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THE BATTALION
-SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1941
The Battalion Must Lead the Way
STUDENT TRI-WEEKLY NEWSPAPER
TEXAS A. & M. COLLEGE
The Battalion, official newspaper of the Agricultural and
Mechanical College of Texas and the city of College Station, is
published three times weekly from September to June, issued
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings; also it is published
weekly from June through August.
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at College
Station, Texas, under the Act of Congress of March 8, 1879.
Subscription rate, $3 a school year. Advertising rates upon
request.
Represented nationally by National Advertising Service,
Inc., at New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and
San Francisco.
Office, Room 122, Administration Building. Telephone
4-5444. »
1940 Member 1941
Phsocioied Cblle6icite Press
Bob Nisbet Editor-in-Chief
George Fuermann Associate Editor
Keith Hubbard Advertising Manager
Tom Vannoy Editorial Assistant
Pete Tumlinson Staff Artist
J. B. Pierce, Phil Levine Proof Readers
Sports Department
Hub Johnson - Sports Editor
Bob Myers Assistant Sports Editor
Mike Haikin, Jack Hollimon
W. F. Oxford Junior Sports Editor
Circulation Department
Tommy Henderson Circulation Manager
W. G. Hauger, E. D. Wilmeth .... Assistant Circulation Manager
F. D. Asbury, E. S. Henard :. Circulation Assistants
Photography Department
Phil Golman Photographic Editor
James Carpenter, Bob Crane, Jack Jones,
Jack Siegal Assistant Photographers
SATURDAY’S EDITORIAL STAFF
Earle A. Shields Managing Editor
T. R. Harrison Assistant Advertising Manager
Junior Editors
Will O. Brimberry W. C. Carter Don Gabriel
Reportorial Staff
Charles Babcock, Herbert Haile, Paul Haines, Carl Van
Hook, J. J. Keith, Z. A. McReynolds, Beverly Miller, Ehrhard
Mittendorf, Jack Nelson, L. B. Tennison.
To 7,000 Aggie Mothers...
TRIBUTES HAVE BEEN PAID to mothers of all
races, in all parts of the world, and in every tongue.
In these times where countless millions of mothers
have been and are undergoing hardships and trials,
witnessing death and destruction of the ones they
love and in many cases giving their own lives for
a course they deem right and just, we breathe a
prayer for all of. motherhood.
But a special tribute to a special group of
mothers—seven thousand Aggie mothers—is the
order of the day. In the minds of seven thousand
cadets the word “mother” is synonomous with all
the gentler, finer things of life. To define the word
“mother” requires a blend of love, honor, tender
ness, faith, kindness, hope, purity and all that is
good.
Mother, a refuge of understanding for us when
in hte midst of troubles and worrries and mistakes,
a haven of rest from the trials and tribula
tions of the world. Mother, the first to find the good
in our meager efforts, the first to praise our ac
complishments.
To seven thousand Aggie mothers—we love you
and appreciate all you’ve done for us. Sometimes
we forget the blessing of having a mother and
take you too much for granted. Mothers’ Day is the
day we set aside for catching up on all the oppor
tunities we missed during the last twelve months
for telling you how much we love you.
Aggies Are Made—Not Born
IT IS A MISTAKE to send a boy to A. & M. against
his will or against his better judgment. This idea
is advanced after four years observing A. & M.
and those who attend; at first may sound para
doxical, but there’s a reason.
As when a man tackles any task unwillingly,
he unconsciously and unintentionally looks for the
wrongs and mistakes and exaggerates them. In
spite of determination, that man will neyer finish
a satisfactory college career. He will not be able
to put out his best and will of consequence be no
asset to the college and certainly be doing himself
no justice.
To make a class A Aggie, a man should really
want to enter A. & M.—should have the burning
ambition to put out his best in all that he under
takes. A class A Aggie is the happiest man in the
world. And the alumni of Texas A. & M. are the
most rabid enthusiasts of their college that any
school can boast. It has been said, “Once an
Aggie, always an Aggie” and the statement is
true.
And what makes men want to come to A. &
M. ? That’s a story for a good-sized book, but it
can be broken down into about three distinctive
parts; academic excellence, school spirit, school tra
ditions.
First consideration for entering any college is
academic excellence, and along that line A. & M.
stands above the crowd. For Texas A. & M. is the
largest military school for men in the world. It
has the world’s largest school of Agriculture. Its
veterinary school is the largest in the nation. And
the school of Engineering is the nation’s second
largest only by a handful.
