TWO THE MICHIGAN DAILY TURSDAY. tY 6. 1944. ________________________________AA.uZ.J111 AA 1A A .Y 1llU J A £3.ALZ4 .d EA dl dN1.731IT1 OULJL : x ... Fifty-Fourth Year THE PENDULUM: The Failure of Current Literature Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan under the authority of the Board in Control of Student Publications. Editorial Staff By BERNARD ROSENBERG MR. BERNARD DE VOTO has roasted the American writers of; the 20's in a bonfire of invective called "The Literary Fallacy." His claim is that men like Dos Passos, Hemingway, Jefferson and Fitzger- ald, in their respective works and in toto, inaccurately reflected what was a healthy U.S.A.. He insists the dis- illusionment they displayed was not America's. Were this charge justified, Mr. De-~ Voto would have to take in much more territory than he does. For every major power in the last war produced novelists and poets who sang the same unhappy tune heard here. Can it be mere coincidence that artists everywhere expressed similar sentiments? Did all of them misrepresent the truth? Remarque in Germany, Schnitzler in Austria, Gide and Cocteau in France, Sasoon and Huxley in Eng- land are but a few of the European intelligentsia whose lagmentations still reverberate in our ears. I think subsequent events have shown amply that the post-war era was, for all its outward glitter and prosperity, ev- erything "The Lost Generation" said it was. But, the best retort to Mr. De- Voto I know is the one Professor Davis provides in his English 184 class. Prof. Davis holds that the function of an artist is not to pho- tograph life. It is rather to create a reality of the artist's own which, by means of illusion, he can con- trol. These books of the 20's, then, must be judged by aesthetic stan- dards, and not by lifelikenees. It is interesting, though, that they meet criteria admirably. Jane Farrant Betty Ann Koffman Stan Wallace Hank Mantho Peg Weiss . Lee Amer Managing Editor Editorial Director City Editor Sports Editor Women's Editor off Business Manager Business Sk~ Telephone 23-24-1 REPRESENTED FOR NAT1ONFl ADVERT.ING DY National Advertising Service, Inc. College Ptblishers Representative 420 MADISON AVE. NEW YORK. N. Y. CIAO BOSTWON . Lp.S'ANQLS SBA FRANCISC Member of The Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or otherwise credited in this newspaper. All rights of re- publication of all other matters herein also reserved. Entered at the Post Office at Ann Arbor, Michigan, as ;scond-class mail matter. Subscriptions during the regular school year by car- rier, $4.25, by mail, $5.25. Member, Associated Collegiate Press, 1943-44 NIGHT EDITOR: DOROTHY POTTS Editorials published in The Michigan Daily are written by members of The Daily staff and represent the views of the writers only. War Effort Drags DESPITE DESPERATE PLEAS to civilians to stay at home on their vacations, Tuesday evening found thousands of Detroiters stranded in vacation areas. Crowds jammed busses and trains. Absenteeism in many plants was reported to be "abnormally high to the point of impairing production" by one qualified spokesman. In western Pennsylvania, holiday-week absen- teeism closed at least 37 pits and caused a pro- duction loss of approximately 105,000 tons. In Chicago operators of the Union Bus station started going without neckties, were ordered to put them back on and struck in protest. With only 96 hours remaining before the close of the Fifth War Loan Drive, less than half of the E bond quota was sold in Detroit. Multiplied instances like these, some of them insignificant in themselves, some of them impor- tant, all add up to one thing-a slackening of the will to pitch in and end this war as soon as possible. War-weariness after more than two and one-half years of all-out effort, infrequent vacations, long hours of work and the stringen- cies of rationing are all having their effect. An apparent general slump in the war effort is augmented by a growing wave of optimism occa- sioned by the growing success of Allied armies all over the world. OPTIMISM, but not certainty of early victory, is justified by virtual American conquest of Saipan and landing on Noemfoor Island in the Pacific, the Red Army's seizure of Minsk and Polotsk and unchecked push toward Latvia and East Prussia, the fall of Cherbourg and offensive gains on the 20-mile front in Normandy, the Fifth Army's push toward Leghorn and the telling