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SAMdEL GRAFTOr's
I'd Rather Be Right1
-"A>'p
THE Cocoanut Grove catastrophe,
which has claimed almost 500
lives, almost started as just another
fire when it first came over the tele-
type at 1:15 a.m. Sunday. The bulle-
tin, dated from Boston, said:
"A number of persons were in-
jured tonight and some were be-
lieved dead in a four-alarm fire in
the Cocoanut Grove, a night club
in the Bank Bay district, and all
available ambulances were sum-
moned."
When the night editor first saw
that, he had little idea that such a
vague story would turn into one of
the worst fires since the one in Chi-
cago in 1903.
And it's too bad that the wild panic
of most of the 1,000 people at the
night club nullified the clear think-
ing of a few. The panic was to blame
for the terrible toll of lives. After see-
ing the pictures, we can't understand
why somebody didn't smash in the
big plate-glass window and open up
a means of escape.
WHEN Harry Sifers of Kansas
City got a big order from Sault
Ste. Marie for his "delicious" candy
bars, he lumped to fill it. When
Harry Sifers read the note sent
with the order, he got sore. The
note said: "The hunting season is
on and the bears sure like your
bars. Hunters are using them, for
bait."
'* * *
They're making a lot of fuss about
the Army chaplain who is reputed to
have uttered the now - famous:
"Praise the Lord and pass the ammu-
nition" statement. The question has
been posed: if this chaplain did fire
a gun, or if any chaplain were to fire
a gun, would he be within his rights
under international law? One of the
chaplains credited with inspiring the
song is worried because they're trying
to tell him he fired a gun. He says
he did not fire a gun, that it would
have been unconstitutional for him
to fire a gun.
Can't you see a chaplain thumb-
ming through his law book and ask-
ing the Japs to pardon him while
he finds out if it's legal for him to
shoot them? -Bob Mantho
NEW YORK-The President has
always loved to pit irreconcilables
against each other, and then stand
off and see what happens.
His current even distribution
of smiles between Darlan and the
Fighting French is not so very
different from the manner in
which he once placed Knudsen
and Hillman at opposite ends of
the same desk.
It does not vary so greatly from
his bland instructions that Don-
ald Nelson and the Army's pro-
curement officers must work out
their differences by themselves.
I am not suggesting that any of
these men resemble Darlan in any
way. I do suggest that the Presi-
dent is a master at turning a clash
between opposites into a kind of
uneasy equilibrium; that this is
a conscious and deliberate Roose-
velt method; that he has used it
since he first unpacked his bags
at the White House.
It is not inconsistency; it is a
kind of deep instinct for keeping
things going. It served, for years
to hold together the most conser-
vative of Southern Democrats and
the more liberal big-city Democrats
of the North on a program of re-
form legislation.
TUGWELL AND FARLEY, AGAIN
The thing goes back to Mr. Roos-
evelt's very first Presidential cam-,
paign, when he kept one hotel-
room office for Mr. Farley and
the practical politicians, and
another one, a block away, for Mr.
Moley, Mr. Tugwell and the ideal-
ists.
Henry Wallace now heads the
ideals branch of the government,
planning a free world, but that
is in a suite of offices of its own,
and has little connection with the
State Department-military sec-
tor, which has made a North Af-
rican deal with some of the worst
trash in Europe.
Wallace is the international
Tugwell; the State Department
is the international Farley; the
new situation grotesquely reflects
the old.-
Mr. Roosevelt is a creative poli-
tician; he does not insist on a
dream-world; he uses whatever lies
around. He has worked with every
conceivable personality from Boss
Hague to Tommy Corcoran, with-
out ever becoming so deeply invol-
ved that he could not dissociate
himself in time to save his pro-
gram.
EQUAL AND OPPOSITE
We cannot support or attack the
administration intelligently with-
out understanding the curious
Roosevelt method. It is a danger-
ous method, it has often made
trouble, but it has often worked,
too, by providing a period of un-
happy equilibrium, which gave time
for the next move.
