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THE COLL

EGE NEWS

‘



The College News
. [Founded in 1914.)

Published wedlly during the college year in the

* interest of Bryn Mawr ‘College

—__——
Managing Editor......DEL1A Smiru, ’26

biscuits
EDITORS %

C. Cummines, ’25_ H. Grayson,



ASSISTANT EDITORS
K, ‘Tomkins, ’ Ve
K.. Stmonps, ’27

26

‘Lozs,
A 27

Se Leary,



“ BUSINESS BOARD

Manacer—Louise Howitz, 24.
¢ Marcaret Smitu, ’26,



ASSISTANTS

MarcaAret Boyven, ’25 ELIzapeTH bl dees
Marion Nacue, 25

—

26

Subscriptions may begin at any time
Subscriptions, $2.5 Mailing Price, $3.00



Entered as second class matter, September 26, 1914,
at the post office at Bryn Mawr, Pa., under
the Act of March 3, 1889, .





i,
ww

% WILL IT WORK?

Theoretically the idea of an Intercollegi-.
ate Speakers’ Bureau seems excellent; no
doubt it would be easier and better if we
could get famous speakers in that way.
Like any agency such an institution would
facilitate the procuring of men, who would
really be worth while and could give us
hew thoughts and ideas worth having.
However, the immediate difficulty, as with
so many excellent projects, is the gathering
of sufficient funds to start the Bureau as a
working proposition; arid this would re-
For

there are few great men and famous

quire quite a large amount for capital.

speakers, no matter how lofty their socio-.

logical ideas may be, who would be willing
to talk at colleges for a comparatively
It
would have to be a sure, well-backed thing,

small sum furnished by the Bureau.

reqyiring perhaps an actual endowment,
which is ever hard to find.



HOPE et
A ray of hope now shines for all the
supporters of peace. We who have been
discouraged by the constant rebuffs those
against war have suffered ‘may rejoice.
The horizon is still dark, but we can lighten
our despondency with the glad thought
that our ranks are swelling. Thousands
of women are joining the Women’s Inter-
national League for Peace and Freedom.
The streets are full of those who wear
the little button, which shows us their pro-
_ test against war. The League will open
its fourth biennial congress in Washington
this week, to which thirty-six countries
are sendin
international order .in its political, eco-

nomic and spiritual aspects. After the

delegates to discuss a “new

congress many of the foreign delegates

are planning to speak at the’ International
Summer School in Chicago, from May 17
‘to May 31. May their influence be wide!



INTERNATIONALISM

A sige forward to the coveted interna-

tional, relations that most of us think very.



waluable is the news of the loan of the
United States of the Hermes of Praxiteles
Greece in her new capacity of republic.
only ask that we have it publicly

_ exhibited, for which purpose they will send
_‘ a scholar to travel. with it, and lecture on
— it, and it is probable that they will want
oa mraashlp to transport it. This does_not

pagar ‘across -without the









“

A UTOPIAN IDEAL

Through long centuries of paitiful evolu-
tion we have achieved an order of things
in which each branch of human endeavor

.}is carried on under more or less” expert

direction. Our militaristic yearnings are
tenderly fostered by-~- institutions such as
West Point, Sandhurst,

unnamed others.

Annapolis and
Each special form of
religion is zealously. guarded and long and

careful preparation is a necessary prelimi-

“nary to: filling a position of dignity and

responsibility. The amount of training re-
quired to gain a position of.any ma itude |
The heads of
trusts or corporations are experts, their

in business is stupendous.

eyes are open to every phase of a situa-
tion. They have full comprehension of the
forces playing with or against them.
Why. would. it not be possible to give our
statesmen, diplomats, and lesser officials
the same thorough preparation for their
positions? As it stands now a man is
elected to office and’ then left to shift for
himself. Often his knowledge and ex-
perience are limited to one particular field;
he has had no previous experience relating
to the new duties devolving upon him.
This seems a practice lacking in the high
degree of efficiency which is the sine qua
non of other divisions of human affairs.
Perhaps the day will come when young
men and women before holding office will
go to colleges specially designed to pre-
pare them for public office. As a possible
future solution, competitive euanduiaroon
and a thorough background may be estab-
lished as requisites for all aspiring office-

holders.

