College News, 1935-03-13, Vol. 21, No. 16

              /
�                                                                                                     �                                                                    .                                                                                     -                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         .                                �                                                                                                                                                                            -                                   .------------------------------------------�
The College News
VOL. XXI, No. 16
BRYN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1935
(-opyriBht  BHYX   MAWIt
COLLKGK    NEWS.     193S
PRICE 10 CENTS
Capable Direction
Marks  Production
of One-Act Plays
Gay   Comedy  Characterizations
Enliven Skilled Performance
of The Boor
SETTING AND LIGHTING
GOOD IN  HINDU  PLAY
Goodhart, March 9.�This evening's
performances of The Boor and The
Judgment of Indra were, on the whole,
well-executed and enjoyable. The
Boor was amusingly and well pre-
sented, with clever acting and an ef-
fective set. The Judgment of Indra,
a play difficult for amateurs to pro-
duce convincingly, showed a lack of
sufficient rehearsals. Its dialogue and
theme were of a sort foreign to us,
and consequently kept the actors from
feeling completely at ease in their
parts. Their lack of ease was under-
standable since they had had so short
a time to acquaint themselves with the
technique required in that type of
play.
The Boor, a rollicking and hysteri-
cal comedy by Chekov, was delightful,
and was enjoyed by both the audience
and the actors. Its plot is far from
complicated: a creditor comes to col-
lect a debt from a would-be romantic
widow, and ends by falling in love
with her. It is the characterization
which makes the play.
Sally Park as Madame Popov and
Anne Reese, who directed both plays,
played their roles with great relish
and vigor. Madam Popov's changes
of mood from pseudo-mourning to in-
dignation and finally to a rather brist-
ling surrender, were accomplished
charmingly and entertainingly. We
cherish the memory of her series of
three sniffs, repeated constantly, of her
manner of wielding a revolver and
holding it out so that it looked like a
continuation of her arm, of her eye-
brow-raising and of her very excellent
screams.
Anne Reese gave us a robust and
convincing characterization of Smir-
nov, the boor, an impatient, short-tem-
pered country man, who has no time
for foolish affections. Miss Reese's
gestures, facial expressions, her em-
phatic utterances and soliloquies quite
suited her part. Especially amusing
were her treatment of Luka, her meth-
Conlinuea  on  PaRe  Five
Undergraduate Drive
Plans to Raise #20,000
The Undergraduate Drive Commit-
tee is getting under way with plans
for a series of schemes to help raise
the undergraduate quota of $20,000.
A Targe proportion of the quota will
doubtless be pledged or be accumu-
lated by gifts, but some money must
be raised on campus. The undergrad-
uates in the five halls have ..heady
voted to give.up desserts for four
weeks and to impose a five per cent,
tax on Book Shop bills to raise money.
In addition to these plans, a college
brnlge tournament is being organized,
the first round of which will be play-
ed before Easter vacation, and which
will finally determine the college
championship after the hall cham-
pions have bee*n discovered.
The committee is also sponsoring a
dance recital by Mrs. Watson, to bo
given several weeks after Easter va-
cation. A novel idea in campus en-
tertainment is to be'Mntroduced. with
a series of square danefs to be held
in the gymnasium on March 22, April
27, and May 25.
Further plans are being developed
in the committee. Meanwhile the com-
mittee is going ahead with arrange-
ments to have at ISryn Mawr a meet -
ing of fathers, who as business men.
will be able to advise the undergrad-
uates as to the feasibility of their va-
rious schemes and will be able to sug-
gest possible ways of raising money.
Peggy Little, '35, heads the commit-
tee. A complete list of the members
is as follows:
Mildred Bakewell. '38; Rosanne
Bennett, '36; Jane Blaffer, '38; Leti-
tia Brown, '37; Doreen Canada^ '36;
Continued  on  Page  Four
French Play Cast Announced
The following is the cast of stu-
dents who will take part in La Soeur
Beatrice, "the play which is to be given
by French Club on March 23:
La Vierge...........D. Morgan, '35
Soeur  Beatrice___E. 'Thompson, '35
L' Abbesse..........A. Stewart, '36
Soeur Eglantine___D. Rothschild, '38
Soeur  Clemence.......J.Devigne, '38
Soeur  Felicite..........S.  Park, '36
Soeur  Balbine.........M.  Jones, '38
Soeur  Regine.....J.   Quistgaard, '38
Soeur Gisele........E. Le Fevre, '38
Le Chapelain...M. H. Hutchings, '37
Le Prince Bellidor.....I. Ferrer, '37
La Petite Allette.-.......
