Letters

"One of the Best"

To THE EDITOR: I have just finished reading the April Number of your MAGAZINE, and I thought it was an especially good number—a lot of very interesting stories from the men in the service, of which there are a great many.

I was especially pleased to read Professor Richardson's description of the Sanborn House, particularly so because he said so much about Professor Sanborn himself. He was my teacher and one of the best that I ever had, and I always had a warm place in my heart for him because when I came to Winchester as an applicant for the Winchester High School position as principal, upon graduation, he gave me a letter of introduction to the School Committee concerning my work as a teacher in the Hanover High School. I was the first male teacher that they had ever had in that school, and Professor Sanborn was on the committee, I think, or very much interested in the school. And I never expected to get another recommendation for anything so good as the one he gave me.

So when I came to Winchester the secretary of the Board said, "I don't think you had better give any time to this, because we have 25 applicants and are going to have our meeting tomorrow to elect a master of the High School."

I had been sent there by one of my classmates —but I was there, and I thought I would go around and see the six members of the Board, and one of them happened to be a Dartmouth man, and my recommendation from Professor Sanborn got me this position, which I occupied for five or six years, and I have lived in the Town of Winchester ever since. So it was mighty pleasing for me to read such a good write-up of Professor Sanborn. His son was also my classmate, with whom I was reasonably intimate for the first ten or fifteen years after we came out of college.

Winchester, Mass.

Approval

To THE EDITOR: Congratulations to Professor McKean and to the MAGAZINE for his article in the April issue on "College Men in Politics."

Continued success of our constitutional government, with all its invaluable advantages, demands that intelligent and honest men—college men and Dartmouth men—assume their responsibilities and take an active interest or part in that government, local, state and national.

The more the College can prepare her undergraduates for the assumption of such responsibilities, the more will she be fulfilling her obligation to the nation.

San Diego, California.

Disagreement

To THE EDITOR: I have just finished reading the two edi- torials on page seven of the April ALUMNI MAGAZINE. The apposition of such material seems extremely incongruous to me. I admit, to begin with, to liberal views which were well fostered in my four years at Dartmouth and which I feel are among the many fine things I received from the College. It is for this reason among others that I am glad to count myself among the "Dartmouth Regulars" al- though the amounts which I have contributed may have been small.

But if the editorial, written by Mr. Marden (which, incidently, is merely more open in its reactionary attitude than many, if not most of those which he has written) is to be taken as an expression of the official view of the Administration of the College and an indication of its attitudes in the post-war world, then the liberal group of alumni to which I feel I belong, should consider long and carefully whether it feels that continued support of the College is warranted. It should also consider whether the time has not come for a change in such an Administration.

No matter how great my feeling for the College might be, I believe that my feeling for my country and its future welfare should be and is greater. I feel that the attitude expressed by Mr. Marden is typical of that group of reactionary men (I withhold the hated word fascist" for the present) which is using this war as camouflage behind which they can get control of the country. I happen to be an employee of that Government and Administration which Mr. Marden speaks of so disparagingly and he would undoubtedly call me one member of his "armies of bureaucrats." I also happen to have been in the Army of the United States, discharged because of physical reasons. If Mr. Marden thinks a war of this magnitude can be run by sitting in the lovely hills o£ New Hampshire and thinking about it, he is greatly mistaken. It takes men to get materiel to the fighting men and my experience with only a part of the war effort through my job with the government and my service in the Army convinces me beyond the shadow of a doubt that if those advocating "laissezfaire" even in the midst of global war, were allowed to have their way, the fighting men would now be dying for want of guns and bullets exactly as did the Russians in the First World War when similar men ran that country.

Except for those steps absolutely essential for winning this war, the Government has in no way to my knowledge, been "eager to plan everyone's private life " In fact, it is my absolute conviction that the Administration has not interfered one-tenth as much as it should have. I suppose Mr. Marden would like to have as much gas as he could use and we could omit the African Campaign or the Invasion we are so tensely waiting for. I suppose Mr. Marden would prefer not to have rationing of foods and let what there is go to those who can afford to pay black market or inflationary prices.

I'm sure we would appreciate some definite indication of any intention whatsoever on the part of the Government to dictate the type of education which would follow its efforts to assist those men who have fought for this country to complete their education. Perhaps Mr. Marden resents this only too slight recompense to those who have risked their lives and lived through unmitigated hell for us.

