College News, 1938-05-11, Vol. 24, No. 25

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College News
VOL.^XXlV^No. 25
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BRYN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA., WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1938
Copyright TRUSTEES OF
BRYN  MAWR  COLLEGE,  1938
PRICE 10 CENTS
Modern Dancers
Give Technique
Demonstration
*  -7�t
k*\
dhows    Background
And Explains Purposes
Of the Forum
COLLEGE GROUP DOES
C.    WEIDMAN    DANCE
Shaw Comedy  and
'Trifles'   Presented
By   Players'   Club
J. Harned  and E. Emery, '40,
PlayinGlm*ft^        'y
Of   Mid-West
Gymnasium, May 10.�The Dancers'
Club presented an informal lecture-
demonstration on the Modern Dance
under the direction of Ethel Mann, '38.
Her short introduction which opened
the program was followed by demon-
strations of' the Doris Humphrey
technique and the presentation of a
part of Affirmation, a dance composed
by Charles Weidman. The perform-
ance was enthusiastic and exciting,
and the dancing, though amateur in
form, showed interest and ability far
above anything expected from college
students.
In her outline, Ethel Mann referred
to the origins of modern dancing
which were found in the methods of
Isadore Duncan who freed this art of
its former artificiality. Miss Dun-
can's aim was to develop "natural"
movement which could express emo-
tional and mystical experience. Upon
this principle of expression the Mod-
ern Dance has been built.
Technique, she explained, is only
the way one does something, and no
two persons employ the same means.
It is, in a word, an individual's point
of view. The three outstanding
schools of technique today are those
of Charles Weidman, Martha Graham,
and Doris Humphrey. The Bryn
Mawr dancers employed the methods
of Miss Humphrey who has been
training them in her classes on the
campus this year.
The technical foundation of Miss
Humphrey's work is based upon the
natural body action in relation to
gravity. Out of the alternation of
unbalance and recovery, a rhythm
develops which is kinetic rather than
musical. The three structural ele-
ments of this dance are rhythm,
dynamism or intensity, and design.
The demonstration of technique, ac-
companied by the drum, included body
stretches, a study in opposition and
Continued on Page Six
Goodhart, May 7.�The Players'
Club presented a socially non-signifi-
cant tragedy, Trifles, by Susan Glas-
pell, and a farce, Passion, Poison and
Petrifaction, by George Bernard Shaw.
Both are one-act plays; the first is
difficult because it is extremely subtle,
and the second because it is just the
opposite. The Players' Club handled
its joint problems with remarkable
success.
Susan Glaspel's dreary midwestern
tragedy opened the evening. The
slight plot concerns a sheriff and a
county attorney, who search the
Wright farm house to find clues to
prove that Mrs. Wright, now in the
village jail, has killed her husband.
From trifles, the women who accom-
pany them piece together Mrs.
Wright's sad history.
Eleanor Emery, '40, and Julia
Harned, '39, were the two women,
stiff and chary of speech. The looks
which they exchanged created a tense
atmosphere, which was communicated
to the audience as a terrifying feeling
of suspense. Eleanor Emery's acting
wds particularly subtle in its com-
plete restraint, which she emphasized
by occasional nervous movements of
her hands. Julia Harned played a
more difficult part with understanding
simplicity.
Martha de Witt, '41, struggling as
Hale, a farmer, under a heavy mono-
logue at the beginning of the play,
spoke slightly too fast and without
sufficient emphasis. However, she
walked and carried herself like a"
man, unlike the sheriff, Thelma Deck,
'41, and the attorney, Barbara Black,
'41, who were somewhat too feminine
in their speech and gestures.
Passion, Poison and Petrifaction is
a farce, recognizably Shavian, about
a husband who poisons his rival and
feeds him lime as an antidote, only to
watch him turn slowly into stone,
good for nothing but a statue- in Tra-
falgar Square. The Players' Club
cast acted this with skillful abandon.
