THE'MICHIGAN DAILY"
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1931
TH-MC IG N DAU'.WDNSDY ARL 9 13
....... .r .
Published every morning except Monday dur-
ing the University year by the Board in Control
of Student Publications.
Member of Western Conference Editorial Asso-
ci ation.
The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to
the use for republication of all news dispatches
credited to it or not otherwise credited in this
paper and the local news published herein.
Entered at the postoffice at Ann Arbor, Michi-
gan, as scon class matter. Special rate of
postage granted by Third Assistant Postmaster
General.
Subscription by carrier, $4.00; by mail, $4.50.
Offices: Ann Arbor Press Building, Maynard
Street. Phones: Editorial, 4925; Business, 21214.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Telephone 4925
MANAGING EDITOR
Chairman Editorial Board
HENRY MERRY
FRANK E. COOPER, City Editor
News Editor...............Gurney Williams
Editorial .irector............Walter W. Wilds
Assistant City Editor........Harold 0. Warren
Sports Editor.............. Joseph A. Russell}
W omen's Editor ............. Dary L. Behmiyer
Music, Drama, Books ......... Win. J. Gormni1
Assistant News Editor.......Charles R. Sprowl
Telegraph Editor ............George A. Stauter
Copy .Editor................Win. E. Pyper
NIGHT EDITORS
S. Beach Conger Charles I. Sprowl
Carl S. Forsythe Richard L. Tobin
)avid M. Nichol Harold 0. Warren
John D. Reindel
Sports Assistants
Sheldon C. Fullertons aJ.Cullen Kennedy
Charles A. Sanford
REPORTERS
Uhomas XAL Cooley
Morton Frank
Frank B. Gilbreth
Saul Friedberg
Boland C 0dman
Morton lper
Dryan Jones'
Wilbur J. Aeyers
Eileen Blunt
Nanette Dembit,
Elsie Feldman
Ruth Gallmeyer
ily G. Griles
JeanaLev.
3Dorothy Macgee
Susan Manchestcr-,
Robert L. Pierce
Richard Racine
Karl Seiffert
Jerry E. Rosenthal
George A. Stauter
.John W. Thomas
John S. Townsend
Nary McCall
Mile Miller
Margaret O'Brien
Eleanor Rairdon
Anne Margaret Tobin
Margaret Thompson
Claire Trusseli
BUSINESS STAFF
Telephone 21214
T. JOLLIs'TERt MABLEY, Business Manager
iASPER I1. IIALVERSON, Assistant Manager
Department Managers
Advertising..... ......Charles T. Kline
Advertising ..............homnas M. Davis
Advertising........Willianm W. Warboys
Service...........Norris J. Johnson
Publication............Robert W. Williamson
Circulation..............Marvin S. Jiobacker
Accounts..... .........Thomas S. Muir
Business Secretary ...........Mary J. Kenanl
h arry 1. Beglev
Vern Bishop
WilliaiaIlrown
ERobert Callahan
William AW. ]Dayis
MIiles Hoisingtou
Erie Kightlinger
Agn W. Verner
Marian Atran
Helen Bailey
Josephine Convisser
Mai e Fishgrumd
Dorothy LeMire
Dorothy Laylin
Assistants
Noel D. Turner
Don. W. Lyon
William Morgan
RichardtStratemneier
Keith Tyler
Richard H. Hiller
Byron C. Vedder
Sylvia Miller
Helen Olsen
Mildred Postal
r Marjorie Rough
Mary L. Watts
Johanna Wiese
lines unsurpassed in educational
history-and raise its tread proudly
saying, "Look, here's what we've
done."
MUNICIPAL COURTS
Newly-elected Mayor H. W i r t
Newkirk recommended last week
that Ann Arbor establish a munici-
pal court, to take the place of the
present justice-of-the-peace courts.
With his proclamation, he placed
himself in the majority group of
political theorists, who have long
advocated abolition of the compli-
cated, and often corrupt practices
of the justices of the peace.
Mayor Newkirk remarked that "I
strongly favor a municipal court
to take the place of the relic of an-
tiquity-the justice court of colon-
ial times."
He has evidently analyzed the
contemporary municipal judiciary
of Ann Arbor and similar cities and
boroughs, and discovered the num-
erous flaws in its existence.
Removal of the arbitrary judg-
ments of the justices in civil and
criminal cases alike; abolition of
the fee system of paying fines,
which is a temptation to police
officers and constables to "patron-
ize certain justices, in considera-
tion of a percentage cut of the
fines; recognition of the tendency
to appeal cases from the justice
courts, would all cause a speedier
fairer administration of justice in
minor cases.
