College News, 1939-02-22, Vol. 25, No. 13

              College News
~\S *-�"
VOL. XXV, No. 13
BRVN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA., WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1939 brcyTm%r�o"l�ge%934-   PRICB 10 CENTS
V
Psychologists
Induce Animal
Neurosis in Rats
Dr. N. R. Maier's Experiments
Judged Best Scientific
Work of 1938
PRIZE FILM SHOWN
BY MR. MACKINNON
Muaic Room, February H.�The
prize film, Experimentally Produced^
Neurotic Behavior in the Rat, by Dr.
Norman R. Maier, of the University
of Michigan, was shown and discussed
by Donald W. MacKinnon, of the
psychology department. When Dr.
Maier gave the film with its accom-
panying paper before the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science in December, it was awarded
the annual prize of 1000 dollars as
the most worthwhile report at the
meeting.
The importance of this achievement
lies in the successful production of
neurotic behavior in animals under
strictly controlled laboratory condi-
tions. This allows a simplification of
the life story of the organism so
that cause and effect can be scientific-
ally analyzed.       ^
In the rats so far used, "nervous
breakdowns" have appeared in only
four. In these the neurotic symptoms
are brought on when the rat is in a
"no solution" situation where only
negative forces act upon it. It has
no learned mode of response and the
conflicting forces upon it are some-
where nearly balanced. The rats that
developed no neurotic symptoms either
escaped from the field of the forces or
showed some new mode of response.
One of the rats that "broke down"
was shown using passive resistance in
the baffling situation. Suddenly it
jumped from its perch and raced about
the laboratory floor with a curious
hopping motion. Its behavior was
stiff, and quite distinct from that
shown of the normal rats. When Dr.
Maier picked it up it appeared to be
quite oblivious of its surroundings.
He was able to mold it into a ball or
stretch it out into positions which it
held. The film then showed that
brother rats which had not been
through these experiences would not
permit such treatment.
The effects wore off presently. The
test rat was only somewhat more re-
tiring than its cage-mates. When
again introduced to the situation,
even after a month's vacation, the
Continued on Page Four
Sophomore Presents
Play for Workshop
M. Alston  Writes and  Directs
Eighteenth Century Satire,
'Premature  Lilies'
Wyndliam, February 18.�Prema-
ture Lilies, written and directed by
Mary Niven Alston, '41, was presented
Saturday night in Wyndham for the
benefit of the Theater Workshop.
A satire on the formality of life
and manners in the eighteenth cen-
tury, it showed a highly amusing pic-
ture of a young girl pretending to
pine away from love to satisfy a fam-
ily who would have thought her "lack-
ing in sensibility" had she behaved
otherwise after a broken engagement.-
Mr. Chilton (Virginia Nichols), ar-
ranges a sensible marriage for his
daughter Isabella (Mary Alston).
She, however, not properly apprecia-
tive of her good fortune, contrives to
get rid of the young man, one Jere-
miah' Somerset (Peggy Squibb), by
confiding to him that she was a biga-
mist although both husbands are now
dead. He, much shocked, terminates
the engagement and flees from the
house to avoid a duel with Mr. Chil-
ton.
Isabella   pines  for   two   days.     A
handsome doctor, Babs Black, '41, who
is  called  in   discovers  the   ruse   but
agrees to be an accomplice, providing
Isabella with  food  and  at the same
time giving alarming reports to the
family.
Continued on Pago Four
Scholarships Benefit
Outstanding Students
Dean Manning Lays  Emphasis
On Scholars' Contribution
To Community
Music Room, February 17.�Dean
Manning, speaking in chapel on
Scholarships, stated the college policy
with regard to awards as simply to
increase the number of outstanding
students in the college. It is not a
matter of charity, but an asset to
both college and community.
