College News, 1938-04-13, Vol. 24, No. 21

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COLLEGE
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VOL. XXIV, No. 21
BRYN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA.; WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1938
Copyright TRUSTEES OF
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, 1938
PRICE 10 CENTS
Bryn   Mawr  Wins
Acclaim as Russia
_$M&t**    J~l League
Morley    Awarded    First    Prize
For   "Litvinoff"   Speech
On League Inaction
SAYLOR OF HAVERFORD
CHAIRMAN'S  ASSEMBLY
The Bryn Mawr International Re-
lations Club took a prominent part in
the Mqdel Assembly of the League of
Nations held at Rutgers University
on April eighth and ninth. Last year
Bryn Mawr represented Denmark and
so suffered from an inferiority com-
plex; but this year self-confidence was
restored when we were allotted Rus
sia and the trip turned out to be a
great success. Louise' Morley, '40,
won first prize fml her speech in the
Friday Plenary S�sipn, Dr. Fenwick
^as quoted by China, and many dip-
lomatic manoeuvers were won by the
three Bryn Mawr delegates at the
informal dance.
On Friday morning Tillman Say-
lor, of Haverford, opened the first
plenary session and such routine
business followed as the appointment
of the Credentials Committee and the
election of the president djf the as-
sembly. After this camedne debates,
in which Louise Morley, '40, proved
the best diplomat. Impersonating the
Soviet Union, she pointed out that
the League has failed to keep down
aggression largely through its at-
tempt to be universal. This ideal uni-
versality has caused artificial and in-
effective measures, for the League's
own covenant permits the withdrawal
of members for aggressive purposes.
Therefore the League members, rath-
er than holding to this ideal of uni-
versality, should be united by a ''com-
mon universal idea such as that of
peace, of respecting the independence
and integrity of all peoples, of out-
lawing forces as an instrument in
national policy."
The silence with which we have ac-
cepted the recent aggressive actions of
three nations is dangerous, the "So-
viet Union" believes, for the aggress-
ors may interpret our silence to .mean
agreement with their principles^ As
a solution, the speaker_urged that the
League make its policy that of strong
non-intervention and show by one ex-
ample that "aggressiveness does not
pay." Then the three previously men-
tioned States would return and help
attain the ideal of a universal League
as an instrument of peace.
The afternoon and the following
morning were filled by commission
sessions dealing with mandates, Far-
Eastern affairs, and internal conflict.
Ann Blake, '39, Mary Wood, '39, Joy
Rosenheim, '40, Alice Shurcliff, '38,
Louise Morley and Eleanor Taft, '3D,
Continued on Page Five
Zimmerman Attacks,
. Imperialistic Economy
Labor   Must    Fight   MMttfiam
Governments
Common Room, April 6.�Mr. I.
Zimmerman, formerly organizer for
the C. I. O. in Delaware, spoke to the
Industrial Group on Labor and War,
with special reference to the May Bill.
Declaring that imperialistic econ-
omy is one of the chief causes of war,
Mr. Zimmerman stated that "the only
force to do away with war is labor,"
because it alone can fight effectively
against the present system. He urged
free action of the labor party in the
political field to guard against op-
pressive legislation and to bring
about more adequate social conditions.
By opposing rearmament and the in-
crease of military budgets labor
would form a most effective weapon
against war.
Imperialistic economy causes war,
Mr. Zimmerman said, because such a
system, to expand, must have colonies
to supply raw materials and a market
for manufactured goods and surplus
capital. The division and reallocating
of colonies in 1919 are the main causes
of today's conflict between the "haves"
and the "have-nots." With such a
cause we cannot simply say that it
it is the nature of man to fight, or
expect to stop war by expressions of
indignation.
Every nation is now preparing for
war, not only by rearmament but by
more insidious means; through educa-
tion, the R. 0. T. C. and organized
propaganda groups. The speaker
quoted Fechner, head of the C. C. C,
as saying, "All of these boys are 85
per cent army trained. . . All of the
guiding spirits (of the C. C. C.) are
military men."
