this monthabout noted career of Mr. Zimmerman,—ED.]

For Parker Merrow '25

To THE EDITOR: Here's a personal "WAH-HOO-WAH!" for Parker Merrow '25 for his article, "1925 Registers A Son" in the January issue. It is one of the finest things I have ever read, as I think hundreds of Dartmouth men with sons slated for Hanover will agree.

The Boston Herald,Boston, Mass.,January 25, 1940.

Webster's Birthday

To THE EDITOR: Today is January 18th and should be a memorable day in the life of every Dartmouth man, because it was on January 18th, 1782, that Dartmouth's most famous graduate and America's outstanding orator, a.great patriot and statesman was born.

He successfully defended the cause of his college and his country. Great in the eyes of posterity, he is not remembered on the anniversary of his birth—not by his country which memorializes many, and not by his college which memorializes none.

This is the case for celebrating annually, on January 18th, Daniel Webster's memory, now dormant in cigar wrappers, historical annals and the Congressional Record.

Magnificent as champion of Union in the United States, twice Secretary of State and winner of The Dartmouth College Case before John Marshall's Supreme Court—Dan'l was great in achievement.

Through college publications, essay and oratorical contests and in other ways, let Dartmouth remember Webster on January 18th, in the years to come. His memory, celebrated by students and alumni, will fortify those qualities in the celebrants which wrote large the record of Daniel Webster.

Roll out that record each January 18th lest the old traditions fail.

I North La Salle Street,Chicago, Ill.,January iS, 1940.

Tale of a Shirt

To THE EDITOR: Naturally, I was interested in the facetious letter you recently published under the heading of "Yale Green" which you received from Andrew. S. Taylor, Stamford, Connecticut, relative to the use of Dartmouth Green in the New Haven Hospital.

In spite of several gross errors about the USe of Dartmouth Green at New Haven, he has adhered very closely, as a good Yale man, to the general policy of understatement characteristic of his University. If he could look beyond the "Yale Psychologist" he might have discovered deeper influences amidst the various intertwinings of Yale and Dartmouth; such as Eleazar Wheelock, Nathan Smith in the medical field, not to mention several Dartmouth graduates on the present professional and administrative staffs of the New Haven Hospital.

His remarks about the poets cause me to yield to the temptation of sending you a copy of "The Tale of a Little Green Undershirt" which is a humorous protest, not against the color but the design of the shirt to be worn under the operating gown.

Alas, the poet, Dr. Arthur H. Morse, is neither Yale, nor Dartmouth, nor Irish, but a graduate of Tufts College, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and, at present, Chief Obstetrician at the New Haven Hospital and, Professor of Obstetrics at the Vale University School of Medicine.

Director,New Haven Hospital,New Haven, Connecticut,February 2, 1940.

The Tale Of A Little Green Undershirt

(Composed in Dartmouth Meter)

Written for, and dedicated to, Miss Ann Ryle,8.A., 8.N., in appreciation of her supremeheroism in repelling the advance of the GreenShirts along the Tompkins four and DeliverySuite Line.

A sad little green undershirt Went wandering down the hall lbe tears were coursing down his cheeks, He was not loved at all.

Alas," he said, "I've played my part And tried to do it well Beneath my verdant texture I-o, how virile bosoms swell."

I've emphasized the manly form. In various directions I hough many of its curvatures Are pregnant with defections."

I can't create Adonises However much I try I m strong for forms 'au naturel Hut Nature's oft awry."

Now at the climax of my fame From where all life begins, Barred is my chlorophyllic soul Bowed with virescent sins."

He sighed, gave a convulsive twist, And soon was all unravelled, His corpse, a small green cotton ball Was seen by all who travailled.

Cabin Contest

To THE EDITOR: I was very much interested in your article in the January issue of the AI.UM.NI MAGAZINE covering the cabin-designing contest won by W. B. Humphrey '14.

From just a cursory reading of the material this seems to be a cabin splendidly adapted to alumni use and therefore excellent material to stimulate and coagulate alumni interest.

May I suggest that the article fell short of its goal in one particular in that it failed to give an estimate of the cost of such a building.

Please forward, at your earliest convenience, further information including estimates of construction cost. I believe there is a definite possibility of doing something along this line here in Western Pennsylvania for alumni in Pittsburgh and vicinity.

in Maple Avenue,Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,January 17, 1940.

[Dick Buttgrfield '30, architect with J. F.Larson in Hanover, and chairman of thecabin contest judges, estimates the Humphreycamp top cost at $ I0,000, the Dingman cabintop of $2,000. Variables such as location,availability of stone and logs near at hand,and most of all contribution of- labor couldsubstantially decrease the estimates. He figures cost of labor is roughly 50% of estimate,and probably more than 50% for the wilderness camp.—ED.]