To the Editors of Tue News:

“Such gonferences, of course, seem to me
one of the amusingly futile creations of
this conferential age”—this was given, me
as honest opinion anent the. Interracial

Conference held’ at Swarthmore April 11,
12, and 13, but went on in conclusion to

amend, “but the problem is one well worth
thinking about.”

That’s just it—we as. intelligent people
must think about problems so that later on
we can act. Faced with a problem like
that of race it seems that the thing to do
is to talk it over, and how can that be
done adequately except in conference?

It is in conferences that you can say what
you honestly think: with the best assurance
of its having some effect. It is in con-
ferences that the ever present other side can
get counter: opinions at first hand, and the
process is reciprocal. The Swarthmore
conference, small as it was and unofficial,
did not, to use general terms, “accomplish”
anything. That is ‘to say, no immediate
arid transcendent measures ensued,” but
what seems to me all important an intel-
lectual road was opened. White men and
women talked with black men and women
about an interactive problem. There was
on the whole little argument and surpri8-
tngly little idealizing; facts were earnestly
hunted. for-and-honestly looked at. -For a*
good many people there the experience of
meeting negraes as thinking being to think-
ing being was new. We learned at first’
hand something of that often referred to
intelligensia of the black race—and were

forced to recognize them as our equals.

This method of procedure seems to me
to be the sensible starting point for a work-
ing out of any problem, for patently the
individual cannot run the world—by these

| student conferences we will be able to
‘|}amalgamate our student opinion so that

upon it—the preliminaries being at. least
started. : :

I think that any one who was present
at a meeting of the Interracial Gonference
will agree or admit that a step forward
was made—not perhaps in the great na-
tional and international question of black
and white, but in the segment of it that is
ours. And each segment so treated again
and- again will eventually, of course, make
one*big step. ee

Deirpre O'SHEA, ’26.

Gr
a

—
a

BOOK REVIEW

Notes on My Youth; Pierre Loti, trans-

lated by Rose Ellen Stein. Doubleday,
Page and Co.

From the exclusively litery point of

‘| view it seems regi ttable that these posthu-

mous fragments of\Pierre Loti’s diary, in-
terspersed with letters to and from his
friends, should have béen translated.

The charm of his style lies inea smooth
flow of words, rich in sotind suggestion,
for which the French language is peculiarly
fitted. In English-this effect is ‘lost. ‘One
misses the sensuousness of his descriptions.
Words remain, but their power has de-
creased. The descriptions, magical in the
original, become, in translation; somewhat
affected. and unconvincing
fact. /

But from the personal and documentary
It
discovers Pierre Loti’s true reactions to
the seqtiel of his episode with Aziyadé,
recorded in his novel of that name; it

tatements of

side this book is importantly revealing.

brings forward Mon Frére Yves, and other
characters of his autobiographical novels,
We watch
sock high lights of his emotional and tem-

as. actual figures in his life.

pestuous youth as his acrobatic , perform-
ance in a country circus before an enthusi-
astic and amused audience of friends.
There are passages of self-revelation:
“T have no feeling for occidental Europe
where I have found nothing but disappoint-
ments. Even before Islam had won me
over so completely, I already wanted to
leave . . . I hate what is known conven-
tionally as civilization and theories of
equal rights, and so I will take refuge in-
the old Orient,
from social pettinesses, and from the com-
If I can’t be of
the nobility over there very well, then, I

will be of the people, a banakak, but I will,

far from steam-engines,

mon places of progress.

have my corner in the sun and my share
of the liberty which falls to the lot of, the
energetic in the countries where the laws
are not made for everyone . e

And froma friend there is this under-
standing appreciation of his personality,
weighed against that of other men: “Your
soul which you think has grown old and

incapable of strong. emotions has rémained

|young, ardent, and still capable of strong

enthusiasms. You despair of. life and you
have found the only way to live: to have
emotions and know + how_to share them.
We who live a dull’ existence in which each
hour brings some duty imposed by society,.

we who unhesitatingly perform this new

| duty every hour of our life, without think-

ing of giving one instant to what is best in
us, in our heart, or our imagination, we
will> end our stunted existertee without
having lived for a sécond, Our ‘heart, our
imagination, our feelings will all be rusted,
shrivelled up, worn out without ever hav-
ing served.”

