The Texas Aggie. (College Station, Tex.) 1921-current, October 01, 1937, Image 2
THE TEXAS AGGIE BoE. MeQuillen........... 0. Publisher Published Semi-Monthly at the A. & M. Press, College Station, Texas, except dur- ing the summer months when issued menthly, by the Association of Former Students of the Agricultural and Mechan- ical College of Texas, College Station, Texas. F. D." Perkins, ’ President C.-L. “Babeoek, 18... Vice President E. E. McQuillen, ’ xecutive Secretary 1.8. Locke, *18............ Assistant Secretary Subscription Price $5.00 Entered as Second Class Matter at |: College Station, Texas Directors H. K. Deason, ’16...................... Port Arthur Charles L. Babcock, ’18............... Beaumont Bs Goa PiafE, v0]. 4h bins Tyler FP. D. Perkins, "9. rte ictntonsi ns McKinney J. B. Crockett, ’09 Dallas 0. A. Seward, Jr., 07 d.:V. Butler, Graham GG. Hall, T. M. Smith, Sr., ’01 Charley K. Leighton, P.-L. «Downs, Jr., 206. ..2 5 seas Temple Jd. C.i Dykes, 21... 0... sei Fort Worth CoH McDowell, 212..............coo in Towa Park AE. “Hinman, 125%... Corpus Christi HE B. . fPat’ Zachry, 22: . ins: Laredo R. S. Reading, ’10 El Paso G. Dudley Everett, ’15................ Stephenville G. C. McSwain, ’20 Amarillo BE. VY. Spence, "11.00 nt Big Spring E.- Bs Aldridge, ’16..... 5.5... 0. San, Antonio Penrose B. Metcalfe, 16............ San Angelo E.R. %Eudaly,” 10... 5 College Station Ci A. i Thanheisey, 201. 00. 5 Houston A. P. Rollins, ’06 Dallas Bo ASSBIrk; CIB. ocr ST ts Wichita Falls EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE F. D. Perkins, °'97 McKinney C. L. Babcock, ’18 Beaumont C. A. Thanseiser, *01 Houston E. R. Eudaly, ’'10............ College Station Oscar A. Seward, Jr., '07........... Groesbeck STUDENT LOAN FUND TRUSTEES FD Perkins, 297... ..ccnscoecodinsiocions McKinney A.“ F.. Mitchell, *209..........0.5....... Corsicana E. E. McQuillen, ’20............ College Station REPRESENTATIVES ON ATHLETIC COUNCIL Dallas Tyree L. Bell, ’13........ Tyler A. G. Pfaff, ’27 FEELING FINE Friends and sons of the Texas A. & M. College are feeling fine these days over the institution they love. The greatest enrollment in its history attests to the high re- gard in which mothers and fathers of Texas hold the school. The ad- dition of many outstanding men to the faculty and the staff has improved the quality of the school’s leadership. The restoration of fac- ulty salary cuts has raised the morale of the many fine men who have so ably served the institution through its lean years. : It is believed funds for the con- struction of additional dormitories are jpet around the corner. Both EE uy, STUroq Enis ~~n fortball pros- prnsanenetul———. ioc: ship in the cadet corps seems to be more conscious this year of both its authority and its responsibility. A. & M. Clubs are more active- and enthusiastic. Membership in the Association of Former Stu- dents so far this year has shown some increase. Individual A. & M. men seem to be more anxious and willing to render real and unsel- fish service to the school and its students. The friends and the sons of The Texas A. & M. College are feeling fine. Major Samuel L. Metcalfe, ’17, 224 Federal Building, Hartford, Connecticut, is recuperating from a long siege in the hospital. Major Metcalfe was all set to attend the twentieth reunion of the class of | 1917 and was taken to the hospital on May 15, and remained there until September 1. Mike Dillingham, ’35, has been transferred to Corpus Christi as Division Petroleum Engineer for the Oil and Gas Division of the Texas Railroad Commission. For the past year Mike has been sta- tioned at Pampa, Texas, acting as engineer for the Panhandle Dis- trict. He gets his mail at Box 1111, Corpus Christi. Mike is a younger brother of H. E. “Dutch” Dilling- ham, ’22, of the Electrical Engi- neering Department at A. & M. Robert D. Hardcastle, ’31, is district superintendent of the Wil- son Supply Company for South Louisiana and his address is P. O. Box 152, New Iberia, Louisiana. A. A. Storey, Jr., ’29, is county agricultural agent at Rocksprings, Texas. A. L. “Dutch” Sebesta, ’32, is still working for the A. & M. Ex- tension Service as county agricul- tural agent of Dimmit County. His headquarters are at Carrizo Springs. Sebesta is married and has one little girl. During his cadet days, Sebesta was a prominent member of the Aggie football team. R. Z. Wilkinson, ’37, is with the Arkansas Extension Service as an assistant in agricultural con- servation and is located at New- port, Arkansas, Wilkinson states that he is very well pleased with his new location. Thomas Mayo: His Column TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE (EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the first of a series of five columns, prepared by Dr. Mayo on ‘Trends in American Literature’. The other four will