SUNDAY
FEATURE
SECTION
SUPPLEMENT
FEATURES
TREATRES
LUSICE
LITERARY
T4irr rigaxt :43I&*ttIj
SECTION,
TWO
9
VOL. XXXI. No. 99. ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1921 PRICE FIVE
SPIRIT
OF
REFORM
HOLDS
SWA
Iichigan Campus
SPlays Bie Q
of Button-Button'
SUFFERS EPIDEMIC OF MYSTIC PINS AND BADGES; OVER-ORGANI-
ZATION CALLED RESULT OF SOCIAL INSTINCT WHICH
IS OLDER THAN HISTORY
i
f :.ull lIH=lurllnlllnllntlnlnl nnn lli=l inr11K
SMichigan Man on Harding Cabinet
Michigan can well be proud of
Edwin Denby, '96L, who has re-
cepjtly been signally honored by
his appointment as secretary of
the navy in-President Harding's
cabinet.
Mr. Denby was admitted to
the bar immediately after his
graduation from the University
in 1896; and began his practice
of law in Detroit at once. Since
that time his life has been one
of almost continual service to
Universities A ttaeA
Dancing; }Ichia
Case., Onie of Y ah
DIGEST OF OPINIONS VOICED BY UNIVERSITY AND METROP
TAN PAPERS DECRIES FR IVOITY OF AGE; CAMPAIGNS
BEGUN BY STUDENTS_
(By Stewart T. Beach)
"Or with the dance-let joy be unconfined," cried Lord Byron I
Childe Harold." as he considered the grand ball of the Duchess of
mond at Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. Now reformers, throughot
country, as they watch with fearful gaze the antics of the younger ge
tion, are holding up their hands in horror and changing Byron's wor
read, "On with the dance, if you will-but let joy be more confined-on
(By L. Armstrong Kern)
Way back in the darlt ages, long be-
fore humanity reached any kind of a
state that we can logically conceive,
there may have been a time when
there were no societies of any sort.
Perhaps that was only until Cain and
Abel came along and began to fra-
ternize with each other.
But whenever it was that the first
social organizations hatched forth and
began to bloom, certain it is that we
cannot now readily conceive of a con-
dition of affairs in which they were
non-existent.
Look in an encyclopedia. "Probably
the first fraternal organizations," it
says, "existed among primitive tribes
and were exemplified in such societies
as -the Duk-Duk of the Island of New
Britain in the Pacific or the Mumbo
Jumbo of West Africa." What those
two were we don't know, but it shows
that the social instinct went way back
into th'e past.
Societies Ancient
These old organizations were partly
religious in character and were se-
cret, as were also the next examples
which we find, namely, 'the Eleusians
of the Greeks and the priestly col-
leges of the Romans. Then, follow-
ing these Greek and Roman groups,
came a perfect flood of societies of
one sort and another during the Mid-
die Ages and now we have them all
boiled down, or spread out, into the
mass of societies of today: We Ma-
sons, out of which countless other or-
ders have grown, Christian societies
and organizations directly under the
control of the Roman Catholic church,
and so on.
All of which brings us to the point.
The social instinct is as old as man
and out of it have developed thou-
sands of organizations, brought into
being for thousands of different pur-
poses.' And now, to and behold, we
have the exemplification, the consum-
mation, of the whole of history from
the time when Adam first took a bite
out of the apple skin down to the
prese.nt, right here on our campus,
and we have a mass of societies that
would fairly make the hair of the old
grad turn grey when he compares the
conglomeration now with the time
when there was only one lone frater-
nity at Michigan and that in a back-
woods shack to which the brethren
had been forced by the Board of Re-
gents.
Activities that Function.
We have, in ,short, a society for
about every activity that is now going
on or ir ever expectedhto blossom
forth hereabouts, and 'when we want
to do anything in any one line the
only problem which confronts us is
which of the groups aiming at that
sort of thing we'll choose.
The effects of all this mixture is
curious, and especially so its effect
on the students themselves. Take the
(Continued on Page Three)
his country, for in 1898 he be-
came a gunner's mate on the U.
S. S. Yosemite.
Following the Spanish-Amer-
ican war he returned to his law
practice, and in 1902 was elect-
ed to the Michigan house of rep-
resentatives.
EDWIN DENBY
Secretary of the Navy
It was in 1905 that Mr. Denby was elected to Congress, where he served
until 1911. In 1917 he enlisted as a private in the marine corps and he rose
to the rank of major before leaving the service:' Denby is a member of Phi
Delta Phi, professional law fraternity.
Ornery'Oenothera
'
Will Not Behave)
the 'toddle' and 'shimmie'."