Julia Follansbee, '41, was excellent as
the melodramatic villain, sneering
Continued on Pas* Four
Miss Meigs Reviews
the March 'Lantern'
ANNA HIETANEN
Eight Bryn Mawr Folk Dancers Descend
On New York to be in Spring Festival
Four undergraduate couples, Miss
Ethel Grant and Mrs. A. Basset, '24,
went to New York on Saturday, April
17, to the spring festival of the Eng-
lish Folk Dance Society of America.
Mrs. Bassett took four students in her
car. En route she told anecdotes of
the days when impoverished under-
graduates pledged 100 dollars to Good-
hart and then raised the money by
dress-making and waxing sweetpeas.
(These were Mrs. Bassett's methods.
Others sat on Taylor steps and sold
four cent strings of beads for a dol-
lar.)     .
In New York, our first gesture was
the purchase of an ic(e pacV^QH one
of our number who seemed to be de-
veloping appendicitis. The next was
lunch. Having consulted the police-
man on the corner of 67 Street and
Park Avenue, we started into a murky
little sandwich shop. Alarmed by the
darkness and by the numbers of fur-
tive looking men at the counter, we
backed out again quickly. There was
no other place in sight. At length,
' on the advice of a nearby doorman, we
gathered courage and went all the
way in. From the inside it looked
like a cross between the bookshop
with its lights off and a soda fountain.
The Folk Dance festival, which is
backed by many imposing people,
headed by Mrs. Roosevelt, is given in
the armory on East 66 Street By the
time we arrived most of the dancers
were already there, but a good many
ladies in bright cotton dresses still
crowded in the door: We followed in
the wake of two elderly green ones
and reached an enormous dark room
where we changed shoes, surrounded
by mothers tweaking their little girls'
braids, schools in all stages of undress,
and grandmothers preparing to dance
themselves.
The room in which we danced had
enough' floor space to accommodate
eight tennis courts and was propor-
tionately high. All around the sides
there were elevated boxes bearing bit
a shield the names of the groups sit-
ting in them. We shared our box with
the Child Welfare Foundation Train-
ing School, which was dressed in
brown and blue.
Every one seemed to be in group
costume but ourselves; there was a
contingent of brilliant pink women
from Boston, green women from New
York, pink children and blue children
herded by a girl in white from the
Staten Island Academy, and a whole
seraglio of yellow ladies clustered
around one long-waisted middle-aged
gentleman. The men all wore white;
some were in tight Morris breeches,
but most had on ordinary trousers.
Like the women, they ranged in ages
from six to 65. Some of them were.
covered with the insignia of folk danc-
ing, each rosette indicating a type of
dance mastered.
The program began�on time�with
the Horn Dance given here last Big
May Day. It was danced entirely by
men, and included, besides those who
carried antlers, a down, a hobby
horse and a small boy carrying a green
branch. The steps were slow and
Continued on ra*e Four
Anna Hietanen Joins
Geology Department
Special   Appointments   Include
Two Men Candidates for
Ph. D. Degree
The Mary Paul Collins Scholarship
for Foreign Women, to be held for
1938-39 in the department of Geology,
has been awarded to Miss Anna Hie-
tanen, of Finland. A canvass of all
the institutions in the world where
women of advanced graduate rank in
geology are available showed only
eight or ten eligible for the scholar-
ship. The department believes Miss
Hietanen is the best qualified of these
to participate in the work planned.
Born in Isokyro, Finland, in 1909,
Miss Hietanen will receive her Ph. D.
this year. She was trained under
Professor Pentti Eskola of the Uni-
versity of Helsingfors (Helsinki), who
has done extensive iield work in the
metamorphosed igneous rocks of Fin-
land. These rocks present problems
very similar in petrology and strati-
graphy to the complicated Piedmont
Province around Bryn Mawr, on
which the department will concentrate
next year.