I feel that the long series of editorials all pointing to the same end—the increase of reaction in at least some of the officials in the College Administration—calls for a definite statement on the part of that Administration as to where it stands and where it intends to lead us and our young men in that future which is certain to be a battle ground between those who think like Mr. Marden and those of us who believe that the privileges and good things of this world belong to everyone and not to a few. It owes such a statement to those from whom it is now asking unstinted support.

Syracuse, N. Y.

The editor is glad to reassure Mr. Irving and Mr. Hall, whose letter follows, that the ALUMNI MAGAZINE has no political line to follow and, indeed, that it does not think it proper that it should ever have one, unless extraordinary circumstances make it necessary. As conducted at present, Gradus ad Parnassum largely represents an individual point of view and is always initialed; certainly it provides no basis for perturbation over the Administration's attitude unless a statement in this MAGAZINE is labeled as such. We do not agree with Mr. Irving that any clarification of where Dartmouth is leading young men is needed beyond knowledge of the College's past record, her present role in the national life, and her plans for the future. This does not affect agreement, however, that political opinion has no place in the editorial columns of the MAGAZINE, and greater care to that end will be exercised.

"Shallow Stuff"

To THE EDITOR: May X take exception to some shallow stuff written by PSM in the April issue on the sub- ject (found buried under the garbage) of a federal proposal to help returning GI Joes ac- quire more education?

Here is PSM's intelligent approach to his subject: "If the government at Washington were not so eager to plan everyone's private life for him " Then, scattered throughout his little piece are such bright cracks as: "Washington's armies of bureaucrats have revealed a passion for planning things for others. .... Washington's eager planners ...." would circumvent ".... the traditional American Way."

What suffering hath PSM undergone at the hands of the bureaucrats? What martyred mumbo-jumbo is he hawking about in Hanover's hills? Safe within the cloistered walls of Dartmouth, far from the crowded dwellings of Negroes in the alleys of the nation's capital, sheltered from the unlovely smell of human sweat in a hundred roaring cities, this learned man looks down upon a scene he knows not and talks to a well-upholstered audience in words he knows will fall on sympathetic ears. Because (as George Maurice Morris once admonished me: "Of course, Clyde, you know Dartmouth is traditionally a Republican school") PSM knows that anything he writes, however meaningless (traditional American Way, forsoothl), against the "government at Washington" will be applauded by roughly 75 per cent of his listeners.

As one of the dissenting 25 per cent (Vox Clamantis In Deserto), I would like to ask PSM whether he would have wished that the planners had not planned the Social Security Act, the laws that are now breaking up the monopoly of private power companies, the law prohibiting the sale of worthless securities to persons less discriminating than PSM, and other legislation no less beneficial to the common man and his family? Further, he might define his idea of the "traditional American Way." Is his way the way for a handful of well-heeled Dartmouth graduates—a handful in comparison with millions of men, women and children who are still under-nourished, ill-housed and clothed—even by PSM standards, I'll bet!?

And why doesn't the college appreciate the fact that PSM's kind of overstuffed thinking is anathema to hundreds of its loyal alumni who, at least, don't try to force their political prejudices down somebody's throat? Will none raise a voice in behalf of this minority? Is the editorial policy of the magazine given over to unnecessary abuse of "the government in Washington" in the manner of the ChicagoTrib? If so, let's know these things. Prexy has often said that ignorance is our greatest curse.

Above all, let's have the editor sharpen up his blue pencil when guys like PSM come along with their unthinking twaddle—the government "planning everyone's private life for him." That's just damned muddy, unhonest thinking. If PSM wants to decry federal control of education, Mr. Editor, give him lots of elbow room but don't let him clutter up the place with pusillanimous gibberish.

Yes sir, I'm one of the bureaucrats in Washington—a damned piddling little, unlettered bureaucrat trying to inch up to the challenge laid down to college men by Prof. McKean in the same issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

Garrett Park, Maryland.

Incredible as it may seem, Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, recorded in his diary at Hanover, N. H., on June 16, 1775, that "the noise of Cannon Supposed to be at Boston (140 miles away) was heard all day." The '"noise" turned out to be the Battle of Bunker Hill.