Baltimore

OUR APRIL MEETING was made memorable by the presence of a very busy member who is seldom able to be with us, Raymond Pearl '99, youthful Dean of our Dartmouth colony. In a most interesting and stimulating talk he drew into his special field of biology and population statistics the present confused and wellnigh desperate state of the world and gave it a philosophical interpretation. Mankind, through scientific discovery, invention and industrial development has changed his environment more swiftly and more radically in the last forty or fifty years than in any previous period of his history, and at the same time rapid increase in the world's population has intensified the pressure for living space (Hitler's "Lebensraum"). The human race is now going through the throes of adapting itself to its new environment, as every living thing is compelled to do by the inexorable laws of evolution. Since the adaptation must be social as well as physical, our human institutions are particularly on trial, and a considerable part of the world, dissatisfied with the results of the previous tendency toward democracy, is turning with fateful consequences to militant nationalism of a dictatorial, totalitarian order. What the outcome, no one knows, but the old order changes, and we, too, must change, if we are to survive; we cannot go back to things as they were. However, Dr. Pearl sees in man an innate love of individual freedom which has on the whole been growing through the ages, and this gives him reason to hope for the ultimate triumph of some sort of democracy.

Recently acquired members present were Francis Holland '39, Ken Smith '25 and James Lund '20; and we hear that Henry Hudgins '26 has recently settled in this neighborhood.