PAGE F+dUit. THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY, YVIAY 16, 1954 PAGE FOU1~ THE MTCUIGAI'I DAILY SUNDAY, MAY 16, 1954 TheRight Track A T THE 1952 Olympic games in Helsinki, Finland, Western athletes long before the beginning of games, had formed a men- tal barrier between themselves and the na- tions who supported Red ideals. These young men were told stories about the boys from Russia, and because these tales were told with such conviction, the reaction among these intelligent athletes was most unfortunate. A Russian was a vicious animal, and they were not to associate with the Red athletes. Imagine six foot sons of democracy afraid that if they dared to converse with a Rus- sian, they might be kidnapped and smuggled into the inner sanctums of the iron curtain, never again to see a friendly face. The Mascow competitors were supposed to be under strict orders from Stalin not to tour picturesque Helsinki, but rather to stay by themselves. Russian trackmen were agents of the secret police, and their only in- terest in the Olympics was to see if they could lessen the foundations of democracy by influencing the Western athletes towards following the commy line. They were vicious looking men these Rus- sians. Big bearded monsters out of physical proportion when compared to normal hu- man beings. Soviet female competitors were all described as crude Amazons with little intelligence and much muscle. It sounds fantastic that such ridiculous stories could be told, much less believed! But even today members of the University of Michigan track team are apathetic about accepting an invitation to run in a meet to be held this summer behind the iron curtain. Some of the boys are ac- tually afraid of being swallowed up by some Red organization of intrigue. The Red athletes have this same atti- tude toward capitalistic and liberal nations, because they too have been snowed with lies of ridiculous measure. However, fortunately one Canadin Olympic team member refused to be taken in by the falsehoods he had heard so many times. "I was practicing my event on one of the off days," relates this Maple Leaf star. "Then this guy comes up to me and asks me about my technique. We had a pleasant chat, and he seemed like a de- cent guy. I can speak in French and Ital- ian so I communicated with him in one of those languages, I don't remember which one. "When he left some fella came up and told me that my new friend was a member of the Russian team. I didn't know what to think. The Russian was such a regular fella, and hardly fit the evil frame he was supposed to fit into. "When I got back to the Canadian tean headquarters my thoughts couldn't leave that Russian athlete. A while later I saw some Russian boys touring the city, free to go as they pleased, and not contained in a private cell as we were led to believe. "Finally I got curious. I had heard that + the American shot put champion Jim Fuchs had visited the Russian camp, and I sug- gested to some of my teammates that we should do the same thing. Most of the boys were plenty scared, myself included, but I finally convinced a few of them to come along. "As our bus neared the place where the Russians were staying my knees were knocking like castanets. We weren't sure if we would ever get out of the Red area without difficulty, but we were inquisi- tive enough to force down our stupid fears and go through with the intended visit. "When we arrived we found a tremendous picture of Stalin posted up near the en- trance, but that was all that we saw in a pro Commy vein. Coke machines were com- mon, and everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves talking and laughing. "We met quite a few of the Russian boys, and believe me they weren't any different from the Americans or the Canadians. The barbaric Russian strong women turned out to be as nice as any gal from home. As far as being uneducated, I met one soviet gal who could speak ten languages. "I became such good friends with one of the Russian boys that we exchanged team pins. I gave him my Canadian olympic pin, and he compensated me with his Russian olympic lapel pin. Many times I have thought back to my experience in Helsinki, especially with all these hearings going on. "I realized that some day I might be call- ed on to kill some of the fellas I had be- come friendly with at the '52 games. It is a sad state of affairs when distorted stories are told to draw people, who could other- wise be compatable into different factions of hate and fear. "I am sure that the guys I had met went back home to Russia feeling the same way as I did, and still do. If only nations can get together on peaceful terms, as we at the Olympics did, maybe the fruit- lessness of war will finally be realized. I. only wish every American and Canadian could have shared my experience at the last Olympics. "Then maybe we could face all the bull thrust at us, and begin to think of the Rus- sians as humans just like we are. If we can acquire a sensible attitude about our enemies, we may at least get something con- structive accomplished." 7Tn rlf-s ~ .7-1 -4. mns A Century of Walden "I Have Here In My Hand--" (EDITOR'S NOTE: Russell C. Gregory, author of the following essay, contributed book reviews to The Daily in 1952-53. Now at Fort Knox, he writes "If it strikes you as too much of a para- dox for a soldier to be writing about Thoreau, you may chalk it up to the fact that I have been a student of Thoreau since high school days, and a soldier only since last July. Things are rough all over.") ANNO DOMINI 1954, now one quarter spent, leaves little time for remembrance of things past. The present is much with us. Our nation faces a domestic economic situation of unknown character and pro- portions; scientists have mixed a potion whose lethal effects frighten all; an uneasy truce in Korea could erupt into war again, but even an uneasy truce might be welcomed in Indo-China. Indeed, 1954 seems a year each will consider himself fortunate to get through unscathed. A backward look, could it be arranged, might be directed toward a book celebrat- ig its centenary this year: Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," published in 1854 from Ticknor and Fields, Boston. The ex- act publication date is unknown; schol- arship reveals only that it happened after March 1854. That no exact date can be named is for- tunate in this instance. "Walden" is too long, too fine, too important for commemor- ation by gubernatorial, presidential, or aca- demic proclamation. Any value it might have in directing one toward greater sanity would be lost or obscured were public cere- monies attendant on the anniversary. Could anything be more inappropriate or ludicrous than a Henry David Thoreau Day, or worse still, Week? No. The centenary will be ob- served best in a private way, with the cere- mony-so