1912
Syd Clark has chided me in the past forreporting his travel letters in full but theyare so interesting and informative that theydeserve complete publication. Writing fromHotel Savoy, Berlin, Germany, September 6:
It's a long time since I have sent you a letter for the '12 column of the Alumni Magazine, since I don't like to flood you with reports merely because I travel more than most of my classmates, but this brief report from 'the Berlin front' may have interest. I am in this remarkable city on Germany's Election Day, of such importance to the free world. I was here also just before the big riots of June 17, and by 'here' I mean also East Berlin. I wish I could picture the contrast of these two Berlins. West Berlin is going ahead great guns. It is exciting and excited, knowing that 'as Berlin goes, so goes the world.' It realizes that it is the one rift in the Iron Curtain, the eastern anchor of the West, the conspicuous show window for all the envious Easterners. When the Freedom Bell that America gave to Berlin sounds off every noon there is a sort of reverence in the air, a thing quite different from ordinary flagwaving or bell-ringing. On the other side of the line, in what the Reds choose to call the Free Democratic Sector of Great Berlin, there is a sullenness that you can see and feel all the time. The people are simply swimming in propaganda and that doesn't sustain them. Every paper on the stands is saturated with, praises of the generous Russian leaders and with long quotes from Pravda intersprinkled with insults for the American warmongers. Every picture postcard has a Communist slogan. Every menu in every pitiful restaurant all of them Red-run has Communist preaching just above the soup course. And so on ad nauseam. But the people are miserably dressed! I didn't see so much as one woman with any smartness or elegance. They were all dowdy, dull, dispirited. Their shoes were shoddy beyond words. Long queues, reminiscent of London at its darkest creep along at all the Red-run food shops of the Handels Organisation, the only outlet for anything that is to be bought in the line of food or clothing or household goods. The boys and girls on the other hand, are being given smart Communist uniforms and are being taught to love all things Red. They have marching and singing, and their Red teachers take them in squads of fifty on two-hour educational tours to learn the full, dazzling wonder of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and a little bit Malenkov. And here's a word-snapshot of right now: At the Potsdamerplatz, where East and West meet, there is a big Handels Organisation building on the Red side of the square. The June 17 rioters burned it to a shell. Now, on the shell is the usual huge red ribbon, two in fact. One says something 'inspiring' from Malenkov. The other says,_ in German: "On the 17th day of June, 1953, this building was robbed, demolished and set on fire by Fascist Provocateurs from West Berlin.' Of course not one person over ten years of age on either side of the line believes that nonsense, but there it is. West Berlin's great avenue leading from the Brandenburgertor has been renamed 'Strausse des 17ten Juni' and there is jubilation in that name.
Last evening I went to West Berlin's vast stadium, seating 100,000. It was nearly full of people _ watching the so-called 'Tag der Sensa- tionen.' East Berliners were let in at half price. Two high lights of the great show were: first, massed military bands of Germany, France, Eng- land, Ireland and America, after marching into the stadium in their respective and so-various ways, formed a huge square and played German folk songs together while 75,000 people sang and swayed back and forth in long lines, as we do when we sing Auld Lang Syne; second: after com- plete darkness had fallen the Master of Ceremonies announced, 'Here we are, meine Damen und Herren, in our little island in the Red Sea. At the signal one, two, three, we shall have Berlin's Special Fireworks.' The floodlights and every other trace of illumination was shut off. Then he counted, 'Eine, Zwei, Drei' and 75,000 little flares, held in 75,000 hands, were instantly lighted as if by turning on a switch. By the light of the flares the vast crowd sang a song of freedom. It was one of the most moving things I've ever seen. During the entire long evening no insults were hurled at Russia, not a trace of propaganda was uttered. The people of the free side, and their visitors from the slave side, which were estimated to number at least 25,000, offered this flare-light tribute to the liberty that both sides longed for. And now I shall make myself ring off, Heinie, out of commiseration for the groaning columns of the MAGAZINE. I am visiting every country in Free Europe this year of 1953, including Yugoslavia, to which I am flying on September 28. All this is for a general allEurope book probably to be called You in Europe. ... And now All the best."
Mark and Marion Snow spent two weeks on Cape Cod the middle of June. Inasmuch as they had another couple with them who had never been east of Albany, they all were kept busy seeing Cape Cod, Plymouth, etc., so there was no opportunity for them to look up any classmates on that trip.
Conrad E. Snow and three other men appointed by the President took prominent parts in President Eisenhower's Administrative Law Conference which held its first meeting in Washington, D. C. on June 10 and 11. Speaking to the delegates from sixty-odd federal government departments and agencies and some eighteen members of the judiciary, the bar and trial examiners were John L. Sullivan '21 and Robert K. McConnaughey '26. Connie, delegate of the Department of State, was appointed chairman of the Committee on Style. George Maurice Morris '11 was elected the vice-chairman of the Conference and appointed as a member of the conference committee on Conference Organization and Procedure. The President has asked the Conference to study the problems concerning unnecessary delay, expense, and volume of records in some adjudicatory and rulemaking proceedings in the Executive Departments and Administrative Agencies.
The formation of the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation, Inc., with headquarters in New York City, was announced last month by DocHenry Viets, its chief medical adviser. Myasthenia gravis is a progressive disease in which the victim suffers a lack of muscular control because of a break, presumably of a chemical nature, at the junction of nerves and muscles. The affliction can usually be controlled, but only through the use of expensive daily doses of a drug called neostigmine. Henry is also chairman of the Council of Scientific Assembly of the American Medical Association.
Roy J. DeFerrari, Secretary General of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., and a member of its faculty since 1919, started his 25th year as Director of the University's summer sessions. Before going to the Catholic University he was a director in Classics at Princeton.
Doc O'Connor was a speaker at a luncheon meeting of the state representatives of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in Chicago on September 23. Fred Shepard and his wife were Doc's guests. Ralph Tackaberry had accepted Doc's invitation to attend but was unable to be there. ConnieSnow's son, Richard Currier, was married to Maura Clare Wingo. Stan Weld sent a postal card from Switzerland dated September 20, saying, "We are having a great trip.
September visitors at the Hanover Inn included Henry Van Dyne and Mr. and Mrs.Harold Stearns.
Changes of address: Barrow E. Lyons, 130 11th Street S.E., Washington D. C.; RobertS. Morris, P. O. Box 311, La Jolla, Calif.; Clyde H. Norton, R.F.D. 1, Kilrae Road, Derry, N. H.; James Worton, 137 Washington Ave., Somerset, Mass.; Paul E. Martin, 1912 East sth St., Pueblo, Colo.; Elliott A.White, c/o P. A. White, 11 Vine St., Springfield, Vt.
Secretary, 120 Broadway, New York 5, N. Y. Treasurer, 4 Bank Building, Middleboro, Mass. Bequest Chairman,