A. & M.’s school spirit is known as far as
is the school itself. It’s a spirit that holds more
than 20,000 students and ex-students together clos
er than brothers. It‘s the spirit of the corps which
gives it the most famous band and yelling section
in the nation. It’s a spirit that makes an Aggie
an Aggie—whether he was a million dollar socialite
or a grease monkey before entering school, when
he puts on that uniform, his former self is forgot
ten and he is just one among seven thousand Aggies
—each with an equal opportunity to excel.
A. & M., more than any other school, is steeped
in traditions—traditions that lend it color unmatch
ed anywhere. But a few of these are: freshmen be
ing known as “Fish” This or “Fish” That instead
of using the given name; freshmen meeting every
one with whom they come into contact; every Ag
gie speaking to everyone he passes on the campus;
the comic names applied to items of food in the
mess hall; standing any yelling throughout the
entirety of all football games; and many, ..many
others which make life worth living and which
teach valuable lessons for years to come.
Being an Aggie is not hard. All that is needed
is the desire to work and the will to win plus an
affiable spirit and a good sense of humor. Aggies
are made—not born.
WITH THE MADMAN of Europe still at large and
rampant in Europe and his successes more and
greater with the time, there spreads a note of
alarm across the continent. This new note is the
note of militarism.
Militarism will be the theme of all national ac
tions in the next few years. All things military
will be in the national spotlight.
A. & M., as a military school, must become a
leader among colleges and universities. It must
stand as a guiding beacon for all to follow.
But A. & M. is well prepared and experienced
in holding the position of leadership. In the last
war A. & M. supplied more officers to the United
States Army than any other school in the nation,
and in the event of another conflict, she stands
prepared to repeat the process.
FRANK LOVING PRESENTS:
/ Heard the Preacher Say
THE LETTER TO MOTHER
You may write a thousand letters
To the girl that you adore,
And declare in every letter
That you love her more and more;
You may praise her grace and beauty
In a thousand glowing lines;
And compare her eyes of azure
With the brightest star that shines.
If you had the pen of Shakespeare,
You would use it every day
In composing lines of worship
To the sweetheart far away;
But a letter far more welcome
To and older, gentler breast
Is a letter to a mother
From the boy she loves the best.
•
Regardless of its diction,
The spelling or its style;
Although its construction
Might provoke a critic’s smile,
She will read it very often
When the lights are soft and low
Seated in the same old corner
Where she nursed you long ago.
In her old and trembling fingers
It becomes a work of art,
Stained with tears of gladness
As she breathes “God bless his heart.”
Yes, the letter of all letters,
Look wherever you may roam,
Is the letter to your mother
From her son away from home.
—Author Unknown
BACKWASH
By
George fuermann
COVERING
(MfDismsii
“Backwash: An agitation resulting from some action or occurrence.”—Webster
Wherein the history of The Battalion’s tri-weekly column, “Backwash,”
is the subject of another discussion . . . Born in 1939, the column’s
name was the suggestion of one Max Durham, a former A. & M. pre-
med student. With the collaboration of N. Webster, a dictionary writer
of some repute who defined the word as “An agitation resulting from
some action or occurence,” Durham’s nomination became a fact and,
today, the column, or parts of it, appeared in two metropolitan Texas
dailies and formerly appeared in one other collegiate
publication. Thus has Backwash become of age.
Putting one little word after another and it is
seen that Backwash made its modest debut June 6,
1939 in the first issue of the first Summer Battalion,
a publication edited by the genius that was William
Hauser Murray. The column’s appearance throughout
the remainder of that summer was somewhat of a
nip-and-tuck affair, but with the beginning of the
1939-40 long session September 23 the column bowed
in as a regular Battalion organ. During that session
the column went to press 105 times; 91 in The Bat
talion Newspaper, nine in the T.S.C.W. student
Fuermann publication, and five in The Battalion Magazine.
Thus far this year Backwash has appeared in The Battalion News
paper 69 times, once in The Daily Texan and once in The Battalion
Magazine.
Generally divided into five items, hole> broke Ms ]eg and) ag a resu]tj
they fall into one of six classes— wag k j bed
with
Itomgiuis
humor, human interest, feature,
news, sidelights or editorial.
The letter contained a postscript
which read, “By the way, I’ll need
The column’s success, if any, $15 to bury the thing! „
• • •
belongs to the famed A. & M. corps
of cadets for whom and about whom
it is written. Hundreds of cadets
send by mail or bring personally
many of the items which have been
included in the column since its
beginning.
