‘in Goodhart Hall,. announced that

 

 

 

ws

 

 

VOL. XX, No. 10

PRICE 10 CENTS

 

 

7 aN BRYN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA., “WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1933 Cer iiicw Nae isar

Noted Critic Explains Vocational Conference Curriculum Committee Comii? in: Geodhans Miss Millay Presents
' : : Mrs.. E. B. White. (Kath- : = _ The Cosmopolitan Club of .

B eginning of Career arine Sergeant, Bryn Mawr, i Prop OSes New Policy Philadelphia sacl duty Reading of Own Poems

 

Alexander Woollcott Considers
rh Radio Most Rewarding Field .

of Journalism

 

NARRATES WAR STORY

Mr. Alexander Woollcott, disclos-
ing the Confessions of a. Dying
Newspaper Man last Tuesday night

 

the topic of his lecture meant’ noth-
ing, although his last job had, it was
true, been on the dying World. He
had tried having no title for his lec-.
tures at all, but he found that that
‘did not work, for when he made that
experiment on New Rochelle, he ar-
rived: to find the facade of their high
school decorated with a pennant read-
ng: “How To Go To the Theatre.”
Mr. Woollcott suggested that they
should go on free tickets” but they
did not seem to care for his attempts
to enlarge upon the title with which
they had presented him, for the next
week was “Better Speech Week” in
New Rochelle!

Mr. Woollcott said that the cur-
rent issue of Vanity Fair contains a
photograph of himself taken in 1892
in Kansas City, Missouri, on the oc-
casion of. some Shakespearean tab-
leaux given by his street; he was cos-

amed as Puck. After looking at
that( picture, he fell to wondering
where he had gone wrong that he
should now be here. The coming to-
gether of himself and his Bryn
Mawr audience required some sort of
an autobiographical explanation. Mr.
Woollcott and his friends often pause
to wonder how it happened that they
should all have come together: in
1907, for instance, Mr. Woollcott was
a sophomore at Hamilton College,
Harpo Marx was a bellhop at the
Seville, and Irving Berlin was a wait-
er in Chinatown; it is pure luck that
they should all be great friends now.

Mr. Woollcott decided to become a
newspaper man at the time when his
picture as Puck was taken, for across
the street lived the lanky and string-
ent Roswell Martin Field, a dramatic
critic and columnist on the Kansas’
City Star. Mr. Field took him to
see his fitst show, Sinbad, The Sailor,
with Eddie Foy. When they arrived
home, Mr. Woollcott announced to his
family that he had decided to go to
the theatre every day thenceforth; it
‘was pointed out to him that this
would run into money, something no
Woollecott ever did, and that Mr.
Field. was able to go because it did
not cost him anything. That decided
him to become a dramatic critic. He
was deflected from his intention only
once, in his senior year at college,
when he decided to retreat from com-
petition and teach. Having been rec-
ommended as the principal of a High
School at Hudson, New York, he went
to tea with the board of directors of
the school. The women were all in
favor of choosing him, but one old man
took him aside and explained confi-
dentially that although corporal pun-
ishment was forbidden by law, the
school could not be managed by any-
one unable to lick everyone in it. At
that moment three husky and burly
boys wending their way from an in-
nocent, if rough, game of baseball
walked down the street; the old man
said: “There are three of the pu-
pils. Do you think you could lick
them?” Mr. Woollcott became a news-
paper man, a :

He first applied for a job on the
Philadelphia Record, but instead of
going to the Managing Editor, he
went to the wife of the Editor-in-
Chief at her home, and asked for a

(Continued on Page Four)

 

- Sale of Books

All the books in the Book
Shop are being sold at extreme-
ly low prices. The books on
sale include many best-sellers
published this fall. And so—
give books for Christmas and |
save money. ae

 

 

 

 

14) will speak on Magazine
Work and Writing in the Com-
mon Room. in -Goodhart Hall
on Monday afternoon, Janu-
ary 8, at a quarter of fiva
Mrs. White is one of the edi-
tors of The New. Yorker.
Everyone, who is interested is
urged to come. Tea will be
served at half-past four.

