1917

Since the last column, I have left Mary Hitchcock Hospital for Hanover Terrace Healthcare, was in the extended care facility at Alice Peck Day Hospital in Lebanon briefly, and am now back at Hanover Terrace. (The address is c/o Hanover Terrace Healthcare, Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755, but I must in advance extend regrets for my inability to acknowledge any correspondence.)

I have pulled out of my files for the substance of this month's column a short item I wrote just before I went into Hitchcock. I hope you'll be amused by it.

How would you react if you picked up your copy of The Dartmouth and read a headline which stated that the board of trustees had changed the name of the College from Dartmouth College to the Dartmouth Institute of Technology, since technology was the coming thing and Dartmouth must get in on the ground floor. The article gave some of the comments of administrators, faculty, etc. Among them and first was a notice from President McLaughlin that under such circumstances he would resign immediately, for in his view Dartmouth was founded as a liberal arts college and he had intended to keep it that way. A friend and I were enraged at this prospect. We declared that we would call The Dartmouth and stop our subscription at once; that we would cease to give to the Alumni Fund; and that we would change our wills and leave out Dartmouth. I myself would resign as president of the class of 1917, as well as from all the other offices I hold to try to keep the class together. We called the paper to stop our subscription immediately. They said they were sorry for that, but if we would look on the editorial page and read a short bit entitled "This Outrage" we would realize that this was the annual "joke" edition of The Dartmouth. In due respect, we must say that it was a good job well carried out! Let me once again extend thanks to friends and classmates for their kind notes of recent months.