Letters
Men of Dartmouth
To THE EDITOR: You may want to know the whereabouts of an old alumnus—another, not me. In the March ALUMNI MAGAZINE in the 1911 notes, no one seemed to know the whereabouts of Colonel Pat Hurley. I think I can tell you!
Colonel Hurley '11 is Commander of this Camp where I have been stationed since Dec. 14. It is a new internment camp for Italian and German prisoners from the battlefields of Africa. Only recently did I learn of my commander's identity with Dartmouth. Occasionally, I will be selected for night fireman job, the work of keeping the fires in the Officers' Quarters. The Colonel has a house of his own. One Sunday night while attending to my duties in his house I spoke for the first time and introduced myself.
Since that day the usual chill and professional distance that separates officers from enlisted men has been gone. The Colonel has been extremely friendly. Not only do we have the College in common, but, also, Moosilauke Mountain. He used to live summers near Crawword Notch and many times has climbed Moosilauke. Never does the Colonel fail to ask me to sit down a minute and talk, no matter how dirty with coal dust my fatigue clothes.
I wanted you to know how approachable a Colonel can be—and even a Camp Commander—by so insignificant a one as a private, so long as they are both Dartmouth men.
Things in Common
To THE EDITOR: In my years of contact with Dartmouth I have heard and read many eulogies about our College—frequently impassioned and sometimes hysterical—but I have never known the Dartmouth "feeling," as I understand it, better expressed than in your article in the May ALUMNI MAGAZINE, entitled "The Things We Have in Common."
Boston, Mass.
Camp Copies
To THE EDITOR: I believe that the further one gets from Hanover, the more he thinks of the good old New Hamphire hills. The parts of Texas I have seen have been for the most part flat.
I have been receiving the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and enjoying it. To my surprise, I also found an April copy in 'the camp library before I received my own. As far as I know, this is the only college alumni magazine here.
Also in my company is Gordon Miller from the class of 1928. We have had some swell talks, recalling experiences in Hanover.
Camp Hood, Texas
At the present time, 187 copies of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE are sent every month to Army and Navy reading rooms throughout the country. This useful and valuable service is made possible through the generosity of a group of alumni who are underwriting the project.—ED.
"Laureled Son"
To THE EDITOR: Several days ago Major Fred C. Eaton, Dartmouth 1940, addressed one of our large Signal Corps schools. He was received with overwhelming applause and his appearance at the school was an inspiration to all our young men.
In the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE of April, 1943, on page 14, under the heading "Laureled Sons of Dartmouth," you had a brief article concerning Major Eaton. I am wondering if you have any reprints of this article which we might post in the Signal Corps school for the further information of our men. I should appreciate receiving any reprints of this article which may be available.
Director of Training.
First Service CommandSignal Corps Service Unit
Services for Servicemen
To THE EDITOR: I am enclosing card showing myself as Liaison Officer in this area.
I have been most anxious to develop some activity of interest to Dartmouth men in this area, but so far have not been particularly successful. I have been able to meet a number of the Dartmouth men in this area and entertain them as individuals, but that is all that has been done. I have been in contact with the proper parties at Fort Knox, Bowman Field, Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot, and Nichols General Hospital—all in this areab ut have not received much, if any, information from them. I would appreciate your letting me know somewhat more in detail what other areas are doing so that we can act accordingly.
From my contact with other soldiers I have found that the two things which they need most when they hit Louisville are (1) a date and (2) a place to sleep. I believe that throughout our membership we could provide both if it were properly organized. Any suggestions you have to offer will certainly be appreciated.
[lnitiated by the Dartmouth Secretaries Association, a project for providing services for Dartmouth men in the service starts in earnest this month. Announcement of the plan is carried in this issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, page 17. A start has been made in establishing in every major center of the country an organization to help visiting alumni in uniform get located and acquainted. Alumni clubs and associations in larger centers are appointing one member, usually the secretary, as liaison officer to assist in this program of Dartmouth hospitality. —ED.]
President Cowley's Article
To THE EDITOR; "Now is the time," you stated in the May issue, "for Dartmouth men—teachers, alumni, students—to discuss fully the future of the College What sort of a college should Dartmouth be after the war?"
I want to give you three cheers for starting off so important and vital a discussion by President Cowley's excellent article on "The Liberal Arts College." I have never seen, in such compact form, so complete, so penetrating, and so challenging an analysis of the situation confronting us.
President Cowley's fifteen questions concerning liberal education are urgently pertinent for Dartmouth now. If we can find the answers to these questions we need have no fears for the future. But as he points out, we have not found the answers yet, and unless we do the "twilight" predicted for us by proponents of other educational doctrines may indeed fall.
This is not the place to launch a full discussion of these vital questions, but I should like to clear the atmosphere for such discussion by making one plea. Upholders of liberal arts education frequently imply that the proponents of other educational doctrines are attacking them—out of sheer malice, or even worse, cupidity. President Cowley is guilty of this ungenerosity in only one minor reference to the University of Chicago, but since it is a common fault these days, I am sure he will forgive my picking out this minor point in his article as the text of an appeal for fairmindedness.
Specifically, I deny that President Hutchins and the University of Chicago have conducted or are conducting a malicious and underhanded attack on liberal education as practiced at other institutions. Chicago's two-year bachelor's degree has the look of sharp trading. But I am absolutely positive that it is not an attempt to undercut educational standards; on the contrary, it is an attempt to raise them. It is certainly not an attempt to conduct an educational price-cutting war; setting up a sophomore hurdle that really works and eliminating intercollegiate football are not devices to attract students.
Most of all, Chicago's two-year bachelor's degree is neither modeled on nor inspired by the German educational system. The German educational system had nothing whatever to do with the Chicago system. To attack the Chicago system as Prussian is, in the first place, making an unfair use of wartime hatreds, and, in the second place, it is completely and absolutely fallacious.
A CONSTRUCTIVE EFFORT
Because the Chicago system lends itself to these superficial misinterpretations, I think we should be on our particular guard against falling for them. Books have been written about the Chicago system; it is not possible to discuss it fully here. But I taught at Chicago for five years, during which period the New Plan was put into effect, and I want to put on record here and now in the strongest possible terms that the Chicago Plan, whatever its educational merits, was launched as a constructive effort for the improvement of higher edcation, not as a destructive attack on it; that it was the result of hard, sincere, conscientious thinking and effort about education, not of cheap, mercenary, competitive student-grabbing. And that it remainswhether one agrees with it or not—one of the outstanding efforts of the last generation to advance the cause of higher education in the United States, and as such is deserving of our praise and gratitude rather than our derision.
Because Chicago believes in its own convictions it may well challenge others. It has won the right to do so. But let us at least give a great university credit for seeking the advancement of education rather than the malicious undermining of rival institutions.
I think if we can answer President Cowley's fifteen questions we need fear no rival doctrine. I think that the future will show that the Science-Arts College (as I prefer to call it) occupies the central position in higher education, whether in a university or in an independent college, and that it can be just as effective in an independent college as it can be in the collection of "colleges" which we call a university.
But I think the future will also show that after the forthcoming period of change and readjustment those institutions which lacked the courage to ask searching questions of themselves, of their aims and methods in relationship to the society in which they existed, will have fallen by the wayside. President Cowley's article is both a warning and a challenge: a warning that the liberal college must fight by self-criticism rather than criticism of others; and a challenge that if it thinks it will live.
Department of Art,
Hanover, N. H.