Prime purpose of Backwash is
Vanilla
One of the best of the current
mirth-control items is being told
by Bill Hardin, salesman for the
Dallas branch of the National
There’s not much room for talk
about A1 Donahue’s music for the
corps dance tonight. If he satisfies
most of the seniors for their Ring
Dance, “the” dance for them, there
won’t be much room for anybody
else to complain. Donahue hasn’t
played here before but many Ag
gies have heard him in night spots
in the larger Texas cities, and that
great popularizer, the radio, has
spread his music everywhere.
Again at 7:30 tonight at the
swimming pool is the annual water
carnival, a chance to see some ex
cellent swimming and diving, some
pretty girls and some aquatic
clowning. The show is only put
on annually, and our swimmers
and Baylor’s are the principal act
ors. But besides some graceful
swimming, the carnival has several
specialty numbers which are worth
seeing, including trick diving and
an over-water trapeze act. The
show is well worth the money, and
so is the cause. Proceeds go to the
water polo team.
Just a different twist on an old
show is coming to the Assembly
Hall Monday and Tuesday. The
name doesn’t even sound so hot,
“HIGH SIERRA,” but that twist
is exactly what it takes to put
the show over. The plot is clas
sically simple, a hardhearted gun
man takes to his hideout in the
snow covered Sierras, shoots his
way out of trap after trap but
never the last one.
The different twist is that Hum-
phery Bogart outdid his best gang
ster self to show a hardened mob
ster in a soft sort of way. With a
cold-blooded, complex personality
he is shocked at newspaper men
tion of him as Mad-dog. He becomes
good friends with a taxi-dancer,
Ida Lupino; he is kind to a mongrel
dog in the picture; and he goes
out of his way to help a crippled
girl, but as a farmer’s boy with
amental quirk, he shot at sight
with no moral scrupples. The high
and mighty mountains add to the
background of this crime story,
which is plenty good.
The Philadelphia Academy of
Science recently named a plant
“Azalea Bakerae” in honor of Dr.
W. B. Baker.
Quotable Quotes
“COLLEGES CANNOT TALK about democracy and
at the same time allow democratic principles and
methods to be used on their own campuses. Boards
of trustees, faculties as well as student bodies, must
see democracy as a way of life effective here and
everywhere.” Dr. Gould Wickey, Council of Church
Boards of Education secretary demands that stu
dents and faculty members practice what they
preach.
to be a mirror of Aggie thought Theater Supply Company,
and activity ... A column written It seems that one of the exhibi-
according to the Aggie way of tors in the College Station vicinity
things ... A column written for sent in an order for popcorn sea-
and about the great Twelfth Man. soning. By mistake, billboard paste
... A column based on the belief was sent instead,
that the Aggie way of doing things went well until a few feeks
is the best way. later when the Dallas firm re-
For the high school seniors ceived another order from the
throughout the state, here’s a re- Brazos County threater-owner.
view of some of the past year’s fp^e attached letter read, in part,
best humor items. The present “pj e ase do not send the same brand
writer, who has written Backwash 0 f popcorn seasoning that you sent
since its birth, will write ‘thirty’ ] as t time. Some of the customers
to the column with the end of the were no t altogether satisfied.”
current college year June 7, but • • •
the items to follow are a sample
of what you can expect when you JJg}} No
become Aggies next September.
There’ll be a new man writing Stories concerning Aggieland’s
Backwash when you arrive—a man varsity footballers are as many as
who will vastly improve the column the Dionne Quintuplets’ names, but
over its present status. Thus—a tops in the field is the one which
history of the column, its future goes back to a trip made by John
R. (Bubba) Reeves and James M.
(Cotton) Williams last September.
The two were hitch-hiking out
of Bremond as a car veered around
and here’s a review.
• • •
“The American college has demonstrated both
its vitality and its usefulness, but to maintain it
and to extend that usefulness to the world of to
day and tomorrow, the college must think harder
and think straighter about its job than it has
thought up to the present.” Dr. F. P. Keppel, pres
ident, Carnegie Corporation of New York, poses a
straightfonvard challenge.
—Associated Collegiate Press
As the World Turns..
BY DR. AL B. NELSON
DOES THE LABOR RACKET PAY? The large fees
and dues, plus fines, paid by the average union
laborer have enabled the A. F. of L. in Detroit to
purchase a luxurious building built by fashionable
club. The original cost of the building was $600,-
000. This calls to mind that the
United Mine Workers, a C. I. O.
organization of which John L.
Lewis is still the head has its
headquarters in the former Uni
versity Club building, a ritzy af
fair indeed.