Considerable work on this region
has been done in the past, particularly
by members of the staff and students
of the college. Recently, interest has
been renewed because of changed
methods of age determination and
consequent new interpretations. The
Mary Paul Collins Research grant
provides two scholarships to American
graduate students, who will also work
an the Piedmont project. These have
been awarded to Miss Anna L. Dor-
sey, A.B., 1937, University of Mis-
souri, and Miss Natalie Carleton, A.B.,
1933, and M.S., 1936, University of
Vermont.
Dr. Elisabeth Sauer, of Munich,
Germany, who received her Ph.D. de-
gree 8umma cum laude in 1937, was
also seriously considered with Miss
Hietanen for the main scholarship.
It is now probable, the Dean's office
of the graduate school announced, that
Dr. Sauer will be at Bryn Mawr as
German Exchange Teaching Fellow.
Four or five men are registered as
graduate students for next year, two
of them the first men candidates for
the Ph.D. degree/in the history of the
college. In addition, the regular
graduate scholars will be Jane Arm-
strong, from Smith College, and Kath-
ryn Dedman from  Marietta College.
Next year the Mary Paul  Collins
Research grant will be awarded for
the  fourth  time.    It  was  held  first
Continued on Pace Five
The College News, in a recent edi-
torial, states that the Lantern is hav-
ing an admittedly low period and that
ikjir*           . r*d with ultimate death
unless further support is offered. The
News thus calls attention to a very
vital question among Bryn Mawr's
extra curricular activities.
It is the opinion of this member of
the faculty selected to review the last
number, that the cause of this low
period is not the fault of a group of
diligent and spirite* editors, but is the
responsibility of certain more remote
figures, namely T. S. Eliot, Gertrude
Stein and, less directly, Chekov, Kath-
arine Mansfield and The New Yorker.
It is not suggested that imitation of
the work of the above named is the
source of the trouble. The fact is
that each of these, in his own way,
has helped to set up a literary fash-
ion which it is extremely difficult to
follow. Since the educated taste of
a college audience responds to this
rather intricate and specialized work
to an unusual degree, it seems incum-
bent upon the college magazine to re-
flect that taste and produce something
of a similar sort. More than one
magazine of the present day has
fallen into the rut of some such spe-
cialized tendency, has grown thinner
and thinner in actual content and
then, after temporary retirement, has
burst suddenly into the journalistic
ring with a "Here we are again,"
turning double somersaults and clad
in the violent motley of The Picture
Magazine of Popular Appeal. Such a
fate could never overtake the Lantern
for the good taste of its constituency
will not abide it. But none the less,
it is the serious concern of everyone
interested in Bryn Mawr to-�onsider
the case of the magazine. That a
college of Bryn Mawr's resourceful-
ness should have real difficulty in
maintaining an adequate literary
magazine is hardly to be believed.
At present, the editors must write
the contributions themselves, or must
select them from the casual and fugi-
tive pieces of work which students
may produce in their spare hours.
Suchspare-hdurs are very few and
the people outside the Editorial Board
do not make work for the Lantern
part of their regular program of ex-
tra curricular activities. As a result,
the editors are overworked and are
unable to offer their best efforts in
the magazine. Some new plan of
gathering material, a much larger
Continued on rage Two
WASHINGTON LETTERS
FLOOD PEACE COUNCIL
Mercantilism
�
Final Flexner
Lecture Topic
Gay Sees Reflux in Modern
Times and Hopes for
Its Success
INDUSTRIAL CONTROL
BY   STATE   DEVELOPS
Science Picnic Postponed
The Science Club picnic has
been postponed until Monday,
May 23, because of the Varsity-
Faculty baseball game this
Thursday. Members should sign
on the new lists posted in
the halls before Monday, May
16, and indicate whether they
will bicycle or will require trans-
portation. All available cars will
be gratefully welcomed.
After the Peace Demonstration of
April 27, the college Peace Council
distributed its resolutions to numerous
senators, congressmen, departments
and committees who might be inter-
ested. To date, Louise Morley has
received ten letters. The first was,
appropriately enough, from the War
Department, and is posted on the
Peace Council bulletin board. The
other nine lie in the council secre-
tary's folder, where anyone may see
them on request.