That is the method of keeping
several things in the air at once,
five information bureaus, say, or
two equal and opposite production
and labor chiefs, and then waiting
to see what direction the resultant
of these forces will take.
(And sometimes I think we
were lucky to have a President
with this instinct for uneasy
equilibrium, at a time when the
country wasn't ready for much
more than that. He has often
been no more undecided than
America itself. One wonders what
might have happened had we had
a President with his mind fully
made up.)
The President has balanced off
irreconcilables in the internation-
al field as often as he has done so
at home.
He is the only major democra-
tic leader who maintained terms
of perfect understanding with
both Chamberlain and Churchill.
But he spoke for "quarantining
the aggressor" during the - Cham-
berlain period, and became the last
democratic leader to get out of
Vichy in the Churchill period.
ONE MAN, TWO BIOGRAPHIES
You could write two separate bio-
graphies of Mr. Roosevelt, one
an appeasement biography, dating
from the Spanish business to the
sale of steel to Japan, to the con-
ciliation of Petain, and the second,
a vigorous non-appeasement bio-
graphy dating from the "quaran-
tine" speech to benevolent neutral-
ity toward England, to the lease-
lend act.
The Darlan thing is not an iso-
lated incident, but one chapter in
the long serial story of the Pres-
ident's instinctive search for
something that will keep things
going until the next stage. He
had never had final answers, he
has always loved interim gadgets
and ad hoc devices.
Under the circumstances, I would
not guarantee that animal, Darlan,
too long a political life.
That' the President works with
him, stupefying and wildly danger-
ous as that fact is, proves relatively
little concerning the President's in-
tentions for the post-war world.
(Copyright, 1942, N.Y. Post Syndicate)
OUIS ADAMIC presented a number of ideas
here Monday night which demand the atten-
ion of the entire student body. His suggestions
will doubtless not only play an important role
in any post-war plans, but they also hint at
careers in an entirely new field for college stu-
dents. His basic suggestion of an American
Reconstruction Mission to be sent throughout the
world following the close of the war is rapidly
gaining favor and is already under consideration
in the State Department.
This plan, which involves sending huge num-
bers of specially trained Americans to Europe
to aid in the rehabilitation of countries now
facing destruction, is dependent on the cooper-
ation of universities in the United States. It
will be the task of our colleges to prepare young
men and women for this difficult work of
putting Europe back on its feet. Intensive
training in a specialized field is to be given to
those who wish to participate, including con-
centrated work in the language, customs, and
history of the country to which the individual
will be sent.
At present such a plan is already in progress
at fhis University. In the middle of November,
the graduate school initiated its first interna-
tional studies course, with instruction limited to
Germany, the Low Countries, and countries on
Germany's eastern border. It is expected that
some time in the very near future a similar pro-
gram will be available to undergraduates, who
already have Social Studies 93 available to them.
Such work presents unlimited opportunities, since
persons with widely varied talents will be urgent-
ly needed. Participation in as vast an under-
taking as this cannot help but arouse the
imaginations of those anxious to do their part
in the tremendous task of reconstruction.
EVEN STUDENTS who have no intention of
entering this type of work will find it worth-
while to become acquainted with the plan as
presented by Mr. Adamic. He offers a concrete
way in which our ideals can be applied and
brought from the field of theory into actual
reality. - Betty Ann Koffman
LYNCHING:
Jin Crow Thinkers
Must Reform Beliefs
THE WAR to crush Hitler must sound pretty
phoney to a large share of the Negro people
of this country.
To thinking citizens the treacherous "talking
down" of the Anti-Poll Tax Bill must call to
mind another blow that America dealt her
Negro people-the Shabuta, Miss., lynch case
in which two boys, aged 14 and 18, were dragged
from their cells and hanged while the city
marshals were allegedly tied in blankets and
locked in a cell.
Although this occurred a month ago, and de-
spite evidence of police officers' dereliction of
duty, there has not yet been an investigation.