’



recent issue of the magazine en entitled On-



~ Thaving “gone into the world” we can act





| ward,

An article entitled “For. the Small . Cas ot,
lege” by M. Fischer ’24, appeared in a].

PRESIDENTIAL POSSIBILITIES
Calviad Coolidge =

Before his death, last fall, President
Harding had. already been considered by
the Republican Party as a possible candi-
date for re-election in 1924, so that Cool-
idge, who, on becoming President, stated
that he would pursue the policies of his
predecessor, was apt to be thought of, too.

Up to the time of his election as vice-



q



| president, Coolidge had not been especially

prominent in national polities. However,
he had held many offices in Massachusetts,
his own state, for though always quiet and
reserved, he had steadily forged ahead
from the time of his graduation with high
honors from Amherst-in 1895. After two
years of work and study, he was admitted
to the Massachusetts Bar in 1897, In 1899
he became @ity Councilman of Northamp-
ton; this was really the’ beginning of a
long series of public offices which he held,
from that time ‘to the present—City Solici-
tor in 1901, Court Clerk in 1903. During

the years 1907 and 1908, ‘Coolidge es
«chosen as Representative to the State Leg-
islature; he was mayor of Northampton in
1910 and 1911 and State Senator for 1912
and 1913,.president of the Senate during
the latter year. Lieutenant-Governor in
1916 to 1918, he was elected Governor in
1918 by a large plurality, and by an even
greater number in 1919,

The police strike, for the settlement of
which he became widely known, lasted for
two days, September 9-11, 1919, a short
reign of terror, and was then, it is gen-
erally granted, efficiently and quietly han-
dled by Governor Coolidge. Largely due
to this and to the valiant efforts of Frank
W. Stearns, Coolidge’s rather enigmatical
but devoted friend, at the Republican con-
vention, he was made Vice-President in
1920. i
During his whole political career, Cool-
idge has been himself very silent, and has
always let others, whether friends or ene-
mies, do most of the talking about him,
for or against. This has resulted in two
widely different attitudes concerning his
ability and efficiency; some have called him
weak, have said ‘that his ‘lack of speech is
really part of his lack of power and
strength, while others feel that he is quiet
and strong, moderate and withal able.

Before he became President, Coolidge
had shown in the other offices he held a
completely sane and reasonable attitude,
keeping always to the middle path.’ He tig
much to further social reform in Massa-
chusetts, and worked hard for various bills
referring to the railroads, but was > never
in any sense radical. :

As president we have even now seen
very little of Coolidge, the man. He has,
as he announced at the beginning, followed
Harding’s policies in many ways. It would,
in fact, with so short a term of office re-
maining, been difficult to do otherwise.
However, it would seem, that of himself,
he tends to be on the whole conservative,
and slow at times, both to pass judgment
and to act. Under his administration the
foreign policy has continued one of exclu-
sion and partial separation, while here at
home the idea is the further seeking of
prosperity for all classes.

Coolidge has expressed his own attitude
in these words, delivered a good many
years ago in a speech on his election to’
the State Legislature of Massachusetts : ~

“Do the day’s work. If it be to protect
the rights of the weak, whoever objects, _
‘do it. If it be to help a powerful corpora-
tion better to serve the people, whatever
the opposition, do that. Expect to be called
a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter.
Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t
be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as
revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to
be as reactionary as the multiplication table.
Don’t expect to build up the weak by pull-
ing down the strong. Don’t hurry to legis-

-|tate. Give administration a chance to catch

up with legislation.”
ENGAGED.



Helen Stone ’21. to- Everett McColl, ke
Pe: Michigan. :