The "M Day" (Mobilization Day)
plans which were brought to light in
the course of a munitions investiga-
tion are the basis, Mr. Zimmerman
said, of the earlier Shepherd-Hill
Bill and of the May Bill. The pro-
visions of the May Bill come under
four heads: price fixing, drafting of
man pffiver for military service and in-
dustry, control of industry, and prep-
aration of a treasury report on in-
dustry and income. He pointed out
the provisions which seem most sig-
nificant and dangerous to labor. The
bill gives the president absolute au-
thority in time of emergency to con-
script everyone in the United States,
to fix prices, wages, rents and serv-
ices. No exemptions will be made in
drafting, and those not taken at once
will be given "deferred classification."
Only women and children are exempt,
and since in wartime all restrictions
on labor for women and children
would be removed, they would replace
the. drafted men in industry. Under
the bill the president may supervise!
all those in contrbl of business, aria
Continued on  Paps Four--------
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COLLEGE CALENDAR
Thursday, April H.�Prof.
Harold Laski will speak on The
"ritish Labor Party and De-
mocracy.   Goodhart, 8.20.
Sunday, April 17.�Memorial
Recital. Mr. Horace Alwyne
and the Curtis String Quartet
will   play.    Goodhart,   5   p.   m.
Monday, April 18.�Third
Flexner Lecture by Dr. Edwin
Gay. Goodhart, 8.20. Cornelia
Otis Skinner in Edna, His Wife.
For the benefit of the Theatre
Workshop. Forrest Theatre,
8.30.
Tuesday, April fP.�Current
Events, Mr. Fenwick. Common
Room, 7.30. International Club
meeting.  Common Room, 8 p. m.
Saturday, April 23.�German
Club Play.    Goodhart, 8.30.
Sunday, April Pt.�N a d i a
Boulanger recital. Deanery, 5
p. m. Leslie Glenn will speak
in Chapel.    Music Room, 7.30.
Monday, April 25.�F o u r t h
Flexner Lecture by Dr. Edwin
Gay.    Goodhart, 8.20.
Tuesday, April 26.�Current
Events. Mr. Fenwick. Com-
mon Room, 7.30.
Wednesday, April 27.�Peace
Day; Vera M. Dean will speak.
Goodhart, 11 a. m.
Cornerstone of New
Rhoads Hall is Laid
Patience Satirizes Pre-Raphaelite School;
Contributed to Downfall of Aestheticism
fIt is usually a moot point, whether
operas and operettas should be ex-
plained beforehand. On the one hand,
an opera libretto gives the plot m
brief for those who presumably will
not know Ihe words; on the other,
Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are so
crystal clear that they need no ex-
planation. But most of them do not
have as definite a historical back-
ground as Patience, which in 1881
burst upon a whole society of Lon-
don aesthetes, and became the most
spectacular piece of satire of the
period.                         ^^
The average ^ndeW^ricT'Sullivan-
ite is well aware that Bunthorne is
meant to be Oscar Wilde, who. dwelt
lovingly in his poetry and in his daily
life on "strange sorrows and strange
sins." Wilde settled in London in
1878, and immediately became the idol
of a swarm of imitators. His favorite
attire was black velvet knee breeches
and a flowing tie; in his right "hand
he would hold a pure white calla lily,
sniffing it thoughtfully every now and
I
then to indicate his abstraction from
a gross world. When Patience opened,
he was to be seen in the front stalls,
holding his lily and laughing indul-
gently. Punch, also laughing, wrote
a poem on him,
"Aesthete  of  aesthetes,  what's  in  a
name?
His actions are Wilde, but his verse is
tame."
The character of Swinburne is not
so easily recognizable in Grosvenor,
who is a healthy version of the "fleshy
poet," a handsome youth who diverts
all the feminine attention from Bun-
thorne. In reality, Swinburne had a
mass of red hair, and a pale,interest-
ing face, but he was much too small
for the smallest of love-sick maidens.
His only claim to fame as a muscular
Olympian hero was that he did not
strike stained-glass attitudes, and
represented" a robuster school than
langorous Oscar Wilde. For that mat-
ter, Wilde was more preoccupied with
the world'than he pretended to be,
and according to Beerbohm's carica-
Co'ntlnued on Pace Three
Coca Cola, Book List, Lipstick�
Are Enclosed as Typical
Of College Life
RJioads Hall, April 9.�The corner-
stone for the new dormitory was laid
with simple  ceremony.    Mr.  Charles
Rhoads, president of the corporation
and son of the hall's namesake,
smoothed out the last lump of mor-
tar with a silver trowel. Upon this
the large hollow block of granite,
carved MCMXXXVIII, which will be
at the southern base of the entrance
arch, was lowered into place. Mr.
