FOUR THE MICHI-GAN DAILY THE MICHGAN-DA-L Published every morning except Monday wuring the University year by the Board in Control of Student Publications. Member of Western Comference Editorial Association. The Associated Press is exclusively en- titled to the use for republication of all news' dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and the local news pub- fished herein. Entered at the pnstoffice at Ann Arbor, Michigan, as second class matter. Special ratea of postage granted by Third Assistant Post- wfaster Genera. Subscription by carrier, $4.o; by mail, 14.50. Offices: Ann Arbor Press Building, May- nsard Street. Phones: Editorial, 4925; Business, 2s11. EDITORIAL STAFF Telephone 4925 MANAGING EDITOR KENNETH G. PATRICK Editor... ........ ......Paul J. Kern City Editor.............. .Nelson J. Smith News Editor............ Richard C. Kurvink SportsEditor.................Morris Quinn Women's Editor............. Sylvia S. Stone Editor Michigan Weekly....J. Stewart Hooker Music and Drama.........R. L. Askren Assistant CityLditor...Lawrence R. Klein Night Editors Clarence N. Edelson Charles S. Monroe Joseph E. Howell Pierce Rosenberg onald J. Klinc George U. Simons George C. Tilley Reporters Paul L. Adams C. A. Lewis Morris Alexander Marian MacDonald Esther Anderson Henry Merry C. A. Askren N. S. Pickard Bertram Askwith Victor Rabinowitz Louise Behymer Anne 'chell Arthur Bernstein Rachel Shearer Seton C. Bovee Robert Silbar Isabel Charles Howard Simon L. R. Chubb Robert L. Sloss Frank E. Cooper Arthur R. Strubel Helen Domine Edith Thomas Douglas Edwards Beth Valentine Valborg Egeland Gurney Williams Robert J. Feldman Walter Wilds Marjorie Follmer George E. Wohlgemuth William Gentry Robert Woodroofe Lawrence Hartwig Joseph A. Russell Richard Jung. Cadwell Swanson Charles R. Kaufman A. Stewart Ruth Kelsey Edward L. Warner Jr. Donald E. Layman Cleland Wyllie BUSINESS STAFF Telephone 21214 BUSINESS MANAGER EDWARD L. HULSE Aiwistant Manager-RAYMOND WACHTER AdvrtiingDepartment Managers cee Advertising.......... ..Alex x K. Scherer Advertising...............A. James Jordan Advertising ............. Carl W. Hammer Service ...............Herbert E. Varnum Circulation .................George S. Bradley Accounts............. Lawrence E. Walkley Publications...............Ray M. Hofelich Assistantsy Irving Binzer Donald Black tone Mary Chase Jeanette Dale Vernor Davis Bessie Egeland Helen Geer Ann Goldberg Kasper Halverson George Hamilton Agnes Herwig Walter Jack Horwich Dix Humphrey Marion Kerr Lillian Kovinsky Bernard Larson Leonard Littlejohn Hollister Mabley Jack Rose Carl F. Schenm Sherwood Upton Marie Wellstead Yeagley FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1928{ Night Editor-DONALD J. KLINE' MAKE THE PUNISHMENT fT THE CRIME Sphinx, suspended from activity for an indefinite period, has been told by University officials that its initiation methods do not meet with official approval. Lacking evidence that any members were sufficiently under the influence of liquor during the recent initiation to warrant their being dropped from the University, the Senate committee did the next most dras- tic thing in its power and dropped Sphinx. Aside from the question of whether or not the committee was justified in taking such punitive action on the basis of the facts, several inconsistencies !have long been present in Sphinx initiations that have been open to question and correction. The incident in which three neophytes of the society were scalded during the initiation proc- ess was at best an unfortunate one. Some ordeal, unquestionably, is desireable to impress the cardinal virtue of humility upon. the initi- ates, but the public announcement of the honor being conferred upon them should not be allowed to take the form of public torture. Sphinx initiations in. the past, however, have never been so bad or so destructive as to be deserving of total abolishment or even of complete revision. The ceremony, characterized by pistol shots and erratic capers through the city's streets has rather been one of the most picturesque and memorable of the college year. No one will deny in the face of recent events that the society merited a rebuke. But the Senate committee has cured the disease by killing the patient-rebuked an evident lack of caution by remov- ing the society, and swept away at the samo time an organization de- signed to foster good fellowship and service to Michigan. Wrathy powers might have been offended by anything less than suspension for Sphinx, but punish-! ment via supervision would have! come closer to fitting the crime. As the matter stands now, Sphinx, promising a more dignified initi- ation, cannot justly be denied its petition