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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 18, 1944)
t AS-OLE ARMY Texas A*M j DIAL 4-5444 OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE CITY OF COLLEGE STATION The B College alion BI-WEEKLY STUDENT NEWSPAPER TEXAS A. & M. DEEP IN AGGIELAND VOLUME 44 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, TUESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 18, 1944 NUMBER 53 Aggieland Orchestra io Play For Senior Ring Dance Colonel McNew Here On Terminal Leave Former C. E. Head Is Newly Appointed Vice Pres, of Engineering By R. L. Bynes Colonel J. T. L. McNew, newly named Vice-president for Engi neering at A. & M., has recently returned from the China-Burma- Conner Presented Watch at Banquet A beautiful pocket watch, to re mind him each hour in the years to come of the esteem in which he is held by his friends and co workers, was Arthur B. Conner’s tangible evidence of more than forty years of close association with the Agricultural and Mechan ical College of Texas. But in the heart and mind of the man who held the post of Director of the Agricultural Ex periment Station longer than any other person were the many words of praise, the emotion-filled out pourings of love and the good- natured allusions to his reckless bridge game and his astute mas tery of chess—all of them ex pressed by his associates of many (See CONNER, Page 3) Col. J. T. L. McNew * * * * * India theatre of operations, where he was connected with the Avia tion Engineers. Former head of the Civil Engi neering Department, McNew en tered the armed forces in June, 1943, with the commission of Maj or in the Corps of Engineers. He was soon transferred to the Avia tion Engineers and sent first to Fort Belvoire, Virginia; then to Richmond, Virginia, where he took an intensive course in heavy con struction equipment operation; and finally to Orlando, Florida, where he attended the Air Force School of Applied Tactics. At the close of the preliminary training at Orlando, Florida, he was then sent back to Richmond, Virginia, and attached to the staff of Brigadier General C. B. God frey (Air Engineering officer of the China-Burmajndia theater), as construction engineer, Chief of (See COLONEL, Page 4) College Community Chest Short of Goal The College Community Chest Committee reports that it has re ceived about $11,500 in contribu tions. This falls by $3,000 to reach the budget approved for the year, and as a result all budget items will have to be reduced by about 20%. This means that the college com munity will fall short of its quotas in the Red Cross and the National War Fund drives, and that local charities will receive less than in former years. Seventy-five per cent of the bud- and the National War Fund. The committee feels that it would be most unfortunate to fail to meet these quotas at this time. So a Christmas appeal is being made. If you have not contributed to the Community Chest do so at once. If you have contributed and can see your way clear to give more then by all means do so. Contributions may be designated to any charity you prefer and post dated checks are acceptable. Contributions should be made through your department or branch of the college, said Ralph W. Steen, chairman. Faculty and Staff Christmas Dinner To Be Held Thurs. Employees Completing 25 Years Service To Be Honored Guests The annual Christmas dinner of the faculty and staff of the Texas A. & M. College to be held in the Sbisa Hall Annex at 7:15 p. m., Thursday will pay tribute to 22 persons who this year have completed 25 years of service to the institution, W. R. Horsley, general chairman of the dinner committee has announced. Tickets for the banquet will be sold at $1.25 each and may be secured from the head of any (See FACULTY, Page 3) CHRISTMAS GREETINGS Dance To Be Preceded By Ring Ceremony-Banquet Orchestra Also to Furnish Music for All- Service Dance in Sbisa Saturday Night Hampton, Adriance Study Rio-Grande Sub Tropical Fruits Dr. G. W. Adriance of the De partment of Horticulture and Dr. H. E. Hampton of the Department of Agronomy have recently re turned from the Rio Grande Val ley. With \hem on the trip were members of Dr. Adriance’s class on sub-tropical fruits. Those making this field laboratory trip were Professor R. H. Cintron of the University of Puerto Rico, Papl Slud, Cordell Edwards, and T. E. Wright. The purpose of the trip was to From President Gilchrist The ordinary Christmas greeting seems strange ly out of place this year. The prayer for peaceful Christmas to come is as universal now as “Merry 1 Christmas” used to be. The toughest part of the battle is at hand and daily we hear of the supreme sacrifice by some fine boy from this institution. The week commemorating the birth of our Savior seems to call for reconsecra tion to our tasks and a stepping-up of home front activity. May each and every one of us—the administration, teacher, student, former student, staff member, and all who labor in and for this great educational system be given added strength and courage