Different from the British practice,
American colleges award scholarships
not on a basis of supremacy in com-
petitive examinations alone, but try
to make the money go as far as pos-
sible. The college investigates the
need of the student, asking those who
can pay their own way to do so, in
order that the certain number of bet-
ter students who need financial as-
sistance can go ahead without too
Continued on Page Six
/
Midwinter 'Lantern,' With Few Exceptions,
Shows Decadence, Unhealthy. Subjectivity
(Specially   contributed   by  M.   Di-
mock, '39.)
The general mood of the creative
writing in the Midwinter issue of the
Lantern is cheerless. But since this
despair is evidently caused by no ac-
tual tragic situations, the writing's
appear as so many mournful, esoteric,
slightly pathological hallucinations.
The authors do not deal with subjects
confronting them, but spin lines and
more lines around an amorphous sense
of themselves. They seem in general
to be reading their states of minds
into any situation that comes along,
in fact to be so absorbed in their own
j. outlooks that they find it unnecessary
* 4o treat these outlooks in terms of
^^^ anything so healthy as a moral^or a
remedy or a plot.
Hester Corner's Captions for Photo-
graphs is simply that. It is worthy
of note as the one humorous piece in
the Lantern. I find the little mono-
logue Miss Corner directs to her idor
at the close of the poem slightly out
of keeping with the rest of the tone.
But on the whole it is amusing and
unique. Miss Corner's other poem
For the People of Knossos, whether
she intended so or not, comes very
close to being a satirical propitiation
of the interminable critics of Lantern
poetry. Its single theme, clearly de-
veloped first, then summarized in the
manner of the Reader's Digest,
"Therefore their method of knowl-
edge                   '
Is to learn
Objects by their limits,"
leaves nothing^ obscure. The repeti-
tion of such non-visual words 'as
limit and infinity give the whole work
the air of a thesis rather than a
poem. .
Dorothy Counselman's Meeting and
Identity is a slow-moving statement
of the genesis of an unusual relation-
ship. The strange union th'at trans-
cends space and tinae is�itself the in-
teresting thing*, and a. treatment of
exactly how it would work out after
the parting would be of greater- in-
terest to me than the itemized, chro-
nological account of how the parting
came to be. MiM Counselmdn has an
idea of this relationship, but never
attempts to convey it as such to her
readers; she observes how and that it
occurred, but does not write from
within either character. The whole
is a situation which is never made to
seem possible, much less to have hap-
pened.                      '
Continued on Pace Four
COLLEGE CALENDAR
Thursday, February 23.�
Martha Graham in American
Document.    Goodhart, 8.30.
Friday,' Febru7tr>y^2i.�Mass
Meeting on the Embargo^Good-
hart, 1.30. A. S. U. meeting.
Common Room, 8 p. an.
Saturday February 25.�
Freshman Show. Goodhart,
8.30.
Sunday, February 26.�Don-
ald B. Aldrich will speak in
chapel.    Music Room, 7.30.
Monday, February 27.�Frank
A. Arnold will speak on Oppor-
tunities for Women in Radio.
Common Room, 5 p. m. Judge
Florence Allen will give fourth
Shaw lecture.    Goodhart, 8.20.
Tuesday, February 28.�The
' Philadelphid Story. Chestnut
Street Opera House, 2.30v Cur-
rent Events, Mr. Fenwick. Com-
mon Room, 7.30. International
Club Meeting. Common Room,
8.30.
Committee to Aid
Refugees is Formed
Permanent Group to Supervise
Fund-Raising and Placing
Of Students
The Intercollegiate Committee To
Aid Student Refugees has been set
up in New York to "coordinate and
extend the fund-raising work being
done by colleges throughout the coun-
try for the purpose of securing schol-
arships and maintenance for refugee
students. "In its first progress re-
port, which has just been issued, the
committee outlines the work of vari-
ous colleges to date in raising schol-
arships for German refugee students.
At. present, thirty-three men's and
women's colleges throughout the
United States are active in raising
money, and many of them, including
Bryn Mawr, already have one or more
students on their campuses.