for reestablshment. AnT THE TRIRUNE particularly modified by the first paragraph of the accompanying news story which read in part, "The entire 22 members of Sphinx society, junior literary class organ- ization of the University of Michi-. gan, were suspended today by the; senate committee on student af- fairs." The statement, of course, is anl obvious misrepresentation of fact based upon an equally obvious mis- understanding of the decision of the senate committee. In this in- stance, the error was totally un- necessaiy and decidedly to be re- gretted. That it should be the sec- ond breath of fact as well of jour- nalistic ethics committed by the Tribune in as many stories con- cerning the meeting of the com- mittee, moreover,- places the mat- ter in a decidedly serious light. Twice in the case of the Sphinx investigation and at least on one other occasion in the past three months, the Tribune has carried stories from Ann Arbor based, per- haps, upon some kernel of truth but so grossly exaggerated and distorted to preclude all possibility of even the most informed reader discerning between the truth and error of statement. Any code of newsl aper ethics or journalistic policy which author- izes or seeks to justify such acts of sensationalism cannot be denounc- ed too loudly nor its practices too often condemned. They and the; acts which they seek to uphold are a disgrace to newspapers and newspapermen everywhere. The sooner they are repudiated the bet- ter will be the situation for all concerned. Campus Opinion Contributors are asked to be brief, confining themselves to less than 300 words i possible. Anonymous com- munications will be disregarded. The names of communicants will, however, be regarded as confidential, upon re- quest. Letters published should nut be construed as expressing the editorial opinion of the Daily. WE APOLOGIZE To the Editor: In your editorial on December 6th under the title "This Dormitory Problem" you make certain state- ments in regard to the proposed location of the dormitory for wo- men in relation to the University Hospital which, to put it mildly, are highly insulting both to the management and the personnel of that division of the University. You say: "The University hospital, through its necessary func- tions, attracts large numbers of men of a very low and de- spicable sort, many of them as employees. On several occa- sions in the past it has been necessary to call police protec- tion to prevent the molestation of nurses in the short' distance between the hospital and the present nurses' home. The new dormitory is planned equally close to the! hospital in a location even more remote from the general course of traffic. If our present dormit tories are bothered by window- peepers in the shadow of the campus, if women have been repeatedly molested in the vi cinity of the hospital; is it wise on any grounds to place a1 dormitory of 500 girls in the proposed location?"I My association with the hospital has been pretty intimate and I have had occasion to be there at every hour of day and night. Ii have furthermore taken the trou- able to inquire of every one who would be at all likely to have in- formation on the subject and I feelf warranted in saying that your statement to the effect that the University hospital attracts "large numbers of men of a very low and despicable sort, many of them em- ployees" has no warrant in fact. It is true that the nurses have been annoyed by, men but it is not true that these men have been re- lated to the hospital in any way. Since you have raised the question, I feel required to state the facts, which are as follows: During the autumn of 1926, the nurses of the hospital were so much annoyed by University stu- dents that it was necessary to ask for a special police officer who was stationed in the neighborhood of i the nurses' dormitory between. the hours of 7:00 and 12:00 p. m. Thisl officer succeeded in preventing niurses from being annoyed by stu-j dents. He was on duty for six or eight weeks during the autuimn months. The same situation re- curred for a time during the au- tumn of 1927 but ceased after the1 auto ban went thoroughly into ef- fect. T a m enr- r t.n aupt 1o-n +c.