appear in succeeding issues of the AGGIE. These articles are reproductions of a series of radio broadcasts made dur- ing the Summer by Dr. Mayo that were highly commended and that brought to Dr. Mayo wide notice.) ¢)) The new books which thrill the American public nowadays in the 1930’s are very different from the favorites of the 1920’s. From the Armistice to the Depression, dur- ing the Jazz Decade, few books im- pressed the reading public very favorably unless they criticized something. The urge was in the air to take to pieces and examine, with a cold, fishy, and chitical eye, all the things that people used to take for granted: romantic lice, for example, patriotism, and all the “American Ideals.” The Age of Jazz, from Armistice to Depres- sion, was preeminently the Age of Satire. Sinclair Lewis’s widely read novels showed how our small towns cramp and narrow the minds and sympathies of Main Street people; how the American city makes herd- minded Babbitts out of its business men; how American science is commercialized and cheapened by the national demand for quick and showy results; how even the min- istry itself harbors hypocrites and scoundrels,—and rewards them highly, too: Hk kok ok Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theo- dore Dreiser, and Dorothy Parker, in the 1920’s, took romantic love to pieces and showed it to us as a flimsy compound of sex, tommy- rot, and the hunt for a meal ticket. “What lips my lips have kissed,” wrote Miss Millay, “What lips my lips have kissed and where and why—I have forgotten”! H. L. Mencken, meanwhile, was pouring out of Baltimore a scalding stream of ridicule on the heads of his fellow-citizens, whom he delighted to call “The Great American Boo- bocracy”. k kk kk kx ck These and others like them were the writers whose satirical novels, plays, poems, and articles were eagerly awaited every ycar during the 1920’s. It was a critical age, a hardboiled era. In short, it was an age of ruthless rationalism. “Let’s use our Reason,” its writers seemed to say. “Don’t let any emo- tion like romantic love, or reli- gious reverence, or sentimental patriotism blind us to all the non- sense and all the rascality and graft that flourish so fatly and smugly in these United States un- der the shield of such sacred nam- es. Be scientific in your thinking, even about love and religion. Ex- pose everything. Down with the sentimentality that clouds our eyes and hides the truth. Pure bright Reason forever! Critical Rationalism is our ticket—critical rationalism based on scientific thinking and armed with ridicule and satire sharp as a razor!” * ok & ok ok Such was the temper of the 1920’s, and there’s no denying that their irritating books did us good. The thick, stagnant, sweetish air of American literature undoubted- ly grew sharper and cleaner. It is true, of course, that even after ten years of this sort of thing there was still plenty of crookedness, smugness, and plain bunk in this fair land of ours—there still is, for that matter. But there isn’t quite as much of it as there used to be, and its purveyors are not quite as smug about it as in the good old days. : d ok ok ok ok But now, since 1929, satires on this, that, and the other, no longer seem popular. The best novels, plays, and poems that come out each year nowadays are no longer exposures of nonsense and fraud. Rather, our chief writers seem try- ing to express their deep feelings about something or other. Ernest Hemingway writes in the 1930s “A Farewell To Arms”, the best love story that any American ever wrote, in which two young lovers, with their author’s full approval, give up everything for each other, and are faithful unto death. Noth- ing jazzy or critical or analytical about the story! It is Romantic— that is, Love, an emotion rather than Reason, is taken for a guide to living. Eugene O’Neill, the great- est American dramatist, writes in the 1930’s a deeply romantic play about another great emotion, Reli- gion. The hero of his “Days With- oue End” at last falls prostrate at the foot of the Cross. Romantic i for themselves. again. An emotion, the play tells us, (religious emotion this time,) is a better guide to living than cod Reason. Rationalism it out; Romance is in. Compare O’Neill’4 fine old priest, who dominates this play, with Sinclair Lewis’s rascally preacher, Elmer Gantry, who scan- dalized us back in 1927. k kx 3% 3k 3k The reign of critical reason over American literature thus seems to have begun to break down about 1929. Since that year, our most distinguished novels, plays, and poems have changed their em- phasis from merciless analysis to glorifying the emotions: Love, for example, and religion, and patriot- ism. ok ok k % Why has this happened? Well, for one thing, the reliance on Rea- son in the 1920’s rested upon two pillars both of which have been sadly shaken