1933

There is a phrase from Gilbert & Sullivan running through our head as we pull up to the old portable to sing the praises of '33s who have been even less communicative than usual this past month—something about "a fine deelemma .... we have here"—that expresses our sentiments exactly. As this suggests, we are not in a fighting mood this month. We are prepared to forego our customary practice of meeting the combination of Widmayer's Folly, the deadline, and no news with flailing adjectives and, in a word, producing boilerplate. Actually, we are caught between the production of a jumbo-size newsletter a couple of weeks ago that took every crumb of news we had and the home football games beginning this coming weekend that will bring us in some news too late to make this issue of the MAG—and we might as well admit it, and throw in the sponge.

We have a couple of items, however, that will prevent our having to register a gooseegg for the month. Intelligence from Utica, N. Y. informs us that Bill Dowling was recently elected director of the Burroughs Wellcome & Co., Inc., a Tuckahoe drug concern. Bill has been with the company, as secretary and general counsel, since 1946. During the war Bill was a major in the Quartermaster Corps, and in civilian life had practised law in Utica.

The Rutland Herald brought us the information a few days ago of the appointmentof Hobie Farmer to the Vermont State Veterans Board, for a term of four years. KenSpang and his wife were in Hanover overnight in September, as were Mr. and Mrs.E. E. Wentworth, of Cincinnati.

FLASH! In time's nick, a news release fromthe IRO in Geneva about Bill Shaughnessy:

School superintendent and employment officer for Europe's thousands of refugees and displaced persons is the colossal task of William K.Shaughnessy, formerly chief of the Reports and Technical Review Branch of the U. S. Employment Service, who is now Chief of Employment and Vocational Training division of the International Refugee Organization in Geneva.

Mr. Shaughnessy, since his appointment to the IRO post in May, 1948, directs the programs of 51 IRO vocational training schools throughout Germany, Italy and Austria, which graduate more than 1,000 students monthly, and at the same time is responsible for the employment of refugees receiving IRO assistance.

"Currently, a total of 74,021 refugees and displaced persons are employed in Germany, Austria and Italy," Mr. Shaughnessy said. "Of these, IRO itself employs 48,153 on work projects and on administrative and maintenance functions in the camps.

"Moreover, there are 9,661 in vocational training schools and 38,483 are receiving two hours or more of language instruction. In reconverted old German army barracks, they attend the training courses which are designed to refresh skills that have been dulled through disuse during the war years, or to provide elementary training to young workers. Among the students, too, are men and women who, before they became refugees, were well known and highly respected doctors, lawyers and artists in their native countries. Now, as displaced persons, they must, in most cases, . learn new trades which are more in demand by countries accepting refugee immigrants for resettlement."

"Through teaching the disabled new trades, and providing special medical care for the ill," Mr. Shaughnessy said, "we hope to considerably reduce the number of refugees who otherwise would be turned down by Selection Missions and left behind in the camps when IRO is dissolved next June by making them valuable to receiving countries as fit immigrants.

"To date the United States has received 68,677 displaced persons, and the U. S. program is constantly gaining momentum. Seventeen of IRO's fleet of 38 ships are now allocated to transporting displaced persons to the United States."

After graduating from Dartmouth in 1933, Mr. Shaughnessy completed his post-graduate studies at Columbia. During the war he served as a Commander in the U. S. Navy in the Panama Canal Zone and, later, as an Administrative Historian in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Navy in Washington.

And that, friends, is it. We'd welcome an epistolary shower in coming weeks. Is there an epistler in the class?

Secretary, 20 Valley Rd., Hanover, N. H.

Treasurer, 2812 Grant Bldg., Pittsburgh 19, Pa