effect of Allied bombing of Germany's production centers and oil supplies. The only dark spot in the over-all picture is the threaten- ing Japanese offensive in China. Perhaps we are also justified in believing that the hardest stretch of the road lies behind us, but it is in this hour of mounting Allied success that a relaxing of the war effort can be most dangerous. It would indeed be disastrous to believe that complete victory is already within our grasp. A long, hard way still lies before us. If any- thing our efforts should be redoubled. The grave warning of General Marshall, Ad- miral King and General Arnold against slacken- ing of production on the home front should be remembered: "There is still a tough fight ahead of us ... The war is not yet won; it will be won the sooner if everybody in war work sticks to his job till complete victory has been attained." -Jennie Fitch Candidate Bricker .. . So the answer to the vice-presidential ques- tion, the one scrap of suspense in the Republican convention, is an anti-climax named Bricker. No one else showed any interest in the job. And furthermore, since Bricker worked more than a year at a diversion presidential candidacy which drew attention away from the machinery that was preparing Dewey, the nomination may be regarded as a reward for faithful service. But whatever the reasons may be, it seems a sorry outcome.- Though much might be said on the subject, one need only turn to two other Republicans of various views to take Bricker's measure. Alice Longworth called him "an honest Harding." When Bricker declared himself last year, Wen- dell Willkie also spoke of the Harding resem- On the other hand, most of day's "novels neither gratify the tistically-minded nor inform to- ar- the WITH THE AEF: A Battlefield in Italy Down but Not Out I'D RATHER BE RIGHT: Nazis Fight Saboteurs' By KENNETH L. DIXON ON THE ITALIAN FRONT--UPJ)- You read about the big push in the papers. Maybe you understand what it means to the soldier, maybe you don't, being as far from Italy as you are. Anyhow, here are a few notes which have nothing to do with maps and pins or world strategy but which are part of the big push just the same: "It means starting forward in the night through barbed wire, minefields and booby traps which have been months in preparation. Seeing out of the corner of your eye but refusing to look when bursts of exploding flame mark the spot to right or left where someone took his last step . .. Gritting your teeth, sweating, praying, swearing, shaking, swallowing--but still go- ing forward. (In some cases our engineers have stealthily cleared out minefields a- head of the troops in the night, and when the men charged across them they found the Germans had re- sown the mines just as stealthily.) IT MEANS when the enemy alerts to the advance the barrages be- gin . . . they close in on you shaking and wrecking the whole world . . and then you disperse and take cov- er. There is no cover so you scratch frantically at the dirt to get j.ust a little protection. It means listening to the screams of the wounded and not being able to turn back to help them ... And you're not sure that maybe it isn't easier to keep going ahead than to By SAMUEL GRAFTON NEW YORlr, July 5 .-We are now entering the period of disintegration of the Nazi forces. The Nazi armies are breaking into fragments, each one as busy as a bird dog with some task which can neither bring victory nor head off defeat. Nazi troops must suddenly, irrelevantly, fight the people of Copenhagen. They have to step out of the war to make that fight. But when they win it, they win nothing. In the South of France the Nazis launch a furious offensive against the partisan Maquis. The people of France have no tanks, but when German tanks must be used irrelevantly against them, then those German tanks may be said, in tactical terms, to have been taken out of the war, precisely as if they had been shot out of the war from the 1kies. Each ragged partisan on the roads of southern France becomes, incred- ibly, a kind of tank destroyer. Fragmentation and Dispersal Fragmentation and dispersal; these are what lie ahead for the German armies. Stra- tegic tank reserves are whipped west from the Russian front to fight in France, but when they reach France, they must pause to fight the people, who have cut the railroads; or else they must detour incoherently to fight in Denmark; or