unceremonious and wonderful- of reading. Thoreau lived at Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days, moving into his cabin on July 4, 1845. There he kept the journal from which "Walden" was mined. The book was published seven years after Thoreau again became sou- journer in conventional society. It made no best-seller lists that year, or any other year, for that matter. Still, a strong case can be made for its having been one of the first American books to be regarded as a world classic. Americans who pause now to ask why Thoreau should have prevailed against the international ear, mind, and heart, will find their answer by reading. .Why Thoreau was relegated to obscurity and regarded as some- thing read only by poets or professors may also be known. Thoreau thought a man the potential re- capitulation of all human experience, and the beginning of wisdom was knowing one- self. Knowing one's self does not mean knowing only one's mental and physical potentialities, as the Greeks had suggested, although that is a part. Knowing what things are necessary to maintain life, and how they may most easily be obtained; knowing Nature upon which and by which man exists; these are other parts. Essential- ly it is knowing the Nature of Life itself. Ex- plaining the reason for his Walden experi- ment, he says: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the es- sential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep Architecture Auditorium ALL ABOUT EVE, with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders HOW DOES a star become a star? This film gives us the lowdown on the more sordid method, which has undoubtedly been used by many in the past. This time it is Anne Baxter who makes the journey from the bottom to the top, letting no obstacle stand in her way and using and discarding friends as they come along. Bette Davis is a fortyish star who is at the peak of her profession. She has a di- rector (Gary Merrill) who loves her, a husband-and-wife team (Hugh Marlowe and Celeste Holm) to write plays for her, and Gregory Ratoff to produce. And since she has all she could ask for, she tenderly takes in a "stage-struck" young girl, Miss Baxter, after having been moved to tears by her pitiful tale of woe. Miss Baxter takes advantage of her new position, a sort of general secretary, to become Miss Davis' understudy. No-one but Thelma Ritter sees thru her and she has a devil of a time con- vincing Miss Davis, but she finally does, Coming. of Age In Congress RUMOR HAS IT that with the St. Laxv- rence Seaway discussion out of the way, Congress will once again devote its energies to tackling the Hawaii-Alaska statehood question. and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true ac- count of it in my next excursion." Many who read "Walden" overlook that Thoreau did.not regard his experiment as perfect, or the only, answer to the questions he considered vitally important. "Walden" is experimentation which Thoreau recorded because he had performed it, and found suc- cess. Thoreau never urged anyone else to do as he had done, but he recommended that every man consider life with as much seri- ous thought as had he. If; and the word looms large, if he did that. Thoreau reason- ed man would learn to strip life to its es- sentials, discarding all baggage not needed. In short, it would lead to simplicity, and eventually to greater fulfillment of man as man. The estate of individual man has been damaged considerably by forces that were spawned by warped minds during Thoreau's lifetime, or since. Such diagnosis is not new; it's been made repeatedly for years now. As an eminent educator wrote recently in making a plea for education for privacy, "Never have there been so many people making a good living by showing the other fellow how to make a better one." The diag- nosis has prompted a rash of panaceas, some of which appear worse than the ills they are intended to cure. And, the ills are still in our midst. No one has suggested what might have been Thoreau's antidote-that man, each man, might do well to start with him- self. After that, perhaps progress will be made: "Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple- tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecti- cut, and afterward in Massachusetts,- from an egg desposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a ressurrection and immortality strength- ened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concen- tric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the al- burnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,- heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,-may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled fur- niture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last?" Could man expect to live in a peaceful world, friendly toward all his neighbors and recipient of their friendship in return, if he did not know himself? It is not to be suggested that Thoreau has all the answers; he has not, but he does raise the pertinent questions. And he pro- vides hope because he remembered his dig- nity and manhood, and in his own, that of all men.. -Russell C. Gregory SMQ'/IE and fireworks ensue. Nothing daunted, on goes Miss Baxter. She arranges with gul- lible Miss Holm to keep Miss Davis from a performance by draining the gas from her car, and on she goes in the part, wow- ing everyone in the theatre, including the most vitriolic theatre critic you ever saw, George Sanders. He immediately writes a column praising her to the skies, and cast- ing barbed aspersions right and left about whether or not Miss Davis is too old to play the sort of parts she does. By this time nobody loves Miss Baxter. As a matter of fact, everybody hates Miss Baxter. But by a sly bit of blackmail towards the writer's wife, she gets cast in Miss Da- vis' place in his new play, and finally is shown triumphantly accepting something called the Sarah Siddons award and mak- ing a speech about how humble she feels, and how much she owes her friends. Her "Friends" look on, to say the least, skeptical- ly. You may have gathered by this time that there are dozens of name stars in the pic- ture. There are, and I haven't even men- tioned Marilyn Monroe yet. She has a brief. appearance as one of Mr. Sanders' acquaintances at a party. We are given to understand that this was her first film appearance, and that she rose to greater things afterwards. Her bit in this picture is the best thing she's done yet, nonetheless. And ertainly all the other stars shine in great style. Bette Davis is funny, appealing and a bit pathetic as the aging star, and she strides about with some of the finest catty insults ever. She is, to put it mildly, wonderful. Miss Baxter's determined young actress is a bit too obviously sweet. It asks overmuch of the audience at times to be- ff V