For Ann Arbor, the municipal
council chamber represents the be-
ginning of a solution to the prob-
lem. Used but twice a month for
official business, it could feasibly
be usesd as a municipal court-room,
the seat of a popularly elected mun-
icipal judge.
Corresponding reductions in fees,
being removed from the whims of
the justice of peace, a wider juris-
diction for the court, and the op-
tion of a jury panel for the defend-
ants, might mean the first step in
a permanent solution of the mun-
icipal judicial problem.
,o 0
1 Editorial Comment
i°
,THE DRIFT IN COLLEGE SPORTS
(New York Herald-Tribune)
Columbia has followed a good
lead; it has decided not to differ-
entiate between one sport and an-
other in the awarding of varsity
insignia. That is as it should be.
What matters it whether an under-
"graduate gives his best in a football
game or in a fencing match? He
should receive the best that the
university has to award for athletic
prowess. We rejoice over this de-
cision because it means that an-
other outstanding university has
fallen into line as far as the ques-
tion of sports in the life of the
undergraduate is concerned.
Nature gives this boy a sturdy
'pair of legs and a deep chest; to
one it gives a supple wrist and a
quick eye; to another it gives a
sense of balance and the quickness
of mind and muscle so essential to
the adept at squash or indoor ten-
nis. Because we believe in the
bracing influence of competition we
favor the awarding of college num-
erals and letters to succesful com-
petitors. The boy or man who never
wins either his numerals or his
letters may enjoy to the full his
activit in the intercollegiate
sports arena, but nevertheless we
are still in support of the policy of
[giving prizes.
There is-a definite tendency to-
ward building up what have been
known as the minor sports-soccer,
Rugby, swimming, boxing, lacrosse,
fencing, basketball, golf and so on.
The most recent development has
been to give them equal standing
with the so - called major sports.
There could be nothing more whole-
some in the undergraduate world.
Colleges and universities are sup-
posed to lay the foundation for the
growth of good Americanism rather
than to profit by the athletic pro-
wess of a small group of abnorm-
ally well developed youngsters, who
are in no sense representative,
either mentally or physically, of the
generation in which they live.
- About Books -
FACT AND BIOGRAPHY
WILLIAM CONGREVE: by D. Crane
Taylor: published by Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1931: N. Y. C.
The known facts about a man's
life may be so plentiful and so re-
vealing that his biography need
possess only the patience to gather
them, the skill to group them, the
style to state them lucidly. The
biographer who attempts to be
"creative" about such a subject in-
sults our intelligence. The ordinary
scholar's anonymity and simple!
presentation are both ideal when
he has such a subject to recon-
struct.
Mr. D. Crane Taylor's new life of
Congreve--who has been singularly
neglected-is the first one since Ed-
mund Gosse's in 1888. Mr. Taylor
suggests the reason:\"two great dif-
ficulties confront the biographer of
Congreve and make his task, how-
ever important, relatively thank-
less. These are the dearth of relia-
ble contemporary information about
the dramatist and his habit of
guarding scrupulously the details of
his private life." That is, the facts
aren't either plentiful or revealing.
The immediate inference is that
very probably the biographer will
be forced to employ an additional
effort of intelligence. He must in-
terpret to adequately reconstruct.
He must not only "creatively" inter-
pret known facts. He must, in a
sense, create new facts to fill in.
The scholar's humility and implicit
trust in presentation of fact as.the
ideal method are stupid in such a
case.
The stupidity is especially unpar-
donable when the biographer makes
in his Preface a remark that should
have told him his task was doomed
to failure if he doesn't do some-
thing scholarly about it.
Mr. Crane probably knows more
facts about Congreve than anyone
else living. But the man, of whom
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who
knew all the wits, said "I never
knew anybody who had so much
wit," emerges from Mr. Crane's
pages a wooden man who led a
dull life. The point is we don't be-
lieve it. Neither does Mr. Crane, I
suppose. We are grateful for the
facts he has presented; but we re-
sent his satisfaction with them, es-
pecially when he himself realizes
they aren't enough. Who is going
to digest and speculate on the facts
if not him who has known them
in the intimacy of collection? Mr.
Crane chose to look on his task as
the "thankless" presentation of in-
adequate factual material. His task
was relatively "unimportant" as a
consequence.
DARK HERITAGE by Shirland
Quin; Little Brown & Company;
Review copy courtesy Slater's
Book Store.