else, forgetting about the appall- ing railroads, they must clatter cross-country, under their own power, a process almost as' destructive of tanks as battle itself. This con- sumes gasoline, and leads to the strange, peri- odic non-appearance of German planes. The French partisan, who does his little bit to put the rails out of commission, becomes, mir- aculously, a destroyer of planes as well as a destroyer of tanks. Fragmentation and dispersal; for the German cohmander at Cherbourg, General von Schie- ben, surrenders, regardless of his men; and in the forests of Minsk, thousands of Nazis hide out, awaiting their chance to surrender, regard- less of their -commanders. This is what the deaths of our men are buyig, more than local victories; for our enemy is not only losing, but changing as he loses, and changing for the worse, and the lives Americans are giving in localscombat have morethan a local meaning. The Crazy Defensive The Germans are not only on the defensive; they are on the crazy defensive, as of one bailing out an ocean liner with a cup, or plugging eleven holes with ten fingers. For a kind of miracle is happening; each European who becomes a sabo- teur steps directly into the war, while each Ger- man soldier who goes after him steps out of it, and becomes another fragment, broken off from the main body of the German forces. Every peasant who puts a dynamite cap on a rail joins our armies, and every S.S. soldier who tries to hunt him down, leaves his own; and this deepening unity on our side grows in direct proportion as the great Nazi body frag- ments and splinters. Deepening division on the German side; this is the order of the day; a pattern of spreading fissures, like cracks racing along a wall. We must prepare ourselves for the most sensational surprises. Perspectives The first stage of mutiny, desertion, is put- ting in a tentative appearance, and so, among the perspectives now raised is the possibility of German mutiny. Another is a break be- tween German army propagandists, who wish to shock the German people into defense of Germany, and Nazi lParty propagandists, who wish to soothe them, by tall tales of the work of robot bombs, into continued defense of Hit- ler. Fragmentation and dispersal, fissures and cracks; these are what the Allied armies are working for, and all nature seems to be help- ing them, for every peasant in Europe has become a kind of rocket bomb of our own, and no robot, either. The miracle of Allied unity now outraces thought itself. And whoever among us would try to halt it by petty complaint of our allies, or mawkish tears for Finland, or whatever, becomes guilty of trying to halt the process that will save us, guilty of treachery against the grand design of the war. (Copyright, 1944, New York Post Syndicate) The Philippines.. . In the normal course of events, the Philippines would become independent of the United States July 4, 1946. By the terms of a resolution just made law, that date may be accelerated, depend- ing on how long it takes to eject the Japs from the islands. It could be contended that acting in this time of uncertainty is more a handsome gesture than a stroke of statesmanship. Nevertheless, it not only reaffirms our intention to avoid arty sus- picion of imperialism; it says that we are happy and eager to show once again our belief in free- dom for the Filipinos. By virtue of this act, our voice in the post-war arrangements for other weak lands gains a new power. True, we have the stain of Nicaragua on our record. The situation in Puerto Rico is still far from pretty. And in the Philippines our pol- icy wavered between benevolent exploitation and the desire to liberate, until the onset of the Great Depression joined liberationist forces and domestic commercial interests which feared fur- ther competition from duty-free Philippine products. But ever since the Independence Act was passed in 1933, there has been a continuous sincere effort to provide for launching the Phil- ippines as a nation not only free but able to survive in a world of mightier neighbors and fearful economic forces. In the finest sense of the word, the popular Quezon Government and the United States Gov- ernment have collaborated. And what their col- laboration has now produced, and is still pro- ducing, is a shining thing in a world engaged in a re-dedication to human dignity and friendship among all peoples. - St. Louis Post