Page  .................I. Seltzer, 37
Mendants, pelerins,   infirme,   enfants
du choeuL^dr.,
A. Allinson, '37; E. Mackenzie,
'38; E. Morrow, '35; F. Van
Keuren, '35; L. Steinhardt, '37;
E. Bryan, '38; D. Naramore, '38;
Mary Peters, '37, and others.
Extra-Curricular Art
Exhibitions Planned
Modern Art Will be Correlated
With Interests of Various
Departments
SUGGESTIONS       DESIRED
(Especially   contributed   by   Jean
Lamson,  '37)
For several years now, an alumna
of this college has been giving us a
fund for the purpose of exhibiting the
work of contemporary artists. This
fund was given, not with the idea of
forming a supplement to the Art De-
partment, but to afford an opportunity
for the students to understand more
clearly the various trends that are
taking place today. The organizing
committee for these exhibits realize
that it has, in the past, made little or
no effort to emphasize the value of
contemporary art as a means of more
fully comprehending the present age.
As a result of insufficient advertising
on our part, there are actually very
few among the faculty or student body
who know that exhibitions in the Com-
mon Room are continually taking
place. Now, however, we feel strong-
ly that, with the interest and support
of the college, we can make something
of permanent value out of these
exhibits. �
Just as the plans centering around
the new Science Building emphasize
the inter-relationship of the sciences,
so we feel that it ought to be realized
as well that art should not remain iso-
lated from the subjects for which it
has a direct significance. We are,
therefore, setting forth a definite plan
Continued  on  Page  Four
i
John Strachey to Speak
Mr. John Strachey will speak on
America's Place in World At/airs in
the Deanery on Wednesday, March 20,
at 8.30 P. M. He comes to Bryn Mawr
with an extraordinary reputation as a
lecturer on public affairs and with th'e
requisite experience for speaking on
the topic scheduled. During 1933 he
established his name as a lecturer in
a tour of the United States. During
this tour he gave several lectures at
Foreign Policy Association Groups in
New York, Albany, Elmira and Phila-
delphia, and addressed various public
organizations and college and univer-
sity groups. He is one of the most able
writers on modern political crises arid
is well known for his The Com ing
Struggle for Power and The Menace
of Fascism.
Mr. Strachey is the son of the late
John St. Loe Strachey, editor and pro-
prietor of The Spectator and a cousin
of the late Lytton Strachey. After his
graduation from Oxford, Mr. Strachey
joined the Itaff of The Spectator and
hug since become distinguished for his
contributions to many English peri-
odicals, including The'Xeir Statesman,
The Week-end -Review, the New L< 'lit-
er, and the Daily Herald. In 1924
he left his position on The Spectator
and became a member of the Labour
Party, to become a member of Parlia-
ment in 1929 as a delegate from that
pifrty. In 1931 he resigned from the
Labour Party.
Chttir Honors Bach,
Handel In Service
� 7                     .
Sensitive,    Capable     Rendering
Of Difficult Music Shown
In   Program
COORDINATION    EXPERT
Music Room, March 8.�To com-
memorate the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the birth of Bach and
Handel, the Bryn Mawr Choir gave
a special chapel service of their re-
ligious songs. Beginning with simple
unison singing, the Choir displayed at
once a sureness of tone and coordina-
tion of effort which it preserved even
in ?he difficult counterpoint of Bach's
Crucifixns. Its response to Mr. Wil-
loughby's direction was sensitive and
ready, although he restrained the va-
riations in expression to emphasize the
dignified purity of the music.
"Zion hears her watchmen's voices,"
a chorale from Bach's cantata, Sleep-
ers, Wake, was sung to the accom-
paniment of the chorale prelude play-
ed by Mr. Vernon Hammond. The
quick rhythm of the piano ran
strangely under the slow, clear voices
of the Choir, all strongly united in a
simple melody. In her next chorale,
"Lord, hear the voice of my com-
plaint," the Choir sang in four parts,
but with syllabic unison except at the
end of each phrase, when one part
sounded after another, each softly
holding its note until all came together
again. Just as this was an elabora-
tion of the preceding chorale, the fol-
lowing, "O Jesu so sweet," was an
elaboration of this. Every word was
echoed by another tone, now "higher,
now lower. The sustained concluding
notes were particularly clear f and
steady, and the pattern of the various
melodies never became blurred.