to carry on to final, complete, and, we hope, early victory. Gibb Gilchrist. get is pledged to the Red Cross, study soil and crop production in the valley with special emphasis on citrus fruits. They visited com mercial citras groves at Edinburg, McAllen, Harlingen, and Weslaco. Dr. Adriance brought back with him several different varieties of citrus fruits for use in the sub tropical fruits laboratory. While in the valley these men contacted Leon Miller, W. H. Friend, W. H. Hughes, E. Gibbons, J. F. Wood, R. F. Lindsay, A. T. Potts, and many other Aggie-Exes who are now making their con tribution to the Agricultural Devel- opement of the Rio Grande valley. Aggie Band Provides Color And Is Significant Factor In Applause Invoking Aggie Corps Spirit mm - j S38 -.g 2 ■ ■ Dr. Lindsay Named Head Of Local Sigma XI Chapter Dr. J. D. Lindsay was elected president of the Sigma XI Club of the A. & M. College of Texas when a local chapter of the National Society was formed recently at College Station. Other officers in clude Di\ W. A. Varvel, president elect, and A. A. L. Mathews, sec- cretary-treasurer. Function of the Sigma XI club is to stimulate, encourage and sup port active research in the pure and applied sciences among teach ers, advanced students and pro fessional men. To be eligible for membership one must have com pleted some worthwhile research program, and usually the results must have been published in a creditable scientific journal. To be a member of the local organization, as now set up, an individual must have been a member of a Sigma (See LINDSAY, Page 4) Banzai—a By B. J. Blankenship The Aggie Band under the di rection of Col. Richard J. Dunn has just completed another suc cessful season of providing color at Aggie football games. Col. Dunn, who is to retire next year, has served the band faithfully as a director for the last twenty years. In no man could a band find a better qualified director than Col. Dunn. The band has just gone through the football season performing at all the games except three, these being impossible to get to because of transportation difficulties. Each colorful formation that was made at the various football games showed that the band had spent hours of work in preparation. Every member of the band worked hard and diligently to get each formation into shape before each game and to get these for mations perfect, the band drilled consistently every afternoon. Rain did not stop the bandsmen. They drilled up and down in the mud and proved themselves a part of the Twelfth Man. The formation used at the T. u. game proved to be the hardest of all to prepare. Weeks were spent getting in preparation for the large map of Texas that was formed. The band as well as the other (See AGGIE, Page 3) Sam Law Represents College aj; Student Confab at Texas u. Sam Law, secretary and treas urer of the senior graduating class here at A. & M., attended an all- ' student conference of representa tives from colleges and universi ties in Texas and several surround ing states, which was held at the Union, Saturday, December 16. The meeting was called by Mac Wallace, president of the Univer sity of Texas Student Association, for the purpose of outlining the program and objectives for a re gional all-student conference to be held on February 9th and 10th. This conference will bring at least six representatives from each of forty or fifty schools to discuss, define, and suggest remedial action on mutual problems of college and university students. Principal function of the two- day meet will be a series of forums on subjects tentatively selected in the four-hour conference at the Union on Saturday, December 16. Entertainment for the ten out- of-town students attending Satur day’s meeting included a supper at a Mexican restaurant, attendance at the All-University Navy Dance, and an outdoor breakfast at East- wood Park Sunday morning. Entomology Head Elected President At Academies Meet Dr. S. W. Bilsing, head of the Department of Entomology, was re-elected president of the Con ference of State Academies of Science at the recent meeting of the American Association for (he advancement of Science in Cleve land, Ohio. For many years Dr. Bilsing has represented the Texas Academy of Science at the Conference of State Academies of Science, which is regularly held in connection with the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting each year. The Academy Conference con- (See ENTOMOLOGY, Page 2) Civil Air Patrol- Texas Forest Patrol Members Confer Here Members of the headquarters staff of the Civil Air Patrol-Texas Forest Patrol, met Monday in the offices of the Texas Forest Service, A. & M. College Administration building, to plan further expansion of the area patrolled by the planes, according to Capt. S. L. (Jack) Frost, commanding officer of the patrol. The Texas Forest Patrol is oper ating exclusively in East Texas, flying to help protect the piney woods from fire in* cooperation with activities of the Texas Forest Service. It is the plan of CAP how to also use its personnel and planes