Dispatch face the horror of what happened to those who now remain behind. It means hearing the German ma- chine guns and machine pistols fir- ing from well protected nests some- where ahead . . . and knowing that someone will 'have to go in and try to get them . . . that it may be you and if it is the odds are that you'll never go home again... jT MEANS stepping on bodies at night and over or around them in daylight . . . Some are newly slain bodies but not all; some are bloated remains of men who died fighting over these sectors months ago . . And you notice that in death there isn't a- great deal of difference in friendly and enemy bodies .. . It means seeing the flamethrowers ahead and then later seeing the charred remains of those who met the flamethrowers. It means lying in the dust of the roads waiting the next order to move up . . . And for once the length of the wait doesn't irritate so much.. It means not knowing how the push is going anywhere except where you are until gradually the news drifts that it's going ahead everywhere. And then as you move up again and again the strange stimulus of victory begins to seep into that void which was your conscious self before it was drained dry of all sense of feeling. And finally a little bitterly bought pride begins to dawn on you and a little perspective begins to come back.' Then for the first time since the jump-off you start to scent the scope of the big push as the strategists see it rather than as you saw it. fact-hungry. The literature of the 20's is probably not great. As to the true tenor of the 20's, no one in my generation can judge ex- cept by hearsay. But, about our own times we can speak with more assur- ance. And it seems to me if critics must fire their cannonades at the literati of any period, they should be saved for this one. The decline of letters in general can be ascribed to the war. This does not explain the absence of first-rate poetry, however. Warfare normally inspires poetry. Even World War I-during which time Western degeneracy had not plumbed its present depths-gavenus the verse of Graves and Spender and Cummings. What has World War II given us beyond Mairsey Doats? IN TRUTH, this tendency was man- ifest long before the war. We have reason to believe it will be more manifest long after the war. It is a curious fact that the men who wrote so acceptably in their youth (circa 1920) write so poorly in their middle age (circa 1940). A strong case can be made out for the tremendous effect of intellectual climate on art, although it is essentially Mr. De- Voto's thesis that the process works in reverse order, that cynical writers make a cynical society instead of vice versa. Now, the opinion expressed in this column since its inception has been that cynicism is very deeply imbedded in America. Its inroads can be seen everywhere in our cpl- ture. The more we win militarily, the more we lose ideologically. David Lloyd George revealed in his memoirs that he accepted the Fourteen Points as a matter of "political expediency," useful to arouse support but not in need of implementation. Churchill has ta- ken much the same attitude to- ward his and Roosevelt's sop to idealism-which was once paraded, gaudily in the raiment of an At- lantic Charter. Nor is the average layman de- ceived except insofar as he digests the syrupy prose of contemporary literature. Lloyd Douglas and Wil- liam Saroyan ("The Kiddies' Tol- stoy") lead the procession of incur- able optimists who have twisted America's look of anguish into a synthetic laugh, who see nothing but good in a world where evil has all but mastered mankind, who insist on using baby talk in an unpreceden- tedly complex age, who talk only of "beautiful people" when villainy abounds. At the turn of the century Brooks Adams wrote in "The Law of Civili- zation and Decay," "No poetry can bloom in the arid modern soil, the drama has died, and the patrons of art are no longer even conscious of shame at profaning the most sacred ideals." Brooks Adams might well have been writing in 1944. DAILY OFFICIAL BULLETIN THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1944 VOL. LIV No. 2-S Alh notices for The Daily Official Bul- letin are to be sent to the Office of the Summer Session, in typewritten form by 3:30 p. m. of the day preceding its publication, except on Saturday when the notices should be submitted by 11:30 a. in. Notices Students, College of