"Dark Heritage" is not by any
manner of means a great book; in
fact, its only claim to being even a
good book is the fact that it man-
ages to hold the reader's interest
through a bewildering maze of plot
and character portrayal. The au-
thor is, needless to say, a woman.
The tortuous windings through
which she leads the hero, Mervyn
Morgan, are feminine in their -lack
of consistencyand in the general
scheme of their execution.
The heroine, poor thing, being an
apathetic, discouraged creature,
seems to accept all the whims of
the fickle Mervyn, who has to sur-
vey the whole field of eligible
women, to the extent of getting en-
gaged to one, and marrying an-
other, before he finally discovers
that it is she for whom he has been
waiting. Their reunion is particu-
larly unconvincing, and spoils the
effect for which Miss Quin has
evidently been straining.
. With these defects as its chief
drawbacks, "Dark Heritage" is still
an interesting novel. The Welsh
background, both of landscape and
of character, is fascinatingly for-
bidding, for sombre as it first ap-
pears, it is so graphically presented
that it cannot fail to arouse inter-
est. The wild grandeur of the Wales
scenes, is an excellent setting for
the stormy family quarrels of the
hot-headed Morgans. The family
seems to be imbued with the spirit
of the land itself, and Mervyn
seems strangely old-world and out
of place when he first appears in
America.
It is in the AmerIt n scenes that
the novel fails to carry put its first
promise of power, for after the hero
gets an American haircut ani2 be-
gins to wear horn rimmed glass.S,
he loses most of his individuality,
and therefore, most of his charm.
His struggles in adjusting himself
to his new surroundings are very
tiearly as interesting as a sociology
textbook, and he never again re-
sumes his more natural Welsh
guise.
Less emphasis on the American
side of Mervyn's story; less detailEd
accounts of his dissilusionments
with women, less of the "go-getter"
sentiment which is uncomfortably
rendolent of Horatio Alger, would
make this book literature instead
of a misguided attempt at it.
M. O'B.
retirement and life after that? Was
his infertility mere indolence? Was
he, like Wycherley, just a gallant
The long arm of the telephone
I
operator
How to extend the operator's range five-
fold? There's an example of the prob-
lems put up to a telephone engineer.
This was part of a study in stepping
up the speed of service to distant points.
"Long Distance" used to relay your call
to one or more other operators. Now
she herself reaches the city you are call-
ing, 30 or 300 or 3000 miles away.
made longer
Result: in five years the average time
needed to complete a long-distance con-
nection has been cut from 7 minutes to
less than 2 minutes.
In this industry even, long approved
methods are never considered beyond
improvement. For men of the right
aptitude, that viewpoint is a stimulating
challenge.
STEPPING I NTO A MODERN WDORKLD
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1931
Night Editor - JOHN D. REINDEL
N. Y. U. CELEBRATES
New York university celebrates
her 100th anniversary this month
with ."Charter Day" dinners, insti-
tutes, conferences, assemblies and
special programs throughout New
York city. Among her more promin-
ent alumni are Governor Franklinj
D. .Roosevelt, Ogden L. Mills, under-l
secretary of the treasury, Dr. James
R. Angell, president of Yale, and
Dr. George S t e w a r t, nationally
known surgeon and a member of
the N. Y. U. medical faculty for
years.
This outward and visible sign of
an inward and spiritual accom-
plishment during 100 years of schol-
astic effort is a varnish which be-
comes necessary to attract the na-.
tion's attention to the fact that
one of the oldest universities in the
country is celebrating her centen-
nial. Underneath all the flags and
decorations at Hotel Astor, behind
the gorgeous tributes which New
York newspapers are this week pay-
ing to their home town university,
lies a pyramid of accomplishments
unsung and unheraided. Foremost
among these is the result of one
Samuel F. Morse, a professor at N:
Y. U., whose invention of the tele-
graph in the laboratories of the
university ranks as one of the na-
tion's greatest achievements.
The very nature of the founda-
tion of N. Y. U. gives it a unique
place in the history of education.
Albert Gallatin, secretary of the
treasury under Jefferson and im-
portant to American history in his
connection with the Louisiana ter-
ritory, was the founder . It was his
dissatisfaction with the narrowness
of university curricula which in-'
augurated the germ of N. Y. U. The
institution should be, he said, one
in which the young man of the
large city could get a higher edu-
cation in subjects of interest to him
and not in a general course of
G r e e k, Latin and mathematics
which every then established insti-
tution offered. This evocution from
a democratic ideal has become one
of the most important phases of
the success and achievement of N.
