i ha i a i st Youre Iv. No. a BRYN MAWR, wend OCTOBER 17, 1917 Price 5 Cents. ‘DEAN TAFT SPEAKS AGAINST MAY DAY “Personally, I do not feel like giving May Day”, Dean Taft said in Chapel last Thursday. Not only would the energies of the college be going into unproductive labor, Miss Taft pointed out, but into unnecessary labor, for “a nation at war must learn to give its money without expecting to be enter- tain SOMETHING WRONG SOMEWHERE “A pacifist has something physically, wrong”, said Mr. Walcott, in answer to a question from one of the audience after his lecture last Saturday. “Hither the brain or the spinal column is lacking”. COLLEGE REFUSES TO ABANDON MUSIC BECAUSE OF WAR YEAR Admission to be Charged at Door Music will be brought to the college as usual this year through a series of con- certs, the expenses of which are to be de- frayed, as last year, by charging admis- sion at the door. It was the wish of the Music Committee of the Undergraduate Association, ex- pressed at a recent Undergraduate meet- ing, that this method of meeting expenses should be abandoned in favor of the pledge system, used successfully in 1915- "16. Concerts given last year, R. Hart 18, Chairman of’ the Music Committee, pointed out, often barel ared ex- penses. The Association, however, was unwilling that the college should be can- vassed for pledges and evidently pre- ferred to risk signing contracts in ad- vance of receipts. Many students voted against both methods, wishing to defeat them on war grounds. Kitty Cheatham will probably give a Christmas concert here in December and Reinhold Warlich, who sang here lest year, is expected sometime in November. “WRITING THE ORALS— HA! HA! HA!” Seniors Sing And Cheer Before One Hi + Test. Committee of Three ill Busy Correcting Papers Ten minutes of untrammeled oral sing- ing greeted the Senior French examiners last Saturday morning in Taylor before the examination. Sixty-one Seniors took the examination, which lasted an hour. To the tune of “Brighten the Corner Where You Are”, the revival hymn made famous by “Billy” Sunday, 1918 set the first “written oral” song,’ “Writing the Orals, Ha, Ha, Ha”! which they gave for the first time Friday night in Pembroke at the oral singing. The same committee of three, Dean Maddison, Miss Donnelly, and Monsieur Beck, which made out the French exami- nation, is correcting the books. On dc- count of the time it will take for all three to go over each book, the Seniors will not hear from their French before they take College War Relief in “Quarterly” A statement of the plans of the under- graduate War Relief Committee for the year, including extracts-from letters writ- ten by Mrs. Dike, chairman of the recon- struction work of the American Fund for French Wounded, will appear in the next Alumnz Quarterly. “Meat, wheat, and sweet are what our Allies must have to fight down the Prus- sian system”, said Mr. Frederic Walcott, investigator of Belgium, Serbia, and Po- land for the Rockefeller Institute, who spoke on the Prussian system and food administration at the War Relief week end last Saturday in Taylor. “The U- boats began to starve Belgium in August and she is starving still. Tuberculosis is running over the country like a prairie fire. Poland is starved. Roumania is starved, and unless she is fed there is grave danger that she will make a sepa- rate peace, letting the Germans into Odessa, the Black Sea, and the wheat fields of Russia. “We expect Belgium to starve”, said General von Bissing, late Governor Gen- eral of Belgium, in reply to Mr. Walcott’s inquiry. “Then we can force the Bel- gians into Germany to release fighting men. Some we will send to Mesopotamia, the weak and young we will push in front of a firing squad into the enemy’s hands for France and Britain to care for, At the end of the war Belgium will be a German province. and Antwerp ours”. “This was a sincere. statement from General von Bissing”’, said Mr. Walcott. “Denationalization is only an incident if it helps Germany. “The grave-yard of a nation”, Mr. Walcott called the old Napoleonic road by which he travelled into Poland. The Germans had asked him to investigate Poland, fearing that the starvation there would demoralize the German troops. Along this road had passed the Polish refugees, fleeing after the retreating Russians in 1915. “I could not count the wicker baby baskets such as hang in the peasants’ cottages, there were so many lying beside the road”, said Mr. Walcott. “Typhus was in every single camp I visited”, he said. “The refugees were crowded by tens of thousands into bar- racks that were hardly weather proof in the bitter climate. They were emaciated, indescribably filthy, and had the hunger stare by which we have learned to know the starving.” “By starvation”, said Mr. Walcott, “the Germans hope to accomplish what they have tried for years to do in Poland. There they can run the gamut of cruelty. Belgium is too near Holland and the West for such treatment.” “What is good for Germany is good for the world”, say the Prussians, according to Mr. Walcott. The fates of Belgium, Poland, Roumania, and Serbia are exam- | ples of what is good for Germany. Mr. Walcott, who is on the Food Ad-| ministration Board, and lives with Mr. Hoover in Washington, took the audience into his confidence, telling them of the official outlook on the war. He requested that his confidential information be not printed. . Susan F. Nichols ‘15 has been ap- pointed English Reader for the first sem- ester and is living with Dean Taft at Penygroes, Latest Bulletin on War Relief Over fifteen hundred dollars in cash, checks, and pledges was col- lected for War Relief after Mr. Wal- cott’s lecture