The committee hopes to establish
a National Fund to be raised from
"interested organizations, founda-
tions, individuals and colleges." This
fund would facilitate a reallocation of
funds in those cases where a college
can provide tuition, but not living
expenses. Colleges which can- raise
money, but which, for some reason,
cannot take a student on campus, can
be sure of having it usefully applied
if  they  add  to  the  National   Fund.
A number of colleges, the report
continues, have, in order to help as
many students as possible, budgeted
very closely on tuition and living ex-
penses. The Fund will therefore be
prepared to meet such emergencies as
accidents, sickness, unforeseen trans-
Continued on P**e Three
AMERICAN DOCUMENT'
TO  BE DANCED HERE
BY MARTHA GRAHAM
On Thursday, February 23, Martha
Graham, assisted by her dance group
and male partner, Erick Hawkins,
will present the dramatic dance se-
quence American Document in Good-
hart. This dance drama had its
premiere at the Bennington Festival
of the Dance last summer where it
had an amazing success, and at a
subsequent New York production in
October it broke the attendance record
for .an American dancer previously
held by Isadora Duncan.
The work is loosely patterned after
an American minstrel .show, and con-
sists of five parts designed by Miss
�Graham to interpret the_ spirit of
America through the centuries as a
,re-affirmation of our democracy. The
narrative, recited by Housely Stevens,
Jr., taken from the speeches of Abra-
ham Lincoln, the Bill of Rights, the
Declaration of Independence, and
other sources, serves as a background
for the dramatic movement of the
dance. Lincoln Kirstein, commenting
on it in the Nation, calls it: "the most
important extended dance creation by
a living American."
Salerno Was Center
of Medical Cures
Ancient Traditions  Were Basis
Of Medicine in Middle Ages
Says   Dr.   Corner
Common Room, February U.�The
development of medieval medicine at
Salerno in Italy was traced by Profes-
sor George Corner, of the University
of Rochester, in a lecture given by the
Latin Journal Club and sponsored by
the Department of Biology.
Salerno, stated Dr. Corner, was the
logical place for the great school of
medieval medicine to appear. Situ-
ated in central Italy, with a good cli-
mate and healing springs, it formed
a natural center for the Greek and
Roman medical traditions surviving in
Southern Italy as well as those
remaining in the Arabic school from
the South, the Arabic-Spanish school
from the West, and the Byzantine
school from the East.
The first great Salernian scholar
was Constantine the African, who
lived in the eleventh century. He
knew Latin, Arabic and probably
some Greek. Altogether, he trans-
lated twenty Arabfc medical works, in-
cluding the Pantegny, an encyclopedia
pf Galenic medicine. Although gar-
bled and slightly degraded, it came
as a revelation to the physicians of
Salerno. They began to teach and
rewrite, basing over fifty new text-
Continued on race Four
People, Through
Congress, Must
Hold War Power
String Quartet Gives
Concert in  Deanery
Varied   Program   by  Miss   Rice
Group Includes  Mozart,
Haydn, Brahms
(Specially contributed by Helen
Garth, graduate student.)
Deanery, February 19.�Bryn Mawr
again realizes its great good fortune
in having Miss Helen Rice, class of
'23 and warden of Rhoads, on its
campus this winter. For besides her
organization of groups of students
for playing chamber music together,
Miss Rice and three of her friends
gave a delightful concert of string
quartet music last Sunday afternoon
at the Deanery.
The quartet consisted of Helen
Rice and Florence Duvall, violins;
Mary Fairchild, viola; and Ruth Mc-
Gregor, 'cello.