 

 

 

Katherine Hepburn Takes
Star Role in New Tragedy

The Lake, written by, Massinghaim
and McDonald, and starring Kath-
erine Hepburn, will open in New York
December 25 and probably run for
some months, so the News offers its
readers an amateur playreader’s crit-
icism of it. At the opening of this
play in Washington all the seats
were bought out by the Bryn Mawr
Club of that city; so we are told; but
we doubt that the New York Bryn
Mawr Club will be able to pull a
like coup as the seats for the open-
ing night in New York are quoted
as high as two hundred dollars. If
you can’t pay quite that, but still feel
that you would like to know something
more about the play, there is a copy
of The Lake on the Playwriting
reserve in the Library. The criti-
cism follows:

In The Lake it has veen the pur-
pose of the authors to preesnt an
emotion rather than an action, and
the entire play has been constructed
to the fulfillment of these qualifica-
tions. The actual action of the play
is important only as it develops the
emotion inherent in jt. Therefore,
in any attempt to.appraise the value
of the work one must accept the orig-
inal premise of the authors — that
life is neither good nor bad, but sim-
ply unadjusted and brutal in its
treatment of those who are seeking
an answer to it. The characters are
all examples of frustration and fu-
tility in its various phases. Some of
the people realize they are living a
farce, and some are too stupid to
realize it. Herein lies the distinction
between the tragic figures involved
and their foils.

The play concerns a young girl,
Stella Surrege, who has been hem-
med in all her life by the ostenta-
tious “gracious living” of her un-
feeling, grasping and stupid mother.
Though Stella has a natural apti-
tude for many things, such as paint-
ing, music, and literature,’ she has
never had an incentive to force her
to develop any one of these talents.
She realizes that she is completely
useless as a member of society, and
that under the bonds of her life at
home she can never expand—either
to fail or to succeed. In love with
a married man, Cecil Hervey, who is
and has been for years living on his
wife’s income, she finally decides to
make a break, at least from the stere-
otyped unattractiveness of her home,
by marrying a man whom she does
not love, but who loves her and has
the obvious advantage of being in the
good graces of her. socially-minded
mother.

She becomes engaged to John
Clayne in just such a spirit, and then
in one beautiful moment alone with
him in the woods (of the country
estate her mother is mutilating in an
attempt to produce a more artificial-
ly and financially desirable place than
her rival) she sees him as he really
is and as he will be as her husband.
From that moment she is complete-
ly his, but, tormented by the knowl-
edge of her hypocrisy in marrying
him when she had been in love with
another, she is unable to give herself
up to him and to the love which has
enveloped her whole being. ,Fin-
ally on her wedding day she tells
him of her affair with Cecil Hervey
and receives complete understanding
from him. For one too short hour
they live together in a world different
from the one she has always known
and then, as they attempt to éscape

the wedding guests and get away un-
(Continued on Page Three)

 

 

ho pete

on eee

ec
i ta

 

Comprehensive Exams Urged to
Give Broader Knowledge ~
in Major Field

 

e*

READING IS IMPORTANT

 

(Especially Contributed by Dean

di Manning)

A plan for an important change in
the curriculum is at present under
discussion by the Faculty Curriculum
Committee and the various major de-
partments. This plan, of which cop-
ies have been given to all members
of the Undergraduate Curriculum
Committee, would introduce an exam-
ination on ‘certain general fields of
the major subject to be taken by wall
candidates for the A.B. degree in
the final examination period of their
senior year. The examination would
probably consist of three papers of
approximately three hours each to be
scheduled in the first week of the ex-
amination period. Seniors not pass-
ing it would not receive the degree
in that year, but would be permitted
to attempt the examination again in
the fall or later. |

The plan for the Comprehensive
Examination, which might perhaps
better be called the final examination
in the major subject, has been pre-
pared with the object of strengthen-
ing and unifying the work of the
senior year and, to a lesser degree,
the work of the other three years by
giving to the major work a more defi-
nite final objective. The examina-
tions to be successful must test the
power of the students to use and ap-
ply the information which they have
gathered from courses and reading.
A wider familiarity with what has
been written from different points.of
view on the subject matter of the
major courses might be one essential
part of the preparation.