Y. U. .I'
This practicability of courses, es-
tablished as it was at New York,
has spread into a versatile educa-
tional institution throughout the
BELL SYSTEM
,v* xxf
'CA1O
A NATION-WIDE
SYSTEM
O1F INTER-CONNECTING
TELEPHONES
....
;, :- ,
0
A number of "Congreve" prob-living an past his time into the old
lems occur to one which Mr. Taylor age Restoration comedy mocked?
.gives no help on. Macaulay, inevit- Was it just a dull stolid existence
ably wrong, thought of Corngreve's this member of the Kit-Kat club
life as "the history of a conflict led, this man who went to dinner
between two impulses," the impulse at Twickerham with Gay, Swift,
to be a great writer and the impulse and Bolingbroke? What of the man
to be a man of fashion. Mr. Crane who remained "young and fresh
knows that Macaulay has absurdly and cheerful," as Swift writes Stel-
simplified the problem. But correc- la, in the years when he was almost
tion of Macaulay's very confident blind with cataracts and constantly
statement must be an equally defi- afflicted with gout? What of this
nite statement. That answer is man whom Prior called "Friendly
probably best made in terms of the Congreve, unreproachful man?"
experiment the upper strata of It seems possible that Congreve
Restoration Society were making:- perfected the art-product of a past
the experiment simplifying life to age, became disillusioned with its
merely the task of becoming a gen- tendencies (Mr. Taylor disproves
tleman, of escaping emotion by ut- the ordinary interpretation of dis-
terly concerning oneself with ele- appointment at the failure of "The
gance and finesse of manner and Way of the World" as the explana-
speech whatever the situation and tion of his retirement but suggests
demands. Restoration comedy is no other), could not readjust him-
probably best understood as record self in the new literary mode, satire,
of that experiment in the peculiarly (compare his statement: "I profess
sublimated and ideal form with myself an enemy to Detraction"),
which art records. What becomes of and so took the only dignified solu-
the opposition of author and man tion-- a serene life of great friend-
of fashion in such a light? Very ships (compare his remark to Keal-
probably they coincide. Mr. Taylor ly "I am sure you know me well
completes what he has to say about enough to know I feel very sensibly
the age and its qualities in ten and silently for those whom I
pages. That omission is the book's love").
outstanding stupidity. At least, Mr. Crane's biography,
Another problem: John Palmer which thorouoghly documents the
waves away the significance of Con- facts that Congreve came to Lon-
greve's dates (he didn't belong to don, wrote a play, became a com-
the Restoration period at all) by missioner of hackney coaches, wrote
saying: "He lived in the world of some more plays for seven years,
Etherege not the less definitely forj then retired to enjoy his fame and
his living in the world of Pope." fortune and die, gives no dignity,
Yet surely, Etherage is the lyricist meaning, or interest to the man's
of the Restoration. He felt its im- life. The ordinary scholar's assump-
pulses and spontaneously expressed tion that the facts, if found and
them. Congreve was much more the presented, will reveal all has be-
constructive artist, observing the trayed him into a view of Congreve
Age, arranging its impulses as com- he undoubtedly doesn't hold.
ic material with an amused detach- The book's positive virtues are its
ment, and deliberately polishing his discoveries: several new lyrics, sev-
style. Congreve's biographer should erl new letters. He also corrects
little
g up
hek1
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f.
:.
yourself
/
DON'T TAKE our word for it,
switch to Camels for just one
day then quit them if you can.
The moment you open the
package you'll note the differ-
ence between fresh humidor
packed Camels and dry-as-dust
cigarettes. Camels are supple
and firm to the touch. Stale,
dried-out cigarettes crumble
and crackle when pressed. But
the real convincer is to smoke
Camels. Every puff is a sheer
delight of cool, mellow mild.
ness; the
Camel blend of
choicest Turkish and mellow.
est Domestic tobaccos, kept
in prime condition by mois-
ture-proof Cellophane sealed
air-tight.
R. J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.
Winston-Salem, N. C.
r,
Federal income tax investigators
in New York will, this week, look
into rumors of heavy dough being
made in a "flour -racket."-Detroit
News.
Dr. Mann of the National Zoo
says the elephant forgets about as
rapidly as any animal. Since almost
no one else remembers the G. O.
P. party platform, it hardly mat-
ters.-Detroit News.
President Hoover was held up 40
minutes in a traffic jam on the way
back to Washington. Possibly some
middle-of-the-road Congressman
IJAMELS
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