Letters

Dartmouth Information

To THE EDITOR: I SPENT LAST EVENING with the August issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and I was amazed and thrilled over the job you did in securing, coupling and presenting such a vast amount of information on the war connections of the Dartmouth family.

I congratulate you and your associates, not only on this issue, but on all your issues. You have indeed made this magazine a stand-out and the unquestioned leader among all College journals.

New York City.

Kind Words

T THE EDITOR: Let me congratulate you on the last number of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE. It is certainly an impressive array, and I am proud now to be engaged in the war program.

Your last issue was excellent. You've had some excellent stuff in there. Which makes two excellents in two lines meaning I heartily approve.

My very hearty congratulations upon the current (August) number of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. It is a splendid job, well done, and will be of permanent value to everybodyalumni and undergraduates.

My compliments for a great job on the August ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

To THE EDITOR: I was very pleased to see the treatment you gave the War Bond material I gave you. A lot of people around town noticed it and mentioned it to me.

I would be ever so much obliged if you could send me two extra copies of that issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. There is such a good Dartmouth representation in our own War Savings Staff here in Washington, it is difficult to keep a copy on your desk, and the one I get by regular subscription has been mislaid or stolen. Both Tom Lane and Bob Terhune are working with us here. In addition we have another semi-official Dartmouth representative in the person of Jane Sellmer, who is Bob's sister and now my secretary.

Chief, Press Section, War Savings StaffWashington, D. C.

Correction

In the last issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNIMAGAZINE I find a little box containing news of my appointment as a Brigadier General. I am deeply appreciative of the space and nice writeup but I do wish to correct an error therein, which is causing a great deal of correspondence and not doing anyone any good.

You listed me as a Brigadier General, Adjutant General's Department, whereas actually I am no longer in that Department. I am a Brigadier General of the line, G-4, Army Ground Forces, Army War College, Washington, D. C. I would appreciate your next issue correcting this.

Brig. Gen., G.S.C.,Asst. Chief of Staff, G-4.

1600 Pounds Pork

To THE EDITOR: Your good ALUMNI MAGAZINE has just brought me up to date about a lot of the gang and also filled in my own memory pictures of Hanover with a few actual shots. I really believe that a few more pictures of the buildings and scenery would be appreciated by the men in the service as it would be like a visit back to the town at least once a month. Whatever you do, you still have a welcome magazine every month.

For the sake of the records you can put down that I am now a Staff Sergeant in the Q.M.C. of the U.S.A. and have just been transferred to Atlantic City where we have taken quarters in the fashionable Hotel Denniis! You see the Army Air Force has taken over about 54 hotels here on the boardwalk to house and train all their new men and put them through their replacement training work.

Fourteen of us, instructors, from the Cooks and Bakers School at Fort Jay, N. Y., came down here to operate the General Mess which feeds all these men here. Each one of us is in complete supervision of at least two hotel kitchens and some of us have three. You can imagine the administration and coordination involved, and let me put in a good word for Larmon's Administration 11 for doing won- ders in helping me keep about 60 regular Army cooks going, besides trying to help a new Cooks and Bakers School turn out 320 cooks every month! Each of my three kitchens feeds about 3000 men every meal which lasts for two hours.

I used to think that 125 for supper up at the Moosilauke Summit Camp was a crowd we could not manage, but that was an afternoon tea compared to this mass production. If you like pork chops you should drop down when we are cooking about 1600 pounds of them, Army Style, for the . men; I'm sure, then, that you would have seen enough meat at that time to last you for a week. The work of cleaning up is adequately taken care of by a corps of KP's which average about 45 for each shift.

The work is most interesting and I learn something every day as regards the operation of a large mess hall. I tell you a lot of people don't realize what is done in the way of feeding their soldiers, so let me tell you, first hand, that they are ted the best they possibly could be fed and that a stomach-ache or other food pain is hardly known here at this post, or at others. The best food, well cooked, is the constant watchword of the army mess and it is lived up to in every sense. I am glad I'm in this branch of the service for all the good training and actual experience involved. It may not be front line glory fighting, but you can bet that if we don't put out "Chow" the men up front won't be putting out the stuff either. So in our own small way we know we are the backbone of the war but aren't prepared yet to release our campaign!

Hotel Dennis,Atlantic City, N. J.

Student Workshop

To THE EDITOR: While spending my vacation in Hanover during the past July, I discovered to my delight a most unique and useful addition to the equipment of the College, added since my graduation five years ago: The Student Workshop. Perhaps among your readers are those who would welcome a similar discovery when they are next in Hanover.

Located on the bright, sunny third floor of Bissell Hall (formerly the gymnasium or the Thayer School, depending upon the era of Dartmouth with which you are familiar), the Student Workshop is excellently equipped with a great array of hand tools of every description, with numerous power tools well maintained and with an inexhaustible supply of designs, plans and ideas for working with just about every type of material conceivable.

More valuable to Dartmouth by far than all the material resources of this well-equipped Workshop, however, is its resourceful director: Virgil Poling. To President Hopkins, Dean Bill and the other officers of the College responsible for bringing such an outstanding man to Dartmouth, the hat of every alumnus should be raised. For Virgil possesses and practises among his host of undergraduate admirers that rare art of coordinating one's hands and brains in such perfect rhythm that the finished product is not only characterized by beauty and practical usefulness but the experience of accomplishing such a result transcends the result itself.

In building a simple little coffee table while in Hanover during July, I found Virgil Poling's attitude toward the work I was doing refreshing indeed. More important than the tightness of the mitre joints in the glass tray was the ingenuity which could be marshalled to devise an appropriate gig in which to glue these joints under heavy pressure in such a manner as not to break the glass under the strain. And just recently he wrote to me, referring to my plans for applying a highly resistant varnish finish over a long period of time, as follows: "Don't finish the coffee table too 500n.... The fun is in the doing, you know."

His diversified experience, together with his well integrated training even in such a range of fields as from journalism to pottery-making, has mellowed in him a viewpoint toward life which is contagious in the extreme. Who would not be deeply persuaded by a man who with his own brain and brawn can build his little Cape Cod house, then can fill it, not only with a perfectly lovely wife and a fouryear-old daughter, but with attractive pieces of knotty pine furniture of his own making, with pottery he has turned and glazed, with rugs from his own loom, and so on with a large proportion of the living equipment in his home!

The self-sufficient economy of which Virgil Poling is a champion by no means is new to Hanover, nor to New Hampshire, nor to New England. But he has done much during his Dartmouth debut to kindle latent talents for craft work among the Dartmouth student body, officers of the College, aad faculty and citizens of Hanover. On one of the hottest weekends of the summer, Dean Strong and Virgil were pouring concrete for the foundation of their barn. Professor Unger and Paul Sample frequently used the workshop while I was there. At least one of the Naval Officers stationed in Hanover has made in the workshop a complete set of easily movable furniture for his apartment.

Virgil Poling has earned well his place in the ranks of that unique corps o£ Dartmouth specialists which include Dick Weaver, Paul Sample, Ross McKenney and others. It is a prudent and far-sighted administration which, by adding such men to its staff, insures against Dartmouth's turning out those products of a liberal education sometimes described as hav- ing "both feet planted firmly in the air."

New York City.