THE GLEEFUL GLIGG

Ever since the Christmas recess, readers of the Alumni Bulletin have been treated to countless numbers of heartfelt fulmination's from alumni about the Glee Club's withdrawal from the Intercollegiate Glee Club competition. The current number shows plainly that the alumni have no intention of leaving the subject until everything has been said as many times as possible. Only the one man Harvard Club in Singapore is yet to be heard from; and, since mails from the Orient are notoriously slow, this defect may be remedied at any time.

The issue of debate has long since ceased to be whether or not the Glee Club was justified in withdrawing from a contest the character of which it did not consider high enough to be worth while. Various enticing ramifications of the subject have been discovered. Every week some alumnus glimpses a new and enchanting prey, gives a view halloo and writes to the Bulletin about the pleasures of the chase. There appears an aesthetic issue: the contention is raised that the club should confine itself to music that allows it to roar like a lion at supper-time. There is an etymological issue which drags in the somewhat recondite but undoubtedly interesting fact that the word "glee" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "gligg", meaning music.

There must be something behind it all, else the alumni would not have been able to keep the ball rolling at such a number of revolutions per minute for two months. Even though no one has referred to it by name yet, the moth-eaten specter of Harvard indifference may have begun again to walk abroad and clank its chain. It is not the first time that even a suspicion that the worthy spook is about again has set people by the cars.

The Lilliputians, according to the sole authority on their history and customs, frequently came to blows while arguing about whether an egg should be opened at the big or the little end.