Rhoads led the small gathering in
three cheers for the hall, Miss Park,
the architect and the contractors, and
the ceremony was complete.
A suitable inscription for the
trowel will be planned by Miss Park
and it will be preserved in the new
hall. The copper box which will be
scaled inside the granite contains a
collection Of items for the benefit of
future archeologists and the follow-
ing letter:
"To whoever opens this  box:  Greet-
ings:
"We have enclosed in this corner-
stone a number of things which we
think will give you some indication of
how we work and spend our leisure
time here in Bryn Mawr TJollege dur-
ing the spring of 1938.
"The College News and the Lantern
are our own publications. The New
York Times is the newspaper most
generally read by the students. It is
delivered to our doors etery moYning
at eight o'clock. Life, a weekly maga-
zine which inundates our smoking
rooms every Friday, is also popular
among the students. The book of
Self Government rules contains the
laws which operate within the College
and which are made and obeyed by
the students.
The Orchestra program, Book List
(which indicates the popular fiction of
the moment) the Motion Picture Ad-
mission Card and the Inn menu, indi-
cate, in part, what we do for recrea-
tion. The underlined item* on the
Continued on Face Four
Miss Skinner to Give
Theatre Guild Benefit
Will   Appear   in   Dramatization   of
-'*�"��   Edna His  Wife-
THEATRE WORKSHOP
The Players' Club is giving
its two one-act plays on Friday,
May 6, for the benefit of the
Theatre Workshop. The plays
are Poison, Passion and Petri-
fication, an uproarious farce by
Bernard Shaw, and Trifles, a
subtle tragedy of rural life by
Susan Glaspell. Both plays are
being produced without scenery
to lower expenses.
Starting on Monday, April 18, Cor-
nelia Otis Skinner will be at the For-
rest Theatre in Philadelphia in her.
own dramatization of Margaret Ayer
Barnes' novel, Edna His Wife. Miss
Skinner is donating all the proceeds
of Monday night for the benefit of the
Theatre Workshop, but there will be
no increase in the price of tickets.
Students from Bryn Mawr and Bald-
win will give out leaflets at the thea-
tre with information about the Work-
shop.
Edna His Wife is Miss Skinner's
lirst full-length play. It starts in the
early 1900's,'with the first scene laid
in a beer garden where a party is
being given for a brakeman on the
Blue Island Railroad; Edna, her sis-
ter, and two young men have come
on their Monarch Safety bicycles.
Miss Skinner plays the part of Edna
in alternate scenes, but the character
of Paul Jones, her powerful and ruth-
less husband, dominates the entire
play, even though he naturally never
appears. Miss Skinner has an extra-
ordinary faculty for creating invisible
characters who have as much reality
as her own portrayals.
The sets were designed by Donald
Oenslager and the costumes by Ma-
dame Helene Pons, who does most of
the costuming for the Theatre Guild.
Mrs. Otis Skinner always wanted to
see her daughter framed, as it were,
in a comparatively small setting, and
Mr. Oenslager has carried out this
idea. In the past the"whole stage
has been left bare except for a few
obvious properties, making it difficult
for Miss Skinner to fill, in a dramatic
sense, a space which is usually occu-
pied by at least two people. Mr. Oen-
slager was also confronted by the
problem of providing properties for
imaginary characters; in the beer
garden qcene, for instance, he de-
cided to have only one chair for Edna
at a table, even though eight or nine
people are supposed to sit down with
her. In another scene Miss Skinner,
playing the part of Edna's" mother
and laden with real packages, receives
an invisible and quite convincing tele-
gram.
From her mother Miss Skinner in-
herited a passion for meticulous cor-
rectness. When Mrs. Skinner directed
May Day, she made it so authentic
that English directors came specially
to see it. Miss Skinner has studied
the early 90's with such care for Edna
His Wife that even her slang is
correct.