There has been no attempt to place the guilt on
Shabuta's white supremacy scoundrels for this
murder of defenseless children. The whole case
seems to be just another entry in the county
records. It seems to have been forgotten to all
but the Negro race who suffered the injustice.
IT IS TIME for every American to begin chang-
ing his mind if he lets stereotyped thinking
force him to oppose the anti-poll tax bill or to
condone Shabuta's defiance of Roosevelt's anti-
T;. 'rw. ,,.'7---------------11-+1-------n
be used as a column source almost every day-
because practically every day he says something
that is either completely wrong, or inferentially,
wrong, or just plain silly. But of course after a
while itwould get boring.
The important thing is a critical- approach-if
you know how to spot the little tricks of a Mach-
iavellian argument, then Bingay's statements
need no longer worry you. Like the other day
when he answered Slosson's letter to the Free
Press editor. With your eyes open you could
have spotted two nasty tricks; Bingay said, in
effect, that if the U.S. had entered the League,
even then the League of Nations would have
failed, and to prove it, he quotes someone who,
says that the League did fail. If that isn't the
sweetest little old non-sequitur ever then I never
saw one.
NO\V we will assume that Mr. Bingay has just
read the previous statement which names
him guilty of a non-sequitur. We will also as-
sume that the statement appeared in the Free
Press Letter Box. Mr. Bingay would thereupon
begin his column like this:
Wall, I swan, I do vum that there be a
young'un over in that there letter column who
says I done a non-sequitur. Wall, I sure do
like to see these here young fellers gettin'
their ediccation, but a powerful heap of folks
like me sure do wish that they'd dry behind
the ears before they go off usin' sech big words
that their elders can't understand 'em."
Whereupon Mr. Bingay uses two other cute
ones; first, he fails to answer the charge of non-
sequitur, he impugns the person making the
charge, and aligns against that person all the
prejudice of his readers against young'uns that
do not know their place, which is to say, that
put their education to some 'use.
Not that Bingay doesn't write columns that
contain other than this lush mucker-pose sort
of monologue. He does beautifully-he looks up
the history of prohibition, and presents it to his
readers. And quite well, too. But migod, the
logic. In the article attacking Slosson, he grabs
ahold of the Constitution, and shakes it like a
dog with a bone. He says the Constitution has
worked comparatively well, a statement to which
most of us agree. So why try anything else after
the war? But the Constitution has worked well
for America, and what we are trying to get is
something that will work well for the world-
that something can obviously not be our consti-
tution. Another little non-sequitur-and in addi-
tion he allies all the emotions of his readers-
since what he implies is that anyone who wants
world federation doesn't want the Constitution.
THIS could go on forever-the only way in
which it could have any meaning, however,
would be if by this column a few people were
induced to take a critical attitude. .And if this.
attitude is assumed, the person involved will
first look up Mr. Bingay's column to see if
everything I have said is true-he will realize
that mly parody of Mr. Bingay is designed to
align his emotions against Mr. Bingay, and in
no way answers any of Mr. Bingay's argu-
ments. But if I find anyone agreeing unre-
servedly with my approach in this column,
then I will feel sad, because they will be the
same kind of people who will unhesitatingly
WASHINGTON-In intimate White House cir-
cles Mrs. Roosevelt has told how the highlight
of her recent visit to the British Isles was a night
spent with England's much-loved Queen Mother.
Queen Mary, who is just as active as was the
late Mrs. Sara Delano Roosevelt, reminded Mrs.
Roosevelt very much of her mother-in-law. De-
spite her age, she took the hardships of the war
completely in her stride, though apologizing for
not being able to receive Mrs. Roosevelt at her
palace Sandringham, now devoted to war pur-
poses. Queen Mary's present home is kept secret.
"She met me there," Mrs. Roosevelt told
White House friends in describing the high-
lights of her trip, "and took me upstairs.
There were strips of white tape to mark the
edges of the stairs in the dark-for the English
are saving light just as they are saving fuel.
