1941

Some happenings of recent months on the Hanover Plain recall for me the ferment we experienced in our undergraduate years of 1939 to 1941. Even before World War II came to Europe, more than 30 classmates had signed up for summer training in the Marine Corps Reserve. Others took leave to join the British fighting forces. On campus the issue of intervention generated passionate debate. Some favored the isolationist stance of "America First," a position argued forcefully by Norman Thomas in Webster Hall. But a large majority, as I remember the dim, dark days, preferred the contrary viewpoint of the "Fight For Freedom" group, and Herbert Agar, then editor of The Louisville Courier-Journal, urged intervention in a spirited set-to with New Hampshire's Senator Tobey in 105 Dartmouth. Who can forget . . .

Postwar there was quiet readjustment, and this period persisted until the sixties when Dartmouth students, among others across the land, seethed with feeling about civil rights and the war in Vietnam. Dartmouth was heard from on those issues students, faculty and administrators right up to the president - and then the following decade seemed to be one marked by a preoccupation of students with vocational interests. There were "Dartmouth issues," then as now, but perhaps none with national implications. None, that is, until last year.

On Dartmouth Night in 1985, student demonstrators carried anti-apartheid banners onto the campus Green. Since then, of course, the shanties as reported, for example, in The New York Times and, after having been sledgehammered, pictured on DAM's cover in the issue of March 1986. Apart from the merits of divestment vis-a-vis South Africa, I'm glad to see students getting involved. Pro or con, the process is important, but in the context of freedom of expression, as I see it, the assault on the shanties exceeds permissible limits.

For this and other reasons, the Dartmouth pot seems of late to have been really boiling. Writing a couple of months ahead of your reading, I find myself on the receiving end of all sorts of College mail: Alumni for Dartmouth; Alumni Committee for a Strong Dartmouth; and Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College. This is all about electing Trustees, and we've each received the April 15 "Dear Dartmouth Classmate" letter, boosting the candidacies of Dan Provost and his running mate. I wouldn't be too surprised if they made it, given all the disaffection that has been surfacing. DonHagen's "Dope," March edition, gave us quite a slug of this, including his lumping up of women's liberation with pervasive drugs and rising homosexuality in quoting Shaw about the U.S.A. going from "barbarism to decadence." Wow!

It is fun to read the news Don gets on the cards he sends out. And I have a few bits and pieces, too. First, to correct an oversight, let the record note that Brodieand Fran Bjorklund were in attendance when Dartmouth's president spoke on Long Island earlier this year. From ChuckBolte, enclosing his obit of Jim Andrews, news of himself: three married children and nine-going-on-ten grandkids all about the place in Dresden, Maine, where Chuck edits The American Oxonian, a quarterly journal for Rhodes Scholars and other Americans who attended Oxford. "Keeps me out of poolrooms," writes Chuck, who also admits to "local anti-nuclear activities" in between "lots of books" and "lots of Mozart." Every summer, at Penobscot Bay, he visits Charlesand Carol McLane, and I learned from Tom Littlefield that the McLanes stayed over with him in Albany, N.Y., upon returning mid-March from a Kenya safari. Apropos "taking off," Tom described his apprenticeship with the Capitol Rep theater company. I also have a second effort from the word processor of Bruce Brown who says that, among '41s in California, he has seen only B. K. Stephenson and Don Ross.

Another type of Dartmouth mail reaching me is everything sent to class agents. Yes, it's that time again, time to write a check to "Dartmouth College" and send it to the 1986 Alumni Fund. Our contributions are needed and deserved. I'd say that, even if I hadn't attended Class Officers Weekend in Hanover on the first weekend in May. But I have, and details will follow. For the moment, however, suffice to say: Peace and Joy.

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