Books Make Friends

Bringing people together through books is the task that has been assigned to Charles E. Griffith '15 by President Eisenhower. Recently retired as vice president of the Silver Burdett Publishing Company after forty years in the book business, Griffith has been traveling all over Latin America as chairman of the President's People-to-People Book Committee, learning how books can help promote better understanding between nations.

Through seminars and town meetings in selected Latin American cities, he and his associates meet their opposite numbers and look for better ways to distribute the printed word. "The people of the world are thirsty for books," he states. "And we are not going down there to boast of what we may have done or to tell them what they should do, but rather to learn as much as we can and ask, 'how can we help?' "

A man of many interests, Griffith was in charge of the Silver Burdett musical publications department, and he himself has been an accomplished musician and musical historian for many years. An old hand at international dealings, he has made a dozen trips through the Orient compiling native folk music in Indonesia, Burma, China, Pakistan and Japan. On these tours he also collected a valuable assortment of musical instruments - native flutes, drums, stringed instruments and gongs, which he recently donated to Dartmouth.

Griffith, who now lives in Norwich, Vt., has been chairman of the Foreign Education Committee of the American Textbook Publishers Institute and a trustee of the Montclair, N. J., Art Museum. As national chairman of the Tucker Foundation Fund Committee, he was largely instrumental in obtaining the support necessary to finance and advance the work of the Foundation.