Another brief, rather solemn chorale
from Bach, "Lord Christ, reveal thy
holy face," was sung by both the
Choir and the audience, and then the
Choir alone gave Cmcifixus from the
Mass in B Minor. The sopranos be-
gan, holding the one word, "cruci-
fixus" in a prolonged play over only
two or three tones until the second so-
pranos took it up in a lower key; then
the altos, and then the second altos
followed, each lengthening the ponder-
ous Latin word into a sad, undulating,
cry. At last all the voices formed,
and wove and interwove in an intri-
cate melody. Almost immediately the
harmony began to separate into its
component melodies again, and the
powerful, wailing notes, made monoto-
nous by the solemn undertone of the
piano, became distinct as at the begin-
ning. Finally they fused and faded
away. The Crucifixns is a curiously
moving piece of music, and the Choir
sang it with great feeling in spite of
its difficulty.
Oh Sacred Head from the St. Mat-
thew Passion, given next, was rela-
tively simple, yet it had a lovely
Continued  on  Page  Four
Anti-War Student Strike Called
A call for a nation-wide strike of
students against war and fascism at
11 A. M. on April 12th has been is-
sued by the National Council of Meth-
odist Youth, Inter-Seminary Move-
ment (Middle Atlantic Division), the
Student League for Industrial De-
mocracy, the National Student League
and the American Youth Congress.
Student leaders of the strike estimated
that at least 100,000 students from
high schools and colleges would re-
spond to their strike call. Last year,
25,000 students left their classrooms
at Vassar, Harvard, Johns Hopkins,
Amherst, Smith, Los Angeles Junior
College, and the Universities of Den-
ver, California, and Minnesota.
The immediate incentives to the
strike this year, the leaders of the
strike declared, .are the .decision of
the U. S. Supreme Court upholding
compulsory drill, the Heart campaign
against liberal and radical students
and professors, and the various stu-
dent loyalty bills that have been in-
troduced into the State Legislatures,
such as the Nunan-Deuany Student
Loyalty Oath,Bill in New York, and
the Assembly Bill 105 in the Califor-
nia State Legislature.
College Calendar
Thursday, March 14. Fenc-
ing meet with Shipley School.
Shipley.   3.00 P. M.
Senior Fencing Champion-
ship.    Gymnasium.    8.00 P. M.
Friday, March 15. Chapel.
Announcement of Graduate Eu-
ropean Fellowships. Goodhart.
8.40 A. M.
Swarthmore Swimming Meet.
Gymnasium.    4.15 P. M.
Saturday, March 16. Varsity
Basketball Game with Swarth-
more.   Gymnasium. 10.00 A. M.
Sunday,. March 17. Sunday
Evening Service conducted by
Dr. Dunbar. 7.30 P. M. Music
Room.
Wednesday, March 20. John
Strachey on America's P/fice in
World A (fairs. Deanery. 8.30
P. M.
Miss Park Debates
May Day Advisability
Main Asset Is Acquiring Spirit
of Cooperation, But College
Work May Suffer
EXPERIENCE      VALUABLE
Goodhart tlall, March 12, 1035.�By
request of the College Council, Miss
Park spoke to the undergraduates on
the subject of Big May Day. In the
past years it has always been the pre-
liminary vote of the undergraduates
which has been the decisive factor in
the decision about the presentation of
May Day. The Trustees, who must
underwrite the production and who
advance some of the necessary capi-
tal, have always accepted the verdict
of the students. The Faculty have
also been in accord with the students'
wishes in this matter.
There have been eight May Day
pageants given since the beginning in
1900. They are usually presented once
every four years, but during the war
there was an interval of six years as
there was between the first and second
May Day. The character of the page-
ant has changed curiously little since
its inception. The performance in
1900 was put on after only six weeks
of rehearsing, yet it contained all the
fundamental parts of the usual May
Day performance. The success of the
Continued  on  Page  Five
Monologues Reveal
Keen Penetration
and Lively Comedy
��
Miss   Helen   Howe   Exaggerates
Feminine Foibles With Skill
and    Conviction
PORTRAYS RIDICULOUS
IN LINE AND GESTURE
Goodhart, March 11.�The series of
dramatic monologues presented by
Miss Helen Howe were distinguished
for their knife-like penetration. They
might well be called exposes of the
essentially ridiculous characteristics
of various types of modern women,
but the remarkable feature of Miss
Howe's work is that her exposes are
never over-drawn. With unusual per-
spicuity, Miss Howe has seen the sali-
ent points that differentiate the
French teacher or the director of ama-
teur dramatics from the Modern In-
tellectual Feminist or the social work-
er, and has exaggerated those very
points with such delicacy that her
characterizations of them become
alarmingly convincing. It seems as
though none of us could avoid erring
in some of the ways whose ridiculous-
ness Miss Howe has pointed out to us.
