"IF " If you would be a child and live with fairies In that sweet world where what is good comes true; And if you love the salt winds of the ocean, Here are two books that should belong to you. THE BROOM FAIRIES AND OTHER STORIES. By Ethel M. Gate. $1.00 net. SEA MOODS AND OTHER POEMS. By Edward Bliss Reed. $1.00 net. "IF " If you have heard the call of suffering peoples And mean to use your strength to serve their need, Here are wise words of others gone before you, Counsels that you will do full well to heed. NOTES ON TRAINING: FIELD ARTILLERY DETAILS. By Captain Robert M. Danford and Captain Onorio Moretti. Fifth Printing. $2.00 net. 700 FRENCH TERMS FOR AMERICAN FIELD ARTILLERYMEN. By Edward Bliss Reed. 40 cents net. "IF " If duty holds you here, though you are longing THE FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF NUTRITION. By CHANGES IN THE FOOD SUPPLY AND THEIR RELATION TO NUTRITION. By Lafayette B. Mendel. 50 cents net. If after days of danger, nights of waking, You crave the peace that noble thought can bring, Seasoned with laughter, rich with memory's treasure, Read in these pages and your heart shall sing. THE YALE SHAKESPEARE. Pocket Edition, 50 cents net. Library Edition, $1.00 net. THERE'S PIPPINS AND CHEESE TO COME. By Charles S. Brooks. 26 pen-and-ink sketches. $2.00 net. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 120 COLLEGE STREET NEW HAVEN, CONN. MOST this fall, with a fierce resentment against certain little black letters that blurred hopelessly on a white background at a distance of fifteen feet, or with a fervent wish that we had been brought into the world some two or three years earlier. Such petty things, we thought, to keep us from participation in so great a war. We felt that we had bowed in defeat before a quibble. We are rapidly adapting ourselves to new conditions and rubbing off the corners that threatened a rough, uneasy journey through the coming year. The resentment of the more unfortunate has almost vanished in the problems of the workaday world, and the once hopeless wish of those who have not yet attained their majority is being lost in the tardy knowledge that every day is a step to breach the hiatus between the desire for and the realization of active service. It is a period of preparation for all of us. The one time careless aimlessness which formerly characterized college life, however attractive or enjoyable it may have been, is now a thing of the past. It is buried deep beneath a high mound of sincere aspiration and true endeavor. We are here either to make the most of the necessary interim before we may join our fellows in France, or in order to fit ourselves that we may fill to the best of our ability the important places in the world of affairs temporarily left vacant by those who have gone and will go. Each of us has seen the finger of the Stern Daughter pointing this way or that, and there must be no derelicts among us. Discontent in the face of conditions that cannot be remedied is a form of mental cowardice. It is our part now, not to resign ourselves passively to things as they are, but to do our utmost to keep the University running as close as possible to normal, at the same time profiting by the excellent facilities for training offered by the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and the Naval Training Unit. College life is made up of four things: the curriculum, undergraduate activities, comradeship and the Intangible Something, which must be capitalized in order more clearly to denote its mystery. The latter two are self-operative, and require no consideration, but the curriculum (including military and naval training) and the so-called "extra-curriculum" activities, are what offer the real panacea for the evil of internal dissatisfaction. The former merits a far greater degree of attention than it received in the status quo ante bellum, because there is a more positive need for education to-day than there ever has been in the past. Participation in the latter should be to the extent of keeping one busy, and for the higher purpose of maintaining the College as a true college, and not as a mere training school. Some diversion is both legitimate and necessary, but the most futile forms of amusement, which find their epitome, perhaps, in habitual "movie-going," are nothing more or less than wasting time, which is a questionable practice under any circumstances and totally unjustified under the present. The Proclamation of April Fourth announced the arrival of the gods, and the half-gods must go. It is a time to test the permanence of undergraduate institutions. The best of them, such as athletics, the publications, dramatics, the musical clubs, and even the fraternities, combine diversion with actual lasting benefit to the community and to the individual. The worst of them, which are for the most part merely at tractive, parti-colored fungi on the back of Time, will perish because the light on which they thrive has been focused into the point of usefulness and directed upon objects of established value. Athletics of all sorts work in splendid co-ordination with the military or naval training, to produce a soldier or a sailor orientated to his new mode of life before he is actually in it. Under the present system of athletics for the many instead of for the few, an opportunity of appreciably augmenting the benefits of military work is open to the entire University. With the exception of the News (which, in spite of any contrary criticism), is essentially a newspaper, offering the many advantages of reportorial work to its competitors, the publications are a medium for the expression of original thought. And there is no denying that one experiences a pleasant glow of satisfaction upon seeing the child of his brain in printer's clothes, even if it be only a glorified pun in the Record, an engaging description of morning chapel in the Courant, or a short sketch or poem in the Portfolio of the LIT. The new policy of the Dramatic Association, to omit the Christmas trip and to produce plays written by students of the University, is a wartime measure that may well be carried over into peace. It may be that the Musical Clubs are exponents of the theory that a singing army is the best army, but whether or not they are motivated by such a principle, at any rate music is said to be the universal language of mankind and to have charms that soothe the savage beast, both of which characteristics are invaluable to-day. The fraternities, we hope, will make the most of the unprecedented opportunity which they now have, to slough off the bad in them, and to retain the good deeper within. In the curriculum and in the training units we may find our work, and in the better sort of extra-curriculum activities, the greater part of our diversion. No one who is not busy has a right to be here now. And it is this kind of productive busyness that may be considered a means of going South for the winter of our discontent. Philip Barry. |