for a system of aerial type map ping which will cover the entire forested area in Texas in con nection with postwar conservation plans of the Texas Forest Service. Col. Earle L. Johnson, national commander of CAP and a member of the U. S. Army Air Forces, last week pointed to the Texas Forest Patrol operations unit of CAP as the “model and the best unit in the United States”. He made this statement at a meeting in Dallas where the third anni versary of CAP was observed. Those at the staff meeting Mon day included, besides Capt. Frost, Capt. Larry J. Fisher, executive officer; Lt. W. T. Hartman, oper ations officer; Lt. Ken Hallaran, communications officer; and Lt. Guy Deaton, acting administrative officer. Lt. J. B. Clark, intelligence and supply officer, did not attend because of illness. All members of Capt. Frost’s staff are local residents except Lt. Hartman of Lufkin. The meeting was expected to end late Monday after completion of the plan for expanded activity. y Charles Haenisch, Chairman of the Senior Ring Dance Committee, announced today that the Senior Ring Dance will be held on Jan uary 12 in Sbisa Hall. The Aggie land Orchestra, under the direc tion of W. M. Turner, will furnish music for the occasion. Haenisch said that the dance will be pre ceded by a banquet which will al so be held in Sbisa. Harold Borof- sky, one of the members of the committee, said that no final ar rangement has been made as to the speakers at the banquet, but they will be announced in the near future. The Formal Ring Ceremony will follow the banquet, and the dance is to follow the Ring Ceremony. Though no definite time has been set for the dance, it is expected that it will begin around 9:30 and end about 1:00. Haenisch also announced that the plans for the banquet and dance had been made entirely by the Senior class, and that there were no faculty members on the committee. The committee, com posed of Joe Atlas, Epp Brown, Larry Gore, Jimmy Vaughn, Har old Borofsky and Larry Rogers, is trying to determine how many Sen iors wil be present at the banquet so that final arrangements can be made. Saturday, January 13, the night following the Ring Dance, there will be a Corps Ball, and music will be furnished by the Aggieland Orchestra. Tickets for the Senior Ring Dance and the banquet are $2.75. Separate tickets for the Dance are $1.50 and $1.25 for the banquet. Tickets for the Corps Ball are $1.20. These prices include the present federal tax. Noted Journalist Attended School Here H. R. Knickerbocker, Pulitzer Prize Winner, On Town Hall January 12 By Eli Barker H. R. Knickerbocker, Pulitzer Prize winner and holder of other famed newspaper awards, will be presented here January 12 under the sponsorship of the committee of Student Activities. One of the leading journalists of the day, he has been referred to as “the Richard Harding Davis of our times” by Alexander Woolcott. Twenty years of reporting has brought him great fame, but he has recently become known as a prominent lecturer. Forums, col lege audiences, service clubs, con ventions, women’s clubs and other types of audiences throughout the nation have been fascinated by his clear, vivid and authoritative in- terpreations of current world events and his keen explanations of their repercussions in America. Born in Yoakum, Texas, the son of a Methodist preacher, H. R. Knickerbocker wanted to be a phy sician, a psychiatrist. After study ing at Southern Methodist Univer sity and Texas A&M he went to New York to take journalism in or der that he would have some way to pay for his medical training. Fol lowing this, he had several jobs on some of New York’s largest news- H. R. Knickerbocker papers and earned the necessary money to continue his training in Europe. Knickerbocker was in Munich on November 9, 1933, when Hitler’s Beer House Putsch temporarily overthrew the existing German government and first brought the future fuehrer into prominence; he was in Moscow when Trotsky was dismissed from the Russian war ministry and banished from the U.S.S.R.; in Vienna when Chancel lor Dollfuss was assassinated; in Dessye when Italian airmen bomb ed that Ethiopian city, in 1935; in Buros three days after the out break of the Spanish Civil War; in Shanghai when that city was cap tured by the Japanese in 1937; in the Sudetenland when the Ger mans marched in as conquerors and in Paris in the autumn of 1939 when World War II began. During the summer of 1940 he returned to Europe for Internation al News Service. He was in the thick of the fighting between the Allies and the Nazis on the West ern Front. Following a lecture tour in America, he went to the Far East for the Chicago Sun, cover ing Hawaii, the Philippines, Java, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, and New Zealand. Following this, in late 1942 and early 1943, he went to North Africa where he witnessed the invasion of the Al lied forces and the historic confer ence in Casablanca and then to Italy. Knickerbocker will interpret all this experience with respect to present day news during his per formance here.