- TilE MIiCHIGAN [)AILY MICHIGAN DAILY Established 1390 S )- :x M: t: P v _ , .;r ment confirmed the adoption of the metric units." On Saturday the printer changed "Prof. Wilby" to "Prof. Willey." (Prof. Ernest Wilby of the Col- lege of Architecture is the gentleman referred to). -The Editor I Editorial omment STHE SHAME IS NO LESS WISCONSIN'S Homecoming has always been, to most of us, something about which we can grow sentimental and nostalgic-a weekend during which loyal Published every morning except Monday during the University year and Summer Session by the Board in Control of Student Publications. Member of the Western Conference Editorial Associa- tion and the Big Ten News Service. MEMBER OP "THlE ASSOCIATED PRESS 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. All rights of republication of special dispatches are reserved. Entered at the Post Offie at Ann Arbor, Michigan, as secondcia s matter. Special rate of portage granted by Third 4 -stant Postmster-General. Subscription during summer by carrier, $1.00; by mail, 1 .5. During regular school year by carrier, $4.00; by mail, -$4.50. iffices: Student Publications Building, Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Phone: 2-1214. Representativesy College Publishers Representatives, in1c.. 40_ Eat Thirty-Fourth Street, New York City; 80 Boylston Street, Boston; 612 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, EDITORIAL STAFF Telephone 4925 MANAGING EDITOR...........FRANK B. GILBRETH CITY EDITOR......................KARL SEIFFERT SPORTS. EDITOR.. .................JOHN W. THOMAS WO EN'S EDITOR.................MARGARET O'BRIEN ASSISTANT WOMEN'S EDITOR.......MIRTAM CARVER NIGHT EDITORS: Thomas Connellan, Norman. F. Kraft, John W. Pritchard, C. Hart Schaaf, Brackley Shaw, Glenn R. Winters. SPORTS ASSISTANTS: Fred A. Huber, Albert Newman. REPORTERS: Hyman J. Aronstam, A. Ells Ball, Charles G. Bardt James Bauchat, Donald R. Bird, Donald P. Blankertz, Charles B. Brownson, Albert L. Burrows, Ar' ur W. Carstens, Ralph G. Coulter. Wrllin G. Ferris,Eri Hall, John C.Healey, Robert B. Hewett, George M. Holmes, Walter V. Morrison, George Van Veck, Guy M. Whipple, Jr., W. Stoddard Whit'e. WIeanor B. Blum, Louise Crandall, Carol J. Hannan Prances Manchester, Marie J. Murphy, Margaret C. Phalan, Katherine Rucker, Marjorie Weston, Harriet Spess. BUSINESS STAFF Telephone 2-1214 BUSINESS MANAGER................BYRON C. VEDDER CREDIT MANAGER ................... HARRY BEGLEY WOMEN'S BUSINESS ANAER......DONNA BEC R DRPARTMENT MANAGERS: Advertising, Grafton Sharp; Advertising Contracts, Orvil Aronson; Advertising Serv- ice,, Noel Turner; Accounts, Bernard E. Schnacke; CIr- oulation, Gilbert E. Bursley; Publications, Robert E. Finn, 4SSISTANTS: Theodore Barash, Jack Belamy, Gordon Boylan, Charles Ebert, Jack Efroymson, Fre Hertri.k, Joseph Hume. Allen Ku usi, Rusell Reac, Lester skin- ner, Joseph Sudow and Robert Ward. 'Lhzabeth Aigler, Jane Bassett, Buelah Chapman, Doris Gimmy, Billie Qrilth,Vrgiia Hartz, Catherine -M- Repry, Helen Olson, Helen Svinude, May Seefried, Kathryn Stork. THURSDAY, NOV. 24, 1932 l esriction Of Faculty Politicians Unwise. . T HE FOLLOWING resolution was adopted last month by the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas: "When any member of the University staff becomes a candidate for public office, or takes an active part in the support of any political party or a candidate for office, he thereby automatically severs his connection with the University; pro- vided that this shall not apply to county and municipal affairs." Owing in part to. the depression there is at present much criticism of government and govern- mental policies. Since government regulates most of the external machinery of the social system, it is possible that the depression, an external phenomenon, has been induced by either knowing malevolence or unknowing negligence on the part of the "servants of the public.". If this is the case it is the privilege and duty of' everyone capable of submitting either destructive or constructive criticism to do so. And one very commendable way of making such criticism is either to run for office or actively to support a candidate. It is not unnatural that the governmental "Ins" should resent excessive criticism. It is