University of Michigan students,
who believe themselves to be the in-
dividual victims of a faculty which it
is sometimes charged, is puritanically
attempting to "Blue-Law" them, may
be surprised to find that their case
is simply one of many which are eith-
er the cause or the result-no dne
seems to know just which--of a reac-
tion to the sudden and almost com-
plete change in standards which war
brought with it. Universities and col-
leges throughout the country are wag-
ing individual conflicts against the
modern forms of dancing-sometimes
the campaigns are carried on by the
faculty-more often it is the students
themselves who have been aroused by
conduct which they feel instinctively
degrades and cheapens the high stand-
ards of womanhood inherent to the
just conceptions of moralitywhich
should prevail in civilized society.
In Brown University, the student
body, led by the Brown Daily Herald,
has "declared a war of pitiless pub-
licity on the 'don't-give-a-damn' so-
ciety girls." Short skirts, short socks,
and visible garters are among those
things which the students seek to ban-
ish.
"We fellows don't claim to ring any
bells for extra virtue," states the edi-
FAMOUS ALUMNI
(By William W. Ottaway)
(Qy Paul Watzel.)
They are nothing but small, yellow
flowers, some consider them to be
hardly more than weeds, and yet
there are two or three thousand of
them in the University botanical gar-
dens, 'and soon there will be thirty
thousand. Oenotheras, oenotheras in
abundance-but why?
It seems that the plant, commonly
known as the evening primrose, con-
--
r
That S. E P. Yarn Had A Leak;
College.
Life
Has
Two
Sides
(By Leo Hershdorfer)
I been readmn' t' e S. P. Post, which other big paint the S. E. P. forgot-
is a good magaZine miot of the time. uphuilding of character through de-
and what nice covers, etc., and I s seraFie companionship and intellec-
where some big writer comes out with ,;al conversation. That's what a lec-
an article that a man is fooi'h for
going to college, and that it's better tuire s for.
for parents to fix t;,'ir cars and pay For example. It's afternoon, and
off their ortgages thn to send their ziiout a coupla minutes before the
lovin' chicks and ceildren to a uni- hour. The room's half filled up, and
versity. Why, they can learn to tod- the '
die in the high schoo , and that's hi th profs sitting on the platform
enough for any Amie:'ican son oy' talking to his assistants about the
. daughter. Nix on that stuff, is all I weather and what questions to give in
gotta say, that dope's all, all wrong. the next blue book. Then thg drifters
The leak in this S. E. P. story was begin pilin' in, auld pretty soon there's
that the writer forgot that collitch a quorum, and the assistants go to
life has two sides-and justo as many the back of the room, from force of
kinds of advantages. There's the m4- habit, and the professor begins the
terial and cultural sides-"the cultur- ordeal.
al and social advantages as contrast- The students (-that's all those
ed with the material benefits" is how whats in the room-) get the signal
they put it up to us in freshman rhet- from the platform, and out comes the
oric. newspapers and the letters, what
and modern modes of self-adornment
.as illustrated by living models, these
birds snatch a. delightful little snooze.
Ah, the dreamers! Bill Shakespeare
said "ambition should be made of
sterner stuff,"-that was before near
beer-but are not the dreamers of to-
day the thinkers of tomorrow? Chalk
up another one for collitch!
Then there's the -business ad boys
reading the papers, preparing for their
life vocation by keeping in touch with
worldly events even while in the
class-room Talk about your prac-
ticability-would living mortal want
more proof than this? If the fellow
or girl sitting next to them hasn't
something to read, those with the
papers passes around the inside pages
ang. editorials, leaving themselves de-
prived 'of all the reading matter but
the sporting page. Which all goes to
show that students develop their
spirit of generosity, sociplibity, and
willingness, to deny themselves to help
others in need, all while they're in
collitch.
Then, when the hour's up, and the
prof. hops off the platform, they
shakes their sleeping companions till
they wakes up; and then arm in arm
they leave the room, walking down the
street like two brothers. "For this is
college life, and none shall deny
youth of its privilege and desire for
higher education," some clever man
once said. Great stuff, says I. {
forms to none of the laws of heredity
in its reproduction. Ordinarily plants
of closely related sorts can be cross-
ed by placing pollen from one on the
pistil of the other. The results in
subsequent generations follow defi-
nite laws; the botanist can expect
certain characteristics in the pro-
duct. But not so with the oenothera.
And although it has . been believed
that there is "method in the madness"
of the small flower that refuses to
conform in its laws of reproduction,
no one has as yet been able to hit
upon that method.
Started Experiments
Experiments started some 30 years
ago when de Vries, the greatest of
the Dutch botanists, noticed that in
ma'ny evening primrose families cer-
tain peculiar individuals looked and
acted different from the rest. On ac-
count of this peculiar characteristic
he started a bed of the flowers in the
hope of establishing some general law
for them. He raised them in quanti-
ties, crossed and re-crossed them, and
developed a theory of evolution from
them, but he could not definitely es-
tablish it. Finally he wrote about
them, but the utmost he could do was
to convince other botanists that they
were still largely an enigma.