The plan makes allowance for a
considerable amount of time in the
senior year to be devoted to such
reading or to other reading on spe-
cial topics. A Senior would carry
only three unit courses and she would
have, moreover, two full weeks dur-
ing the mid-year examination period
for intensive reading and study and
probably a certain amount of extra
time in May for a general review. It
is also to be hoped that many stu-
dents will find it possible to do a good
deal of general reading in the sum-
mer before the senior year.

Every effort has been made in the

plan to minimize such interruptions
as would be caused by course exami-
nations, but there is no intention of
encouraging students to concentrate
entirely on their major subject in the
senior year. It is the hope of the
Curriculum Committee that Seniors
would feel well able to carry at least
one elective course, whether it be in
a subject totally unrelated to the ma-
jor or in one in which interest has
been aroused through the study of
‘some branch of the major, In the ma-
jority of cases students would prob-
ably also be carrying work in a close-
ly allied subject.
- It is taken for granted that in
those -courses which are not tested
by the Comprehensive, Seniors would
cover the same ground and do ap-
proximately the same amount of work
as the other students, but special
schedules would be arranged in-order
that the review periods and the writ-
ten tests would not conflict with the
periods of intensive work for the
Comprehensive. 4

The junior year would, generally
speaking, be the period in which stu-
dents would complete Second . Year
work in the major and would carry
essential allied work and one or two
elective courses. At the end of the

_(Continued on Page Three)

 

—— ee
NS

 

Hockey Elections
E. Kent, ’35, has been elect-
ed captain and B. Cary, ’36,
manager of the 1934 hockey
team.

| ton December 29-31 -to discuss. the

 

 

 

 

 

Sands in theatrical impersona-
tions, “Our Stage and Stars,”
‘in’ Goodhart Hall, Bryn Mawr
College, Wednesday, January
10, at eight-twenty o’clock,

Mrs. Hunt’s Readings |
Convey Poetic Spirit

 

 

 

 

Modern Lyrics '‘Emphasized in
Choice of Program—Amy
Lowell Praised

 

MacLEISH SHOWS VIGOR

 

Mrs. Hope Woods Hunt gave at
the Deanery on Thursday afternoon
a charming reading of modern poetry.
Mrs. Hunt has that exceptional fac-
ulty of catching perfectly the auth-
or’s meaning and spirit and of in-
terpreting them to her audience by
voice and gesture with both restraint
and understanding.

The poems read were mainly. those
of women and Mrs. Hunt set the
spirit of the afternoon by first read-
ing Amy Lowell’s “Sisters.” “Amy
Lowell,” said Mrs. Hunt, “is usually
called old-fashioned by the moderns,
and the word ‘old-fashioned’ is often
said in a sneering tone, but this
should not be so.” She has merely
dropped out of the ranks of young
experimenters, but those experiments
of hers which are most valuable will
go on in poetic usage. She has blaz-
ed a trail and thrown away a great
deal of dead wood to clear the path
for poets of the present. Mrs, Hunt
caught perfectly the eager, yet mat-
ter of fact, the darting, clear-sighted
spirit of Amy Lowell in her reading
of “Sisters.” Another poem of Miss
Lowell’s “Number 3 on the Docket,”
Mrs. Hunt read, “because it is pure
drama, and, being human, we all love
the dramatic.” Her reading of it
brought out this quality to the full
and she gave an extraordinarily fine
characterization of the farm woman
whose tragedy the poem reveals.

(Continued on Page Three)

 

Conference to be Held
On Students in Politics

 

A national conference on students
in Politics is to be held in Washing-

question of whether it is the duty of
students to participate in the .social
movements of the times.” Students
from colleges as widely scattered as
Caton, Minn., and California Tech
are expected to attend and Vassar,
Wellesley, and Smith are sending a
delegation ranging from twenty-five
to fifty members. It is hoped that
Bryn Mawr will also be well repre-
sented.

The conference is being sponsored
by such men as Charles A. Beard,
John Dewey, William Alan Neilson,
and Senator Robert Wagner, and is
being organized by such co-operating

organizations as International Stu- }-

dent Service, the League of Nations
Association, the N. S. F. A., the Y.
M. C. A. and the Y. W. C., A.