Literature, Sci- ence and the Arts: Election cards filed after the end of the first week of the semester may be accepted by the Registrar's Office only if they are approved by Assistant Dean E. A. Walter. Students who fail to file their election blanks by the close of the third week, even though they have registered and have attended classes unofficially will forfeit their privilege of continuing in the College. Laboratory Assistants in Chemis- try: There are several partatime assistantships in the chemical labor- atory available to students who have completed a college course in general chemistry and preferably more ad- vanced courses. Apply to Dr. R. J. Carney, Rm. 227, Chemistry Build- ing. All Men Interested in Rushing reg- ister in Rm. 306, Michigan Union, from 3-5 p.m. this week. There will be no registration fee. French Club: The first meeting of the Club will be held on Thursday, July 6, at 8 p.m. in the Michigan League. Program: Election of offi- cers. French Songs. Social hour. "La France nouvelle dans un monde nouveau," an informal talk by Pro- fessor Charles E. Koella. All stu- dents of the Summer Session and of the Summer Term as well as all ser- vicemen are cordially invited to all weekly meetings of the French Club which are free of charge. All inter- ested please see Prof. Koella from 10 to 11 and 3 to 4 Wednesday and Thursday of this week in Rm. 100, R.L. Building. Charles E. Koella Try-Outs for "The Chocolate Sol- dier" will be held Thhrsday from 4-6 p.m. at the Lydia Mendelssohn Thea- tre. All interested are urged to come, bring music and be prepared to sing. The Michigan Repertory Players of the Department of Speech will present five plays during the summer session, tickets being or sale now at the box office, Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Opening July 12, the com- plete schedule is as follows: "The Damask Cheek," by John Van Druten and Lloyd Morris, July 12-15; "The Learned Ladies" by Moliere, July 19- 22; "Journey to Jerusalem," by Max- well Anderson, Aug. 2-5; "Fresh Fields," by Ivor Novello, Aug. 9-12; lThe Chocolate Soldier," by Strauss and Stange, Aug. 16-19. Tickets for individual plays will be placed on sale Monday, July 10. Registration: The University Bur- eau of Appointments and Occupa- tional Information will hold its an- nual summer registration for all those wishing to register for perma- nent positions in both the Teaching and General Divisions of the Bureau. Those desiring to register for the first time as well as those wishing to bring their records up-to-date are urged to be present. Juniors now eligible for concentra- tion should get Admission to Con- centration blanks at Rm. 4, Univer- sity Hall, immediately. These slips must be properly signed by the Ad- visor and the original copy returned to Rm. 4, U.H. at once. Lectures "Prospect for Educational Expan- sion," Warren R. Good, Instructor in Educational Psychology, 4:05 p.m., University High School Auditorium, Thursday, July 6. Academic Notices Graduate Students: Preliminary examinations in French and German for the doctorate will be held on Friday, July 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Amphitheatre of the Rackham Building. Dictionaries may be used. Lifesaving, Women Students: There will be a lifesaving class for women students on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 8:30 in the Union Pool, beginning on Thursday, July 6. Stu- dents interested in joining this class should register in Rm. 15, Barbour Gymnasium. Room Changes for Sumner Term and Summer Sesson 1944: New Assignment Chinese 179, S. Ses. . .231 Angell Hall Eng. 1, Sec. 3, S. Term, 2003 Ang. Hall Eng. 1, Sec. 4, S. Term, 2003 Ang. Hall Eng. 2, Sec. 1, S.Term, 2231 Ang. Hall Eng. 2, Sec. 2, S. Term, 2235 Ang. Hall Eng. 32. Sec.l, S.Term, 2235 Ang. Hall Eng. 31, Sec.4, S.Term, 3209 Ang. Hall English 152s, S. Ses., 2013 Angell-Hall English 196s, S. Ses.,.2029 Angell Hall English 296s, S. Ses., 2014 Angell Hall Geog. 142, S.Term, 209 Angell Hall Geog. 181, S.Term, 209 Angell Haill Ger. 85 STerm .2A TTniversit Hall BARNABY By Crockett Johnson How's that for a pirate treasure map? Note the . aIndI s1 ross boes ... Yes. I'm a skilled cartographer. . . I mapped out a route to the headwaters of the Nile.'For Big jobs... Small ones. . . originally determined the boundaries of PerueBolivia. But, now, let's find that gold... This map shows an old oak free. And-