only human ihkt thev shold dislike to see themselves dis- grads return to the campus of their alma mater to "renew old friendships and make new ones," as has so oft been reiterated; a week-end, in short, when university spirit leaps high on the altar of loyalty and patriotism, and of which no short- coming is important enough even to enter into a discussion of its virtues. The editors of the Missouri Student, the publi- cation of the University of Missouri, however, look at homecoming weekend with a much more crit- ical eye, and have offered bitter toasts to "hun- dreds of returning alumni, bottle-laden, stagger- ing, insensible to the real meaning of homecoming to drunken mobs in campus restaurants, destroying property, insulting every creed of gentlemen . . . to the bootleggers, who with the hotel-keepers and their many-storied saloons, are the only ones who profit from homecoming . . ." May we, in turn, offer a sincere toast to these editors who have refused to sentimentalize a bad condition merely because it is bound up with a long tradition? At Wisconsin, too, there is such a condition: Revelers returning to Madison for homecoming and often spending their time in a state of intoxi- cation; at Wisconsin, too, homecoming time is looked forward to by bootleggers and saloon-keep- ers as a time of rising sales and increased patron- age; at Wisconsin, too, there are still some people who find themselves disgusted with the "debauch- ery and moral filth of the occsion;" so we Can appreciate the feelings of our Missouri colleagues. If some find the picture drawn too harshly, the facts presented exaggerated and magnified into an abnormal importance, let them look closely about them on our next homecoming. As if, indeed, it were possible to exaggerate such a con- dition. As long as the slightest trace of such behavior remains linked with homecoming and the word "collegiate" in any of its senses, those of us who take seriously our position as college students, who hope to derive some benefit by way of prestige in the outside world through having been college students, must realize that we cannot disregard the condition,. Our hats off, then, to the Missouri Student; and a stronger determination that homecoming should be homecoming, and not an occasion for a bacchanale. -The Daily Cardinal A Washington BYDER By KIRKE SIMPSON, (Associated Press Staff Writer) WASHINGTON-If Governor Roosevelt had anya hope of avoiding an early special session of the7 new Congress, it must have diminished when notes from Great Britain et al. among the war debtor nations came in so promptly on the heels of his election. There seemed little hope that the questions raised could be disposed of in the brief remaining life of the seventy-second Congress. President Hoover's telegram, inviting his partici- pation in determining the answer to be made to the importuning powers, could have given Mr. Roosevelt no great surprise. It was foreshadowed by the action of the state department in trans- mitting copies of the notes to Albany. Yet the governor was not given much time to prepare for a conference with President Hoover. Unless he had definite ideas about his own cabinet line-up already in mind, the task of assembling around him a group of informed advisers for the purposes of the conference in Washington may have had its own embarrassments. Y The Theatre GEORGE S. KAUFMLAN: AUT'iORt OF THE "BEGGAR." Most of us at some time or other in our early childhood had a very spindly, lace-collared grand- mother whom we went to visit on Thanksgiving and Easter and other days-of-obligation, and who was very prone to quoting all sorts of golden rules and poverbs. As a matter of fact most of us grew up to look for these quotings from Grannic with about as much eagerness as we looked for those atrocious paintings of grapes and other fruits in still-life that ever hung in her dining- room. Now as we look back at Grannie and her proverbs we remember something in her reper- toire about "beggars on horseback," and we re- member her quoting it to us with a long pointing finger. But we never got lthe moral of her tale-only some sort of vague and romantic image of a Petruchio-like person riding on a Kentucky thoroughbred named Daisy. Kaufman draws a great deal from our old