Although program arrangements
are not yet definite, it is expected
that at the opening session the ques-
tion, “How shall students partici-
pate in politics?” will be discussed
by Daniel Roper, Secretary of Com-
merce; George Z. Medalie, promi-
nent Republican leader; Norman
Thomas, Socialist candidate for Pres-
ident, and Robert Minor, of the Com-
munist Executive Committee, Round
tables will be held on such topics as
national self-sufficiency vs. interna-
tional co-operation, and the future of
democracy under the NRA. Vassar
students will present a play entitled
The American Plan, and it is hoped
that President Roosevelt will consent
to address the conference.

Expenses willbe kept as low as
possible. The registration fee will
be one dollar or a dollar“and a half
at the maximum. Arrangements

-activities.

 

Skill _ in Reading Emphasizes” °° ~

Directness and Sincerity

of Her Style
RECITES NEW POEMS

It is not oftem that a Goodhart
audience receives a poet with such en-
thusiasm as that afforded Edna St.
Vincent Millay when she gave select-
ed readings from her poems on the
night of Monday, December 18. For
not only did she read well; she read
as if she liked to read to us, and she

 

 

*

read so that she could be heard, She ©

made,. however, no comments in the
course of her reading, and it was not
until the Deanery session that the stu.

dents were able to sound her views

on poetry and the modern poets.

Avoiding weighty dictums, she re-
plied to the inevitable undergraduate
query, “What is your definition of
poetry?” with the answer she had giv-
en to a similar question on a Vas-
sar final examination: “Poetry,” she
said on that occasion, “is something
reverently written by great men and
blasphemously defined by undergrad-
uates in female institutions.”

Miss Millay is convinced that the
test of a poem’s goodness is mainly

a personal one, to be estimated by —

the thrill of emotion which reading it
provokes in you or me. A poem may
be written on any subject, provided
that subject moves the writer so
strongly that she fairly has to scream
on paper. While an essay must treat
of a thought, the first consideration
for a poem is the expression of beau-
ty, the thought being a secondary
matter.

To hear Miss Millay read her own

work is to realize twice over how’

sincerely and how strongly she has
been moved on all those subjects,
even the most apparently trivial, of
which she chooses to write. Constant
sincerity of sentiment is often more
difficult of achievement than occa-
sional grand passion; and it is this
sincerity, together with a keen- sense
for the ever-present beauty in the
world around her, that constitutes the
matter of the poetry of Miss Millay.
The artistic skill in choice of word
and simplicity of phrase which has
always characterized her work be-
comes strikingly apparent under the
lingering emphasis with which she
reads aloud her verse.

After reading two short pieces,

“Autumn Chant” and “The Spring .

and the Fall,” from the volume en-
titled HARP WEAVER, the author went
on to the “Ballad of the Harp Weay-

(Continued on Page Four)

 

Bryn Mawr Club Invites
Students to Holiday Tea

 

The News has received the follow-
ing letter from Mrs. Helen Riegel Oli-
ver (Mrs. Howard T. Olivier) presi-
dent of the New York Bryn Mawr
Club:

Probably by ‘this time each under-
graduate has received an invitation
to meet the New York members of
1932 and 1933 at tea..on January 3
from four to six at the Bryn Mawr
Club. We do hope that you will all
be able to come. The Board of Gov-
ernors welcomes you to.the Club and
hopes-that you will find our quarters
at the Park Lane so comfortable and
so central a meeting place that you

will want to join the Club and come

often.

We feel that the Club*is very im- .

portant as a link between students
and alumnae. For us who have grad-
uated, it represents the college in New
York, making contacts with other
Women’s College Clubs, participating
in various allied enterprises and serv-
ing as headquarters for Bryn Mawr
But to you, who are still
at college, the Club has a great deal
to .offer. The Park Lane is a con-
venient place to stay and have meals

ov

with Club reductions, to entertain.
men, and, to all practical purposes, —

 

(Continued on Page Two)

+

: al
Pd

(Continued. on Page Four)

i + atecesmamictason