After 47 What?

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

The king is dead! Long live the king! It is always most welcome to youth, when men of affairs suggest paths to be taken. It only remains to decide whether or not the suggestions are worth taking. Ever since the announcement that Professor Baker departs from the University, the resentment of the students has been turned in wrath toward various human objects, but in order to live, it is necessary to adopt one's self to changing circumstances.

It is too late to be shedding tears. Professor Baker has left, and someone must fill his place; and to look at the whole affair with a different eye, perhaps it is advantageous. After all it is not quite certain whether artists (of dramaturgy as well) are born or made; hence we may be assigning too much credit to Professor Baker.

What is known is that given the proper man and direction, there will be a result. The precipitate in this particular instance is a theatrical play. Certainly, there are many embryonic virtuosos who remain quite indifferent to production in the fields suitable to their inclinations, until some accident, perhaps, stirs them to expression. I am sure that after Professor Baker's decision had been rendered, an after-thought crept into the minds of some students that they were fitted for just such work as was customary in the Workshop, and that they were being deprived of their inalienable rights, etc., etc. The press thus performed the veritable function of stirring up impulses and inciting efforts, strivings, and in short verve.

Where is the solution? Walter Prichard Eaton is coached in the bed of experience in the theatres, and can thus bolster up his academic conscience with a defiant air. He is, moreover, in harmony with these impulses of a rejuvenated era of artistic expression (witness the fact that he even writes for the New Republic). Last but not least, he has been labelled "approved by" actors, playwrights, and again even by those everlastingly finical and eternal plagues of critics. Could we ask for a better truce? Leo Slafsky '24.