since those days. One of these pillars of self-confident rationalism was the general feel- ing that we had an essentially sound system of economics. Capi- 1 talism, most writers thought in the 1920’s, needed only to be crit- icized and changed about some- what, in order to make it function satisfactorily. Capitalism, no mat- ter how often our critical writers took it apart and showed us its faults, was generally felt to be a going concern. Then came the pan- ic and the depression. Today thou- sands of readers, hundreds of writ- ers, and even dozens of bankers have felt serious qualms, at one tizae or another, about the work- ableness of free capitalism. Now, if a writer is to trust his reason, he must feel very sure of his premises. But how can he be sure when his economic premises are rocking and sliding about under his feet? “Perhaps”, some writers are likely to think, “Perhaps under such uneasy circumstances our feel- ings are the safest guides after all. We know, at any rate, that our emotions are real. Perhaps our emotions, such as love, and pa- triotism, are more real than the conclusions that we reach by sci- entific reasoning. Perhaps, then romanticism, or trusting the emo- tions, is safer and saner than ra- tionalism, or reasoning things out.” (Personally I disagree violently, but my personal prejudices are neither here nor there.) % ok ok ok Xk And then what about Science, the second pillar of the self-con- fident rationalism of the 1920’s? Well, just ask any philosophically minded scientist if he is as sure today about the fundamental na- ture of things as he was ten years ago. As a matter of fact, the most famous scientific principle since Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is called “The Uncertainty Principle.” k ok kk kk So here is at least a partial ex- planation of why so many leading American writers have gone Ro- mantic in the 1930’s. Both the pil- lars of hardboiled Rationalism— both the unquestioned certainty of free capitalism and the sureness of science—have been shaken in the minds of many a writer. sk ok sk ok 3k In four succeeding columns of this series, we shall take up in detail some recent novels, plays, and poems which seem to stand out as representative of this new romantic trend. We shall probably find, by the way, as we explore the new books, other trends as well. When critical rationalism col- lapsed, Romance was not its only heir. In this first column we have, let us hope, finished with theoriz- “1 ing. Hereafter let us allow the new novels, plays, and poems to speak Today we have looked at modern American liter- ature. From now on, let us listen to=it. J. B. Corns, ’27, was a recent campus visitor enroute to the Uni- versity of Illinois where he will teach this year in the Horticultural Department. He received his doc- tor’s degree this spring from Cor- nell University. He will have a freshman brother in A. & M. this year. Mr. and Mrs. Corns will make their home in Champaigne, Ill. C. E. “Teddy” Maedgen, ’04, pres- ident of the Lubbock National Bank and his associates, recently pur- chased controlling interest in the First National Bank at Odessa. Mr. Maedgen will serve as presi- dent of the bank but will continue to give his full time to the Lubbock National Bank, where he has been an executive officer for 20 years. HOUSTON AGGIES HONOR ASHBURN ON EVE RETURN “Ike Ashburn Day” was observ- ed by the Houston A. & M. Club at its regular Monday luncheon meeting at the Rice Hotel on Sep- tember 27. 150 A. & M. men and their guests were present to pay tribute to the man who comes back to Aggieland on October first as Executive Assistant to the Pres- ident. The luncheon was featured by the presence of many distinguish- ed guests in honor of Col Ashburn. Among these were United States Senator the Honorable Tom Con- nally, President T. O. Walton and Dean Ross Marsteller from A. & M., Alva Carlton, prominent Uni- versity of Texas Ex, Bill Blanton, manager Houston Chamber of Commerce, Ben Warden, '03, Aus- tin, and others. Houston Club president G. A. “Cop” Forsyth, ’17, presided. Splen- did tribute was paid the honor guest by Senator Connally, Pres. Wilton and T. B. Warden, princi- pal speakers of the occasion. On behalf of the Houston Club and following his tribute, Mr. Warden presented to Col. Ashburn a fram- ed resolution expressing the regret of the Houston A. & M. men at losing Qol. Ashburn, expressing their pleasure, however, in his re- turning to A. & M., and affirming their love and respect for their honor guest. Visibly affected by the fine tri- butes from his friends, Col. Ash- burn responded with a few words. “The best tribute that can be paid me” declared Col. Ashburn, “Is the respect and confidence of A. & M. Men. This party is really a Home-coming event, rather than a going away party. I hope I can con- tinue to merit your