Unlike Beatrice Lillie, who per-
ceives people with a similar acutcness,
Miss Howe does not turn her charac-
terizations into farces. They remain
pure comedy, and in their comedy
have that understanding of the pa-
thetic which is the essence of the
comic art. The portrayal of the ri-
diculous has gained a new and export
artist in the person of Miss Howe,
but when she turns to expressing sin-
cere emotion unalleviated by a lighter
touch or to creating and sustaining
dramatic intensity, she departs from
the field in which she is an expert and
noticeably loses the inspired quality of
her work in comedy.
The first monologue presented a
French teacher faced with a class of
recalcitrant small children. This ideal
Frenchwoman did all the things that
have terrified children from time im-
memorial. She issued directions in a
rapid and incomprehensible French
and repeated them with obvious im-
patience in a strongly accented Eng-
lish; she saw all�absolutely all �
that went on sub rosa and none of it
Continued  on  race  Four
Campus Collections Range from Bottles
Through Autographs, Penguins to Dolls
Collecting things seems to be one of
those hobbies which either fascinate
or regel people. At least, when we
went around prying into our friends'
private lives to discover their weak-
nesses, some would scornfully disclaim
any time for or interest in collecting,
while others would proudly show oir
their prizes and tell amazing stories
of the difficulties they had had in get-
ting them.
One of the most thorough collectors
u-e ran across is Madelyn Brown, who
has a booU of autographs of famous
people, particularly theatrical men
and aviators. She has gotten them in
person, not through the mail, and they
are mostly addressed to her. George
McManus has signed and drawn a
picture of the familiar Jiggs. She
has the signatures of many prominent
musicians, among them those of Hugo
Itosenfcld, Rachmaninoff. Martinelli,
Lily Pons, and Ernestine Schumann
Heink, who added this sentiment, "In
art�Life. In Life�Truth." Amelia
Earhart has signed, as have Com-
mander Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Hal-
clien and others of his ereWj and she
has on one page the signatures of
Kingsford Smith and his three com-
panions, which she got a few d
after their flight in June, 1980. Bobby
Jones. General PerBhfng, Arthur <;<ii-
terman, and even Thomas Edison
(who was very chary of giving auto-
graphs) have obliged her, as have
Curtis and DaweS, who signed on fac-
ing pages, Some of the celebrities who
have come to Bryn Nfawr have writ-
ten their John Hancocks, � among
them William Butler Yeats and Wil-
liam Beehe. Just to show she's not
one-track-minded she also has the sig-
nature's*^ several movie stars,�Lil-
yan Tashman, Groucho Marx, Fredric
March, Norma Shearer and others.
There are many foreign trophies
which the travelers among us have
collected. One girl who has lived for
some years in Syria has her room
practically furnished with near-East-
ern objects. She has an oriental rug.
vases and pitchers of Syrian ware, a
box made by Syrian prisoners, Jerusa-
lem china, and Hebron glass. A huge
Syrian auto license, twice the size of
one of ours and much thicker, is leas
artistic perhaps," but was very useful
in getting her family through Europe.
Foreign antiques have lured one trav-
eler, who decorates her wall with a
red, "range, and green striped poncho
from Peru,�it's woven and not made
of rubber,�which is 250 years old.
she also has a Japanese actor's ki-
mono, which is about 200 years old,
but still in good condition. She has
picked up an English chafing-dish,
about iT">o. for domestic purposes.
Dolls still seem to be favorites with
some of our number, though one girl
With about 20 of them justified her-
self by Baying thai her interest was
in the costumes, not in the dolls them-'
selves. She has dolls dressed in the
COStumeS Of Lapland. Norway, the Ty-
rol, etc.. and also a seal  from Norway
which boasts of the name, Agamem-
non. Etd             i also one of her hob-
bies, particularly , from I.apland,
while striped bats of many bright col-
or- decorate her bedposts,
-tinned on   Puce  Six