-nEpr f'knvn THE TRUTHI ABOUT THE OPERA No, boys and girls, you won't find a pot of gold at Rainbow's End- but Mimes will. * * * Of course, when such famous contemporaries as B e n n i e Oosterbaan and my next--col- umn neighbor and the manag- ing editor think a show is "great," why should I disagree? But then, they didn't pay for their tickets. * * * But how can they justify the exit one chorus tried to make through the wall of an adobe hut? To me the choruses looked like a run-down clock! * * * Gorious In Rcluse A General Review, By I. Leslie Askren Make Your This William Mortan Lewis, Jr. Wonder what the Ann Arbor cigar stores will do when the Opera leaves town? From here we procede to our muscular leading lady. If Kunte Rockne ever sees him, he'll be in Notre Dame next year. He side- steps like Red Grange. His legs look like Charlie Paddock's, and when he first came on the stage, he ran just like Charlie Paddock . with a thorn in his foot. And keeping up the football metaphor, "Buster" is triple threat man: he can do anything but sing, dance and act. In short, the Opera is done E Browne. There are three good songs in the show: Mexicana, Fly Aaway, and Wonderful Girl. There is noth- ing jazzy enough about the others to turn red litums "blue." The pride of the previous re- viewers, who saw the show gratis, is George Johnson, sec- ond male lead. He is a pinch hitter. Bill Day, campus bad boy, once had it, but the son that shone in the Day has been eclipsed by the black in- tervening cloud of faculty appobrium. Too Good For Opera Before an audience distinguish- ed much more by their hungry zeal: for authoritative music than by physical good health, Fritz Kreis- ler appeared to play his way through a fascinating program of classical music to a finale figuring a number of his own arrangements for the violin. Ann Arbor, as usual, acted in ap- palling bad taste in the matter of tardy arrivals. There seems little excuse for interruption of a pro- gram after the first fifteen min- utes-unless one considers the ex- traordinary eagerness for encores as in some measure compensating for early rudeness. But arrivals forty-five minutes late are as dis- gusting as the gallery gods who in- sist on encores long after they have had their honest money's worth. But Kreisler remained the gen- tleman throughout and gave his best to. a program that offered rare opportunities for exhibiting his brilliant virtuosity. Ithwould be exaggeration to say that he in- terpreted the spirit of his music with the same fidelity that he played it. He is too much at ease on his instrument to have to fight out the musical essence of his sub- ject-and this in face of his ex- traordinarily sympathetic treat- ment of the Schubert Rondo. But if his-concert was not an emotion- al, nor even an intellectuals expe- rience, it was fascinatingly a study in violin technique of which Kreis- ler is ackknowledgedly master. Playing the final three Caprices o' Paganini he seemed most satisfac- torily occupied. Brilliant things, they called for a sureness and fa cility that no other number on the program offered so completely and he did himself thorough justice. This struck the keynote of his con- cert and brought to a close a mar- velous exhibition. MORE I PARTUU l' LAL Y Calmly, with no fuss, Fritz Kreisler proceeded to give a dein- onstration of phenomnenal violin playing last night at Hill Audito- rium. The flawless quality of his tone, the sensitive flexibility of his bowing (the two are by no means unrelated), his obvious musical awareness, all attested the mastery of the man. There was no hard work. Whatever may have once been difficuly had beensovutterly vanquished that all signs of effort were obliterated. If one accepts Kreisler as the superby finished artist nothing more is to be said. His phrases are so carefully molded, the pre- cise intensity he desires so deftly produced, and everything so well- balanced that one hesitates to say anything that might be construed as suggesting improvement. Indeed, the problem of evaluating Kreisler is the problem of evaluating a class of greathmusicians, or rather of choosing between two classes. Both are so undeniably great that, it would be insolence to dictate to either. Kreisler has the company of such men as Toscannini, Casas, Heifetz and Bauer. All the qual- ities mentioned above characterize these men. They are all conscious- ly aware of every note they play. But there is another type of mu- sician whose musical doings, al- though they may once have been thought over, are no longer on a conscious level. Their expression is not quite so easy. Vestige of the tremendous emotional cost of their articulateness still betrays itself,.in their music. The machin, ery of their musical expression is not so well oiled. Among the vio- linists Elman is one of these, Pad- erewski and Rachmaninoff among the painists, Mengelberg and Muck among the conductors. Beethoven is their composer, Mozart belongs to the others. The reviewer's symnpithy goes to the second group. For him, a least, there was, despite its finish, too much going on at orie level m the performance last night. Let us admit that much of the muilasic was written so. Our reason is con- vinced but the f