, : Jf The Merit System (civil ser
vice) has been extended by execu
tive order to an additional 125,000
federal employees, of course these
offices are now filled with that
Nelson number of more or less deserving
“Newdealers”.
President Roosevelt has just requested that the
machine tool industry be placed on a twenty-four
hour a day, seven day a week basis. The only
thing difficult to understand is why this has not
been done long ago. It is to be hoped that Ameri
can officials will see that we are prepared for any
eventuality in time for national safety.
The British are concentrating on their war ef-
ort to such an extent that in a recent month only
176 automobiles were registered in all of Great
Britain. Also there is a shoi’t'age of tobacco since
that item is a non-essential, and worst of all is a
shortage of razor blades. If the British leaders had
prepared a little earlier England would not be in
such danger today. Their situation should teach
our leaders a lesson.
Recent reports indicate that Germany is mak
ing every preparation for an all out invasion of
England in the event a favorable occasion should
arise. The Germans have been prepared for every
eventuality up to the present.
The total Japanese air force is now estimated
at around three thousand planes with a monthly
production of about one sixth of our present aver
age.
$ad
The twice-each-year registration a cornei an( ^ head in their direct-
always brings to mind the true ^—apparently out of control,
story of the out-of-state freshman Cotton saw the car but Bubba ’ fac '
who enrolled at A. & M. a couple m8 ' the °PP osite direction, was un-
of years ago. aware of the danger.
Digging for a little extra money, “ Look out! ” Cotton y elled ’ but
the boy wrote his father that he to ° late - As the driver slamm e d ° n
had enlisted in the Cavalry and the brakes the s kiddin l? car flipped
needed $125 to buy a horse. The Bubba a double-somersault and,
gullible father sent the money and when he returned to earth again,
two weeks later received another d ^ dn b move a muscle, appear-
letter asking for $10 a week ration * n8 bo be near_ dead.
money for the animal—which was
regularly sent throughout the year.
Thinking that every bone in
Bubba’s body was broken and re-
I
Our hero was put on his mettle, membering the primer rule of first
however, when he received a let- aid , Cotton—-now thoroughly scar-
ter during the last week of the ed—nervously cautioned his pros-
college year in which his father trate companion, “Don’t move,
asked how he intended to get the Bubba; don’t move.”
horse home. “Hell,” Bubba came back—now
The way out was a masterpiece very much alive, “Whatta you want
—an obituary explaining that the me to do; stay here and get run
horse had stuck his foot in a chuck over again!!”
rf
Let Us Demonstrate!
Henry Gines will have Cen
tral Boots on display at the
Aggie Cleaners, North Gate,
May 12-13-14.
Inspect Central Boots and
you’ll buy from Henry Gines.
Don’t be satisfied with less!
Central Boot Company
323 Alamo Plaza
San Antonio
• «
Congratulations
and Best Wishes.
Mr. SENIOR
In just a few short weeks you will be an
“Ex-Aggie” and on your way to seek success
and fortune. May we extend to each of you
our sincere wishes for your success.
Nothing we know of will be more helpful
to start you off in the world with a burst of
splendor—than a “fine appearance”. In this
modern day appearance, you know, counts
85%. Come in and let us show you how easy
you can attain that right appearance that
will get you off to a flying start.
KUPPENHEIMER and GRIFFON CLOTHES
STETSON HATS — BOSTONIAN SHOES
ARROW SHIRTS — ARROW UNDERWEAR
ARROW TIES — ARROW HANDKERCHIEFS
INTERWOVEN and PHOENIX SOCKS
MARLBORO SHIRTS and SPORTSWEAR
NOR-EAST and BOTANY NECKWEAR
HICKOK BELTS and JEWELRY
A. & M. BELTS and COLLEGE JEWELRY
B. V.D. UNDERWEAR and SPORTSWEAR
B.V.D. and KNOTHE PAJAMAS
ALLIGATOR RAINCOATS
GANTNER SWIM SUITS
ATTENTION, PROSPECTIVE AGGIE
FRESHMEN . . .
If you are planning on coming to A. &
M. this fall we cordially invite you to visit
our stores . . . Our Aggie store located at
North Gate of Campus, our Bryan Store 108
Main Street in Bryan. We carry a complete
stock of quality men’s wear and regulation
uniforms. Before you purchase any uniform
goods write or see us. We can save you mon
ey on any regulation uniform goods. Every
item guaranteed strictly regulation.
7 t V CV
WIM3ERLEY STONE PANS BY
W-O. IS
CLOURIERS
‘TWO STORES”
COLLEGE and BRYAN
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