De Vries' theory, known as the "mu-
tation theory of evolution" has at-
tracted more attention than any bio-
logical theory since the time of Dar-
win. It is astonishing that the theory
has been generally accepted, since
few scientists have been able to sub-
stantiate it in their own research. The
evening primrose does not act like
other organisms; and one of the out-'
standing problems of biology is to
Ibring its behavior into conformity
with the laws of inheritance that ap-
pear of almost general applicability
to plants and animals.
In spite of the perplexities of the
problems de Vries has raised, which
may not all be solved ii his life-time,
he will doubtless go down in history
with Darwin and Mendel as one of the
three greatest men in the field of ev-
olutionary biology. His work at-
tracted American botanists, and the
first oenothera beds made their ap-
(Continued on Page Two)
tor of the Brown Daily Herald, "-
just hope we are half decent eitiven
that's all." The Herald's managir
editor is authority for the stateme
that he "heard one chap say he nev
saw so many garters anywhere ou
side of a department store as he sa
at Providence dances." "After yc
have toddled with a girl," adds th
student, "there's no more myste
about her for you."
The affair at Brown University $u
about expresses the turn which the
reform campaigns are taking throug
out the country. At some colleges, t
movement seems to be well-order
and sane; at others university a
thorities or students seem to be sir
ply grasping wildly at any stra
which will make it appear to I
public that they are really attempti
to curb the wave of "jazz-madnesi
An example of this latter phase
the camwpaign would seem to be foul
at the North Dakota Agricultural C
lege where the Student Commissi
has ruled that "at all informal dan
held on the campus no more than ti
dances will be engaged ahead by oit
er sex." This, apparently, is aim
at the man who brings a girl to
dance, solely for the purpose of dai
ing with her himself. It is diffici
to see just what effect thiis rule won
have in keeping such couples' fir(
dancing together throughout the e
tire evening. Perhaps it would ma
the student ask his partner for V
dances; then for two more, and
on, but it. certainly would not'preve
the pair from spending the entire c
ening in dancing together.
"Toddle" Frowned Os
In the University of Kansas, t
"toddle" has been frowned upon a
university authorities are enforei
their rules against it. That the ru
are not, however, meeting with esp
ial favor from the student body
general is exemplified by the rep
of the first dance held under the n
rulings at which were present hea
of the various colleges. It appei
that the students got arouisl the r
ings simply by pushing towards t
side-lines where sat the watch
chaperones the. more conseryat
dancers, while in the center of1
floor, the "toddle" went joyously
The so-called "West-Point" style
dancing has been decreed in the '
versity of Oregon as a fitting zeutr
izer of the influence of "jazz."
"Under the new code," says the
egon Daily Emerald, official publi4
tion of the university, "the ma
right band should be placed ligh
upon the woman's back, and the rip
elbow at a position conveniently hii
The man's left arm and consequen
the woman's right, sho4ld not be b4
toward the body, but extended 'aw
at the nearest to a straight line
lowed by comfort. The proper pla
for the woman's left hand is ab
(Continued on Page Four)
Well, first there's the comforts.
Take the lecture rooms,, and jes think
-where could you find a better place
or a more intellectual atmosphere
where a fellow could sleep? If it's
an hour lecture, you only have to
stay awake twice-until the roll is
taken, and when the class begins
shuffling their feet so the prof. can
wake up and dismiss the class. If a
fellow don't want to sleep in his lec-
ture class, and mighty few don't, then
he can enjoy the companionship and
conversation of his mates. There's an-
ain't been read since breakfast, and
just after the next week's quiz as-
signment is given out, whiz, bang!
goes the notebooks !shut tight.
Over in one corner two birds is
cracking jokes, thus cultivating a
sense of humor, which is putting an-
other one over on the S. E. P. -Hu-
mor is as essential to mankind and
collitch students as the New York Call
is to ,Debs, and that's goin' some. In
the back of the room, and along the
sides, the birds which were up too
late last night after studying figures
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
Of prominent graduates of the Uni-
versity of Michigan Stewart Edward
White is perhaps the best known to
the average American. Born in Grand
Rapids in 1873 'he overcame the am-
bition to be a furniture salesman and
entered the University" taking his
Ph.D. degree in 1895 and his M.A. de-
gree eight years later.
Following graduation' he rose up-
ward in his chosen profession by
leaps and bounds until he is now rec-
ognized as one of the most popular
American authors. Among his well
known works are: "The Blazed Trail",
"Conjuror's House", "The Gray Dawn"
and "The Leopard Woman."./
White is a member of the Players
club of New York City, the National
Press, of Washington, D. C., and' the
Bohemian club. His present address
is Burlingame, California.
GRAHAM
For Your Convenience
RAHA
TWO STORES
Both Ends of Diagonal Walk