The prices for tickets are: Orches-
tra, $2.28; Mezzanine, $1.71; Balcony,
$1.14 and $1.57. They will be on sale
in Mrs. Chadwick-Collins' office in
Taylor continuously until Monday.
Dr.   Gay  Discusses
-  Change to English
Monetary   System
Influx  of Silver  Gave  Impetus
To New Economy and Helped
Promote Capitalism
CLERGY AND MONARCHY
/         DEEPEST SUFFERERS
A. A. PRESIDENT PLANS'
CAREER IN STATISTICS
Anne Janet Clark, newly-elected
president of the Athletic Association,
has spent her life officiating in Bryn
Mawr athletic associations. At the
Bryn Mawr School in her native Bal-
timore she was president of the ath-
letic association. She was elected to
the college one upon arrival and has
systematically run the cursus hon-
orum.
A. J.'s interests are varied. She
won the special Bryn Mawr scholar-
ship for the top ranking studwu^at
school, and has continued to show
great ability. ;�* *�"*'� *�"�"' 9ges and
science. She is preparing fof a career
in biological statistics by majoring in
German. At college she has been co-
founder and active supporter of the
German Club, holding executive po-
sitions In it as in other organizations.
Her summers are divided "between
sailing a sloop in Maine or on the
Chesapeake Bay and mountain climb-
ing or bicycling in Europe, where she
contracted her fondness for all things
German.
Goodhart, April 9.�In his second
lecture, Dr. Edwin Gay discussed
money as the third cause of the price
revolution during the sixteenth cen-
tury. The growth of population and
the advance in technology were
treated last week.
Throughout the sixteenth century,
according to Dr. Gay, there was a
steady transition from the old "na-
tural" economy to the new "money"
economy. This meant that business
was transacted in cash rather than in
goods. Since very little commercial
paper was used except in international
trade, the result was a demand for
new, supplies of metal for coinage.
This need was first met by the de-
velopment of silver-mines in Southern
Germany and Bohemia. Later, after
the discovery of America, great
amounts of precious metals, especially
silver, were also imported from the
Spanish possessions in Mexico and
Peru. The supply of silver was par-
ticularly large, and became more and
more*-important with time. From
1493 to 1560 it formed 55 % of the
European total; from 1561 to 1620, it
formed 7898; and from 1621 to 1660,
80r/f.
According to the estimate of Soet-
beer, between" 1493 and 1560 the total
European supply of both gold and
silver was approximately $549,400,000
(using the value of �WTa'bllar before
,1933). Of this, $310,000,000 came
from Europe and Africa, and $238,-
000,000 from America. From 1561
to 1620, the total was $1,099,000,000.
Owing to the lack of accurate ac-
counts, such figures can only be ap-
proximately correct. A new and
greatly reduced estimate of the Amer-
ican imports has been advanced by
Earl J. Hamilton, who was able
roughly to deduce, from its registers,
the complete amount imported. Ac-
cording to his figures, the import made
a total of $854,500,000. This account,
however, was taken from official
records, and makes.no allowance for
(he great quantity of metal which was
smuggled in, unregistered, and which -
probably formed anywhere from 10%
to M% of the total supply. If such
a 507r increase is added to his original
figures, it brings them much closer
to those of Soetbeer, which still, how-
ever, remain too high. The correct
estimate probably lies somewhere be-
tween the two.
Even with Soetbeer's estimate, the
average total supply is only 8 million
during the first period, '18 million
during the second, and 20 million dur-
ing the third. Compared with the
total yearly production' ih 1932->-545
million�this seems rather slight. But
it is really relatively large when it is
compared to the needs of the society
of the time.
This "flow of metals" had two chief
European points of diffusion, Antwerp
and Spain, from which the American
supply was distributed.
Depreciation and juggling with the
coinage had veYy little to do with the
price revolution. In England, the
depreciation from 1544 to 1553 '"was
a jog in the price movement, but was
��        Continued on FlM Six
LASKI TO SPEAK
Tomorrow night Harold J.
Laski, of the University of Lon-
don, will speak in Goodhart on
The British Labor Party and-
Democracy. Mr. Laski is dis-
tinguished as an economist and
as an author. He has made a
special effort to come to Bryn
Mawr, through the intercession
of Miss Stapleton, and we are
privileged in being able to hear
him.