Grannie, for he is pointing the long moral finger just as she did. He has one of the funniest satir- ical fingers of any playwright in America, and in the "Beggar on Horseback" he is pointing it for all he's worth. His story pictures some spiritual beggars who have luck with "big business" and "prosperity," and shows the silly outcome of their attempt to ride the "high horse." The whole thing is a gi- gantic razz on American materialism, and the "rich quick" attitude. Written in 1924 when "prosperity" and "big production" were at the peak, the play might be considered by the pious critic as a sort of "handwriting on the wall." But most of us get the same kind of enjoyment from the theme as from Will Roger's movie "Down to Earth" or Marie Dressler's "Caught Short." Though it must be said that "Beggar on Horse- back" by no means runs so thin on plot interest as these comic movies. Kaufman above all other things is a genius when it comes to concocting comic intrigue and scene. He works by a method which is called "the lowest (i. e., funniest) common denomina- tor," a method of taking a joke for its full value md presenting it dramatically. For example, in 'Once in a Lifetime" a joke about the Twelve Schlepkin Brothers is brought out in the hotel ,cene, a joke which is rather sufficient in itself (for it certainly is a funny touch that there should. )e a Jewish firm of twelve brothers named Schlep- 'in producing talking pictures, brothers who fly Sack and forth, back and forth from their Mama in Brooklyn to the business in Hollywood). Yes, 3veryone will admit that is funny. But Kaufman is not content to let the joke stop there, not until he has brought all twelve of the Schlepkins (in Jewish beards and big derbies) on the stage for a ;rand curtain climax. That is what is meant bs the method of carrying a joke to its "lowest de-- nominator." It is the method at which Kaufman has been most successful.{ Kaufman began writing realistic comedies withI "To the Ladies," "Merton of the Movies," "Mimic," plays in which he collaborated with Marc Con- nelly and Edna Ferber. He "grew up" in the back-stage of Broadway, and is gifted as play- wright, actor, and director. It will be remem- bered that he was the director of that startling melodrama success "The Front Page," and that he has acted in many plays, strikingly, of course, as his own "Once in a Lifetime." He has rolled in clover for the past ten years, writing in that time his best plays. To those already mentioned must be added "The Butter and Egg Man," "June Moon," "Of Thee I Sing," and the new Constance Collier show "Dinner at Eight" which recently opened in New York. He has been in the "play- wrights' rooms" at Hollywood too, even writing scenarios for the Four Marx Brothers we are told. (For certainly you didn't think Groucho thought up all those gags himself, did you?) His successful "Of Thee I Sing" brought him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year, a play which does with politics what "Beggars on Horseback" did with "big business." It is little wonder that ,ritics have set up his plays to rival anything that W. S. Gilbert ever wrote. Even critics who are sentimental about Gilbert and Sullivan are straight to admit that Kaufman and Gershwin are top-notch entertainment and the most healthy thing in American drama today. -David Mott R TYPEW *'RX TERBIl ~AliMkes -IegeandPortablie Sold Reited changed Repaired ILirge choice stock.Ehasy tems. 0 .M 0 R R ILL, 314 S. State St., Ann Arbor. tt oFur Coats begin on Friday at NAGLER'S with great savings on the most luxurious furs. In view of the fact that our prices this season were the lowest at which fur coats ever have been offered these fur- ther reductions present unprecedented savings on fine furs. Free insurance with every garment. Convenient Terms. Dramatic Sa i ' r << - Ar"'.4 &tA- : j ' , fi,' .. ' . F - , ', ; , ; ;; ", °. _ ___ _. v _ ___ _ev..... a - m I SU RTON' W A L K-OVE R SHO P 115 So. Malin Get this job over with ...NOW'' Order Your Christmas GREETING CARDS Make your selections from the most complete and artistic line of cards we have ever offered. Personal Greeting Cards are most distinctive. THE MAYER-SCHA IRER CO. Printers, Binders, Stationers, Office Outfitters 112 S. Main Phone 4515 H ...... .... . . .......... FAC tS'- 4 lodged from positions which they have grown accustomed to occupy. But in a democracy tley CONGRESS' TASK have no right to use their power to stifle these Congress has dealt so jealously with the war- adverse comments and political activity. debt matter from the first that there was not It is unfortunate that in an attempt to sup- much room for executive discretion left. Neither press action that is disagreeable to them, the the President nor the President-elect, however "Ins" find that they can regulate the conduct of great their combined influence might be on Con- teachers so easily. Especially in state institutions gress when it assembles, could do much legally is it simple to order undesirable activity to stop. to meet the request for a postponement of current. Since teachers, specifically university teachers, payments pending the proposed revision confer- are usually at least as well informed as the aver- ence. age citizen, and frecuently much better, it i; The President could authorize diplomatic dis- obviously not to the general good that their po- cussions. It is generally assumed that they have litical activity be restricted. been in progress informally right along. We hope that no such limitation will ever be Certainly the British, French and other note& imnosed upon our teachers in Michigan. To our could not have been dropped into the lap of the knowledge none is contemplated, and we hope state department without any advance notice that none ever will be. whatever from European diplomats here or from Of course the specific ruling in Arkansas may Americans at the European capitals. not have been adopted at the behest of govern- What was done was to see that the prospect of mental "Ins." Perhaps the trustees of the Univer- such a move was "soft pedalled" to such an ex- sity of Arkansas find political publicity distaste- tent that it did not enter at all into the American ful. We submit, however, that, in this case, they presidential campaigning. have failed to consider the potential results of That was well considered from the viewpoint their action. tof all concerned presumably. Had the debt ques- tion in its present status been projected in advance into the campaign, declarations one way or the C' ! ather might have been made which would render C a p difficult any agreement whatever on the course - _ -1now to be followed. Letters pu lished in this column shol not he construed as expressing thi editorial opinion of The Daily. Anonymous communcaions wil1 be disregard- CONGRESS' VOICE 11,Ih oveo he r(,-,AZ ithoer th bruA- la.t ion of the Congress in an- i I Screen Reflections Four stars nesns a super-picture; three stars very good; two stars good; one star just another picture; no stars keep away from it. FINE FEATURE; INFERIOR SEORTSj AT THE MAJESTIC "WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND" Button G. Brown ............ Lee Tracy Alice..............Constance Cummings Norton.....,..........Alan Dinehart "Washington Merry-Go-Round" is a forceful and at times epochal expose of what happens to Sur new Congressmen once they get to Wash- i.ngton. It is reported that this picture had a "remendous influence on the voting public, since it was released a few weeks before the recent national election. Obviously it could have swung many votes. Lee Tracy, in the role of Button Gwinett Brown, :escendant of a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, is seen amid timely surroundnigs of the Bonus Army, liquor traffic and national cor- ruption; in short, a government in the hands of a chosen few who are not members of Congress. Alan Dinehart is cast as Norton, the multimil- lionaire boss of Washington who is the object of Brown's invective. Constance Cummings is beautiful as Alice, which is all that is required. I4-A -0 MEN WX here Is Ihla Gal? Ikagle h ouse? t SIyial* Who Is ThaL 'Freshie?' Where Does He Live? Eating Club? Phone No. ???? I~ srht .Instructot AL l TI1E CONCENTRATED DOPE -INA HANDY .lrfTLEf BOOK Oil Slt the Pubhlications Bldg*& 81*00 gardc o ir conenitlupni nrequs es. Cotribuos harc asked to(:be bri, conilifing tncrniEs lstole-Ss than ts 1 s, ul ijuz v p 4~ v~i~ proving the debt moratorium, that it was the sense of Congress that there should be no cancellation