1931

It's Friday, October 3, and these notes have to be in Hanover October 5. My secretary is sitting with her pencil poised in ready expectancy and with a look that says "come on, bub, let's get with it" ... and here lam with- out a thought in my head. What's worse, without a single good long letter which could be quoted in toto to fill a column. There's no great cause that I £eel like propounding, no startling philosophy to expound, and no great issues to expose. All I can think of is that it's a beautiful fall day and the view from my 48th story window only leaves me with the deep conviction that it's hell to have to work for a living.

Oft to my right is Welfare Island, where the city has one of its local bastilles, and the men in there couldn't feel a bit more confined than I do right now. In the distance to my left is the George Washington Bridge which provides one of the neatest escapes from this .$24 piece of real estate but I'm not going to be taking it.

Somewhere within the scope of my view there are thousands of Dartmouth men and scores of '3iers and I don't know what they're doing. Part of my job is to know what they're doing but somehow they don't feel its important to let me know, and I get so snarled up in a variety of things that I don't seem to have time to find out. Somewhere down there one of our classmates is enjoying a huge success and the rest of us may never hear about it. Somewhere down there a '3ier is in trouble and he doesn't want to tell us about it. It was not meant to be this way, and somehow or other I feel that I am more responsible for it than you are. Obviously, I have failed to get across to you the idea that your Class Secretary is a clearing house for your continued contacts with 400-odd classmates and, in part, for your contact with the College itself.

When I read President Dickey's address to the student body at the opening of the year, I had a feeling of great strength in the administration, and the letters I get from some of the young fellows who have just gone up to Hanover from this area indicate pretty clearly that those things we lived so vividly have not been diminished in strength or color during the intervening years. The ties and tugs are still there, judging from the number of '31ers who drifted back to Hanover during the summer months, AI Jones and sons, Bill Alton,Bob and Mrs. Huntley, Ernie Moore, HankJohnson and wife, Spence Cram and spouse and Doug Wilson. Nobody ever finds reason to doubt that the Dartmouth alumni body is an unusual organization in many and good respects. My only concern is, how do we make this work better for '31?

Looking over these notes, I would swear that if that calendar page didn't tell me it was October, I would think it was spring. I'm dead, the column is dead ... so let's not kick it around any more. See you next month.

Secretary, Lambert & Feasley, Inc. 60 E. 42nd St., New York 17, N. Y Treasurer, 1512 Spruce St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.