Besides the War Department, the
following acknowledged with varying
degrees of gratitude the receipt of
the resolutions: The Department of
Labor, the United States Department
of the Interior (which has by far
the largest departmental letter head
and the only one specifying the coun-
try), the Department of Commerce,
the Department of Agriculture, the
Navy Department, the Senate Com-
mittee on Foreign Affairs, two Penn-
sylvania congressmen and one Penn-
sylvania senator.
By far "the warmest letter came
from the senator, though the congress-
men .were very nice; and the coolest
was from the Navy Department.
Senator James Davis, after remark-
ing that he has our letter, and add-
ing that he appreciates our thought-
fulness, jotted down in his own hand
these words: "Do you know that Bryn
Mawr is Welsh: It is Big Hill. Mawr
is big�Bryn is Hill." The Navy De-
Continued on Pace Five
Goodhart, May 9.�In his final lec-
ture on the Economic History of Eng-
land during the Renaissance (1485-
1640), Dr. Edwin R. Gay, Flexner
lecturer, spoke on Mercantilism and
the Rise of Free Enterprise. He de-
scribed mercantilism as a restrictive
economic tendency in the period of
transition from mediaeval stability to
the mobility of modern capitalism.
Mercantilism is not a system, but
the haphazard comments and oppor-
tunistic legislation which followed the
changes in Renaissance economy.
This transition was accomplished
without serious disruption of the pub-
lic order. Dr. Gay quoted Whitehead
as saying that where there are the
two forces of permanence and flux,
the "art of progress" is in maintain-
ing change in order and order in
change. We are at present in reverse
transition from mobile to stable econ-
omy. Dr. Gay closed his series of lec-
tures with the hope that the future
may accomplish its change as success-
fully.
In the confusion resulting from the
clash of persisting mediaeval institu-
tions with new forces, the idea of
the powerful state as a supreme re-
stricting power came into being. The
legislation of the period was marked
by vacillating opportunism more
than by any determining policy. It
shows an aspiration rather than a
reasoned redress of the state of things.
From these efforts and the discus-
sions they developed, arose the theories
of Humi and Adam Smith, our mod-
ern political economy, and the actu-
alities of modern free enterprise.
During the reign of Elizabeth, Lord
Burleigh was one of the greatest mer-
cantilists in action. At a time of
serious depression in 1587 he was
prepared to rescind the entire bulk of
restrictive legislation passed since the
beginning of the reign. The efforts
of a "pressure group" of London mer-
chants would perhaps have been in
vain had not the Armada come, and
success in arms stopped economic re-
form.
Although government legislation in
this period was designed to restrain
the changes, it sought restraint in
the interests of rationalism. The re-
sult was the gradual destruction of
the mediaeval system with the growth
of laissez faire and individualism.
In  this  period  the  powerful   state
was developed to hold the same con-
Continued on Pace Five
COLLEGE CALENDAR
Thursday, May It.�Faculty
vs. Varsity baseball game. Hock-
ey Field, 4 p.m.
Monday, May Iff.�Final Ex-
aminations begin.
Tuesday, May 17.�Concert by
Miss Mary Earp for the benefit
of the Bryn Mawr Hospital,
Deanery, 8.30.
Monday,    May    23.�Science
Club Picnic, 4.30.
Friday, May 27.�Final Ex-
aminations end.
Sunday, May 29.�Baccalau-
reate Sermon by Dr. Robert
Russell    Wicks.    Goodhart,     8
p. m.
Monday,,   May     30.�Senior
Bonfire, Lower Hockey Field, 9
p. m.
Tuesday, May SI. � Senior
Garden Party, Wyndham, 4-7
p. m.
Wednesday, June 1.�Com-
mencement. Address by the
Hon. Francis B. Say re, Good-
hart, 11 a. m.
A