Pan-American Pleasantry

Of all the crazes and fads which arrived concurrently with the defense crisis, the Pan-American madness is the healthiest and the likeliest to become a pernianent fixture for the American people, like golf and tomatoes. Until the force of a common danger made them feel the unity of the hemisphere, most Americans thought of South America purely as an uncivilized land at the other end of a Caribbean cruise. Now they are beginning to wake up to the culture that exists down under.

The spread of the craze has helped to prove the old adage that any form of education can be put over to the educates more easily if it has a chocolate coating of entertainment. The zombies and senoritas of the Beachcomber and the South American songs of the Yale Glee Club do more for the cause of the Good Neighbor policy than all the economic reports of Argentinean beef mimeographed in Washington in a decade. Consequently, it is good news that the New England Pan-American Society and the Phillips Brooks House have given up their stuffy sides on Colombian architecture and are sponsoring instead a gala Pan-American Ball this Friday evening to raise Harvard's interest in our adjoining continent.

The rise in enrollment in Spanish courses and in South American history courses are enough of an indication to show how many undergraduates are turning their thoughts and their eyes toward the South, and an occasion like the Ball gives them a chance to combine their newfound interest with pleasure. As if getting the feel of South American life by learning the rhumba were not enough they will find themselves in the august company of practically every senor and senorita in Boston with a trace of Spanish blood in his or her veins.