last Saturday night. Denbigh leads the other halls with a total of almost $500. A reconstruction unit in France, to be supported by the alumnew and un- dergraduates, has been. suggested in-— stead of Y. M. C. A. huts or a Russian ambulance as an object for the fund. In any case a certain percentage of the money goes to the Main Line Chapter of the Red Cross, the greater part being kept for this main war charity not yet decided upon, Miss Anne Morgan of New York /ias offered to come and speak on the re- construction work of the American Fund for French Wounded some tin.c late in November. % EXPELLED PROFESSOR SCORES COLUMBIA; THREATENS TO SUE Sympathy With Dr. Cattell Causes Resignation of Charles. H. Beard The Faculty and students of Columbia University have been in an uproar -for the past two weeks as a result of the ex- pulsion of Professor J, McKeen Cattell from the Chair of Psychology on the charge of “disseminating disloyal doc- trines on the-war’. Charles A. Beard, Professor of Political Science at the Uni- versity and author of American Govern- ment and Politics used in the politics course at Bryn Mawr, has resigned from the staff because of his disapproval of what he believes to be the repression of | free speech among the Faculty. Professor Cattell, in a letter slurring President Butler and the trustees, wrote in part: “Whatever may be the opinion held of me in this period of prejudice and soon emerge, my ‘services to fhe univer- sity are a matter on record .. . I made the department of psychology the strongest in the world and as head of the departments of philosophy and anthro- pology made them the strongest in America It would not only be common decency, but also common sense, for the trustees to pay the pension due to me . . . Otherwise, there will even- tually be unrest among the members of the Faculty; a lawsuit will bring out facts concerning the president, the trus- tees, and the university which will not be of service to them”. The need is felt at Columbia of bring- ing about a closer co-operation between Faculty and trustees and so removing the objection that the latter are checking free discussion at the university. PUBLIC OPINION PUTS BAN ON FLOWERS The sending of flowers this year for “orals” or plays has been discouraged at Bryn Mawr both at the Christian Asso- ciation meeting last Friday and at differ- ent class meetings. No votes have been taken, however, as public opinion is counted on to regulate the matter. | R. Gatling "19 has been chosen leader of the Glee Club for 1917-18. The busi- ness manhager‘is D. Chambers ‘19; the assistant business manager, L. Kellogg. DAY GIVEN UP FOR MORE DIRECT V WAR WORK | audience, are tired of it. ‘Excitement reached a fever pitch last Thursday night when the fate of May Day hung in the balance while the tellers counted a secret ballot cast by the Under- graduate Association on the motion that | the festival be given this year for war relief. The announcement that the project had been voted down 251 to 56— a defeat of almost five to one—came as a complete surprise, since dyring the meet- ing, which lasted nearly two hours, both sides were warmly upheld. Early in the meeting Miss Nearing ’09, a former Pres- ident of Undergraduate Association, was introduced to speak from the point of view of “one who had experienced several May Days”, and gave her arguments against having the féte under present conditions. V. Kneeland ‘18, President, asked that “patriotism” be left out of the discussion, since patriotic service was the common end of the whole Associatiort, the difference of opinion being merely as to the best means toward that end. May Day Incompatible with Gritted Teeth “Do we want to give May Day: at all, and if so, do we want to give it under the present conditions’? was Miss Nearing's formulation of the issue. She said in part: “Many people believe that May Day should be given up entirely, that Phila- delphia people, who make up most of the It is true that | when Bryn Mawr began having May Day |it was a unique sort of performance, whereas now something on the same or- der may be seen at almost any college in the country. Still, I believe May Day is .one of the big things in college and that no maiter how much people hate it be- | fore, while they are working for it, every- unreason, from which I trust we shall one loves it on the day. It has a peculiar flavor and a thrill all its own. “Granting, then, that May Day is fine in itself, ought it to be given under the present conditions? The first reason against it has been called a sentimental one. May Day will come just at the be- ginning of the big spring drives, wher every mail and cable will bring lists of killed and wounded. Those of you who have read books describing the first months of the war in England can im- agine what the reaction will be. I can’t remember whether you are old enough to remember when the Titanic went down , but if you do, you know that the reaction after such a tragedy is horrible. I can’t imagine a May Day given by people with gritted teeth. Even if it were given, the audience might be cut down one-third. . . “Another reason which may or may not have weight with you is that practically all of the Faculty and Staff are against it. es ’ “The cost of the last May Day was $6000. This year it will probably be $10,000. “It seems too bad to put so much effort on something that is non-productive. I must have spent about ninety hours in rehearsal for May Day my Freshman year, although I had only a small part— that of the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe. Innumerable hours, too, must be spent making costumes, with nothing to show (Continued on page 5, column 2)