fine friendship and your deep respect. Returning to A. & M. makes me a very happy man’. The Houston Club meets every Monday noon on the mezzanine floor of the Rice Hotel and extends a cordial welcome to visiting A. & M. men. Officers in addition to President Forsyth are Vice Pres. Victor Barraco, ’15, and Secretary- Treasurer M. E. “Dime” Dealey, 195. Geolge L. Milner, ’31, is owner and manager of the Home Furni- ture Company of Pecos and Mon- ahans, Texas. Milner reports that business is mighty good. S.: Fo Clark, ’15, "ist living" at Greenville, Texas and is looking forward to the Thanksgiving Game this fall. J. W. Godfrey, 37, is a student engineer with the Texas Electric Service Company at Wichita Falls, Texas and is living at 1643 Col- lins Street of that city. Godfrey reports that they have had a very active summer and that he has gained lots of valuable experience. He has recently completed a nice job of rebuilding a 3000 KVA transformer, which he found to be a very interesting piece of work. Herbert E. Kellner, ’27, is with Swift and Company, 131st St. & 12th Avenue, New York City, New York. Kellner is very enthusiastic over the Manhattan-Aggie football game to be played in New York City on October 2, as this will be the first time he has had a chance to see the Aggies play since 1928. F. Leo. Gerdes, 28, is with the U. S. Department of Agriculture and at the present time is Cotton Technologist at the U. S. Cotton Ginning Laboratory, Stoneville, Mississippi, in charge of the cot- ton quality work. Gerdes was re- cently elected to ‘American Men of Science” as a result of contri- butions made in the field of cotton research. Gerdes is married and has two daughters. Pinkney E. Cunningham, ’07, is temporarily located at Lake Vil- lage, Arkansas where he is work- ing on the Mississippi River Flood Control. Cunningham’s permanent address is 1628 Chambers Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi. William W. “Bill’ Coulter, ’36, is a sophomore medical student at Louisiana State University Medi- cal Center, New Orleans, Louisiana.-. Bill says that he is the president and member (only member) of the L. S. U. Medical Center Ex- Aggie Club. J. Harry McReynolds, ’33, is working for the Humble Oil and Refining Company and is located at Roanoke, Louisiana, where he gets his mail at Box 534. McRey- nolds is still single and is getting along fine. Sol Wright, ’22 Rejoins Faculty Sol R. Wright, ’22, recently re- signed as supervisor of Public Util- ities for the City of Fort Worth and has accepted a position as As- sistant Professor of Civil Engi- neering at Texas A. & M. He and his family have already moved to Bryan. Reasons for Wright's resignation at Fort Worth were termed politi- cal. “I am primarily an engineer and not a politician”, Wright told newspaper reporters. “The two just don’t go together, so I am getting out”. He had served as Utility Supervisor of Fort Worth since April of 1926, coming to that city from Waco, where he served for eight years as assistant city en- gineer of Waco. Prior to that time he was a member of the Civil Engineering Department faculty at A. & M. With a wealth of both teaching and practical experience behind him, he will make an excellent ad- dition to the engineering faculty of the College. Colonel and Mrs. W. Claude Washington, ’12, and chicldren, re- cently left the campus for New York City, from where they will sail to the Colonel’s new assogn- ment, Fort Sherman, Panama Canal Zone. For the past six years Colonel Washington has been on duty with the R. O. T. C. at A. & M. Joe A. Ford, ’37, has accepted a position with the Arkansas Natur- al Gas Corporation in the Engine- ering Department, and is located at Shreveport, Louisiana. This company, is a subsidiary of the Cities Service Oil Company and Ford likes his work fine. Joe is a brother of Roy R. Ford, ’35, whe is with the Shell Petroleum Comp- any, Kilgore, Texas. L. D. Stephenson, ’35, is sub- district commander of a CCC camp located at Tulsa, Oklahoma. His address is 101 North Delaware, Tulsa, OKla. Howard E. Willson, ’37, is living at 1705 Fairview, Houston. Will- son is employed by the Humble Oil and Refining Company. W. S. Millington, ’30, sends in his Association dues. Millington is county agricultural agent of Bas- trop County. He gets his mail at Box 421, Bastrop, Texas. cw AIRES am . . . you ride the Western Electric voiceways! We— NO £55 wesTERN AR xen When you travel on these sixteen major airlines, Western Electric’s flying telephone is your staunch friend. It advises your pilot of changing weather — enables him to talk with airports— helps him to bring you through on schedul-, This radio telephone equipment—an outgrowth of Bell Telephone making—is a worthy member of a large family of sound-transmission products. Western Electric LEADERS IN SOUND-TRANSMISSION APPARATUS Vpshen,