The first quartet played was the
Haydn F ihinor, opus 20, no. 5, in
which Miss Rice took the first violin
part, and Miss Duvall the second. In
the first movement, the function of
the three lower parts is largely ac-
companiment for the florid and melo-
dious first violin part. The second
movement of this quartet, a lively
Continued on Page Six
Judge  Allen   Finds  Monroe
Doctrine Has Been
Misapplied
CITES GAINS MADE
AT LIMA' CONGRESS
U           -----
.Goodhart, February 20.�"Wars are
made by governments and, therefore,
the will to peace in the individual must
be registered in and through the gov-
ernment itself," said Judge Allen in,
her third lecture here, Ok the Wat
Powers under the Constitution. For
this reason shekel ieves of the utmost
importanorthe fact that in the United
States, the Constitutional right to de-
clare war is given to Congress rather
than to the executive heads of the gov-
ernment.
For such propagation of peace
Judge Allen emphasized the need for
international law, and pointed out that
the Pan-American Congress has estab-
lished many elements more fundamen-
tal to such a set of international
standards than did the conference at
Geneva. The restatement of the Mon-
roe Doctrine on its original basis so
as to acknowledge the integrity of all
the states in the western hemisphere
was^necessary, Judge Allen feels, be-
fore any such advance toward peace
could take place.
During the last thirty years, how-
ever, the American people's constitu-
tional claim to the right of declaring
war has frequently been seriously in-
fringed upon through armed interven-
tions made use of by the executive
Continued on Face Five
PRESIDENT OF LONDON
ROYAL SOCIETY WILL
LECTURE HERE IN MAY
Sir William Bragg", noted British
physicist, will visit Bryn Mawr in the
spring. The department of physics
announces that ft has arranged for
him to lecture here May fourth.
Sir William is president of the
Royal Society of London, and in 1914'
won the Nobel prize jointly with his
son, W. L. Bragg, who is director of
the famous Cavendish laboratory at
Cambridge. As director of the 110-
year-old Royal Institution, Sir Wil-
liam is" Fullerian professor of chemis-
try, a position that has been held by
Davy, Faraday, .Thomas Young and
DeWar,.
Sir William will be in this country
to give the Pilgrim Trust lecture in
Washington. This fund provides for
exchange lectures between the Royal
Society of London ,and the National
Academy of Science of America.
Synthetic Hostility Abounds on Campus
As Sophomores Publicize 'Devil Did Grin*
1942 has been struggling frantic-
ally for the past few weeks or so
with the usual clutter and confusion
of Freshman Show. Last Sunday
night the exploitation campaign of
the show began in earnest with a
parade of Freshmen who stormed
through the halls singing and waving
challenging banners. "1941 � Have
You the Guts to Come to Our Show
Without Knowing- the Animal?"
"Foxes, You Can't Fool Us This Time,
You Vixens," and "We Hate the Soph-
omores, We Love the Juniors." They
encountered difficulties 1^ Pembroke
and Denbigh when aroused Sopho-
mores tried to hold them in. They
rattled afound with great spirit in
the echoic space of an empty Rhoads
smoking room, but did a little better
in the French House, where Deborah
Calkins was their sole victim. Ger-
man House greeted them with dis-
tracted and anxious faces. Bigelow,
with murder in her eyes, bellowed out
the window, "For God's sake, don't
wake Bimbo!"
The entourage finally broke up, but
not until quite some feeling for Fresh-
man Show had been aroused. One
upper classman stirred from her
smoking room stupor long enough to
murmur, "Oh, are they still giving
Freshman Shows?"
Since then the mutual harrassing
between Sophomores and Fershmen
has got well under way, predominat-
ing in Merion and Rockefeller. The
emphatic warning to leave personal
property alone has, of course, been
well overlooked. Crumbed and
drenched beds, tied doors, peppered
studies, and rooms threaded in true
cobweb fashion are on the list of
light sports. One beautiful display
in Merion is quite memorable for its
artistic execution. A thoroughly dis-
ordered room with a bust of Beetho-
ven on the bed musing under an
open umbrella, surrounded with a
flood of .raisins and almonds, all look-
ing most attractive under a spotlight.
Perhaps Low Buildings will profit By v
all this.
The   costume   and^ property  situa-
Contlnued on Pace Six