"She showed me to a room, a vast cold room,
which made me realize how much we had to
learn when it comes to saving oil. At the far end
of the room was a dim light burning. At second
glance, I realized it was a fire in the fireplace."
But it proved to be the wrong room after all.
On opening the door, the Queen observed that
the Princess Royal was occupying the same suite,
and although Mrs. Roosevelt insisted that she
could fit in anywhere, the Queen showed her to
other quarters.
"She opened another door," recounted the First
Lady," and we were greeted by a blast of cold
air that felt as if it had come from Greenland!
But there we stayed, and what's more, I sum-
moned up my courage and took a bath."
Later, conversation turned to the Queen Moth-
er's war work. She was particularly interested
in giving soldiers a lift in her car. For this the
Government allowed her extra petrol.
Once, Queen Mary said, she had given a lift
to a soldier who proved to be an American.
"He said the strangest thing to me," re-
marked the Queen, in relating the incident to
Mrs. Roosevelt. "When I dropped him, I said,
'Do you know who I am?' And he replied,
'You've got me there.' Now what on earth does
that mean, Mrs. Roosevelt?"
Two-Fisted Jeffers
Rubbel Czar Bill Jeffers lived up to his two-
fisted reputation when testifying at a closed
meeting of the House Interstate Commerce sub-
committee which was probing the need of nation-
wide gas rationing. '
Jeffers bluntly told the subcommittee, headed
by Representative Clinton P. Anderson of New
Mexico, that Congressional efforts to block the
rationing program would get nowhere.
"I understand the position of you gentle-
men, but I want you also to understand mine,"
said the Rubber Administrator. "My job is to
carry out the recommendations of the Baruch
report and I intend to do it."p
Jeffers said he hoped to keep the nation "on
rubber," so we will have sufficient transportation
for workers in war industries. Nationwide gas
rationing is an essential step in this direction, he
added, "'and I'm all for it."
The rubber boss was questioned closely on
whether -Leon Henderson was cooperating with
him. He replied that it was difficult to be the
Price Administrator and also handle rationing,
since the two things are contradictory. As price
chief, Henderson was supposed to protect the
public, while as rationing director he is depriv-
ing the public of something, Jeffers explained.
DAILY OFFICIAL BULLETIN
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 2, 1942
VOL. LHI No.50
All notices for the Daily Official Bul-
letin are to be sent to the Office of the
President in typewritten form by 3:30
p.m. of the day preceding its publica-
tion', except on Saturday when the no-
tices should be submitted by 11:30 a.m.
Notices
Student Tea: President and Mrs.
Ruthven will be at home to students
this afternoon, December 2, from 4
to 6 o'clock.
Women students wishing to donate
blood to the Red Cross for use by the
Armed Forces, are asked to present
themselves at the University Health
Service Laboratory during the follow-
ing hours for a blood recheck: today,
9-11 a.m.; Thursday, 10-12 a.m. The
following day they may see one of
the women physicians at the Health
Service for a report on the above
blood check. - Margaret Bell, M.D.
If you wish to finance the purchase
of a home, or if you have purchased
improved property on a land contract
and owe a balance of approximately
60 per cent of the value of the prop-
erty, the Investment Office, 100
South Wing of University Hall, would
be glad to discuss financing through
the medium of a first mortgage. Such
financing may effect a substantial
saving in interest.
Students: A list of graduates and
former students now in Military Ser-
vice is being compiled at the Alumni
Catalogue Office. This list already
numbers approximately 6,000. If you
are entering Military Service, please
see that your name is included in this
list by reporting such information to
the Alumni Catalogue Office. this
courtesy will be greatly appreciated.
-Lunette Hadley, Director
Alumni Catalogue Office
Choral Union Members whose at-
tendance records are clear, will please
call for courtesy tickets for the Artur
Schnabel concert, on the day of the
concert, Thursday, between the hours
of 10 and 12, and 1 and 4. After 4
o'clock ho tickets will-be issued.
-Charles A. Sink, President
Special permission to attend the
performance of "Spring Again" to-
ment of Botany will speak on the sub-
ject, "Study and Utilization of Sub-
marine Plants," before the Michigan
Chapter of the Society of the Sigma
Xi today at 8:00 p.m. in the Amphi-
theatre of the Rackham Building.
Members may invite guests.
Lecture in Surgery: Dr. Philip D.
Wilson, Orthopedic Surgeon in New
York City, will lecture on the sub-
ject, "The Treatment of Compound
Fractures Resulting from Enemy Ac-
tion" (illustrated) under the ausptces
of Nu Sigma Nu fraternity with the
authorization of the Department of
Surgery, on Monday, Dec. 7, at 1:30
p.m. in the University Hospital Am-
phitheatre. All interested are wel-
come to attend.
French Lecture: Professor Charles:
E. Koella, of the Romance Language
Department, will give the second of
the French Lectures sponsored by
the Cercle Francais entitled, "L'Eur-
ope Future?", today at 4:15 p.m. in
Room D, Alumni Memorial Hall.
Tickets for the series of lectures
may be procured from the Secretary
of the Department of Romance Lan-
guages (Room 112, Romance Lan-
guage Building) or at the door at the
time of the lecture for a small sum.
Holders of these tickets are entitled
to admission to all lectures, a small
additional charge being made for the
annual French play.
Open to the public.
Lecture: Mr. Alfred Bettmann, who
is one of the most noted of City
Planning and Zoning lawyers in the
United States, will lecture today at
4:15 p.m. in Room 101 Architecture
Building on the subject "Land Acqui-
sition for Urban Re-development."
This refers mainly to securing of
land for clearance of slums and
blighted areas and the re-planning
and re-development of such portions
of cities for better and more profit-
able uses. The lecture is under the
auspices of the College of Architec-
ture and Design. Members of the Uni-
versity and the general public are
welcome.
Academic Notiees
Seminar in Physical Chemistry will
meet today in Room 410 Chemistry
Building at 4:15 p.m. Professor Ern-
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by
Ormandy. Everyone interested is in-
vited.
Choral Union Concert: Artur
Schnabel, Pianist, will give the fifth
program in the Choral Union Concert
Series, Thursday evening at 8:30 in
Hill Auditorium. Tickets are on sale
at the offices of the University Musi-
cal Society in Burton Memorial Tow-
er. The Hill Auditorium box office
will be open at 7 o'clock in the eve-
ning of the concert.
-Charles A. Sink, President
Events Today
Social Service Seminar: Mr. Wil-
liam Jones, Director'-of the new Car-
ver Community Center for Negroes
in Ypsilanti, will speak at the Social
Service Seminar meeting today at
7:30 p.m. in Lane Hall.
The Slavic Society will meet at 8
o'clock today, at the International
Center. All Slavic students and others
interested are welcome. Refresh-
ments.
Michigan Dames: Book group
meets at the Michigan League this
evening at 8:15.
Wesley Foundation: Student Tea
and Open House today from 4 to 6
o'clock. All Methodist students and
their friends are cordially invited.
Coming Events
La Sociedad Hispanica will have an
officers' meeting on Thursday, Dec.
3, at 4:00 p.m. in room 302 Romance
Language Bldg.
La Sociedad Hispanica. will meet
Thursday, December 3, at 8:00 in 'Ihe
Michigan League. New members are
invited.
Graduate Coffee Hour, Thursday,
December 3, 4:30-5:30 p'm. Men's
Lounge at Rackham School. All stu-
dents in Graduate and Professional
Schools are invited to attend and
meet other graduate students and
faculty.
The fall initiation and dinner of
Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society will be
held on Friday, Dec. 11, at 6 p.m. in
the Ethel Fountain Hussey Room of
the Michigan League. The address
will be given by Prof. Burton D.
Thuma, Executive Sec'y of the Psy-
chology Department, Chairman of the
War Information Committee and
Armed Forces Faculty Advisor. All
members of Phi Kappa Phi are priv-
iled tn attend. Reservations may be