VARSITY PHOTOGRAPH, '43
Mayer, Milton
Varsity Photograph, 43 By MILTON MAYER THERE THEY STOOD on the broad stone steps of Old Bartlett, arranged in the traditional arrangement invented by the first varsity photographer. The giants sat...
...And those that survive will leap right back, after a little rose-throwing and hell-raising and bonus-snatching, to the farms and the city slums...
...Roehlk said sternly, "Stay ride vhere you are, young men...
...Muscles slackened, and Mr...
...Varsity photograph, '43...
...They're units...
...You've forgotten that this is the varsity photograph, '43...
...None of these boys had ever seen the inside of a college three months ago, and none of them ever would have seen one had it not been for the war to save the democracy that kept them from seeing the inside of a college...
...Nations are always in danger because nations are communities of men, and men are always in danger from the evils inside them as well as the evils without...
...But the nation was in danger before the war, and every nation is always in danger...
...And the whole great hallowed university, once reserved for the little sons and daughters of the rich, of the 2 per cent or the 5 per cent at the top of the democratic heap, has been converted, lock, stock, and barrel, to the preparation of the hitherto excluded scions of the 95 per cent or 98 per cent for their rendezvous with Moloch...
...I don'd like de sun ride now...
...They are, these 40-odd raw, dumb, unmannered Americans, completing their two or three months' college career...
...They leaped right into the gray Gothic dining halls and fraternity houses from the farms and the city slums...
...The government is paying for it, the country is paying for it, the taxpayers, including the big taxpayers, are paying for it because the country is in danger...
...But the dumb Americans on the broad stone steps of Old Bartlett never winked, or blinked, or moved a muscle...
...And where were the traditional smug, secure, and heroic faces that have characterized varsity men since the beginning of varsity photographs ? Why, you've forgotten that this is no ordinary varsity photograph...
...And for the first time in American history nobody counts the cost of sending the entire rising generation to college...
...Few of them have graduated from high school, and some of them, now that the snob Navy has got to take draftees, haven't finished grammar school...
...And where were the just as obviously tough young men, whose agonized way through college had been paved by some football-loving alumnus and greased by some football-loving professor and who would step out of the varsity photograph into pro ball and wind up behind the pump in a saloon or a gas station...
...No Ordinary Photograph Where, in a word, was the varsity...
...Roehlk emerged from under the cloth and approached the steps...
...Muscles tensed, and the young men stayed ride vhere dey vurr...
...There they stand on the hallowed stone steps of Old Bartlett, steps that were once reserved for future brokers and football bums...
...Some of these Army and Navy courses run six months, a year, two years, even, in the medical schools, for instance, three or four years...
...The giants sat on the first step...
...and the middle-sized men stood toweringly, in a shorter row, on the top step...
...Varsity photograph, '43...
...Not a muscle moved on the steps of Old Bartlett, and lips grew parched and eyes grew glazed as the methodical old Dutchman under the black cloth took his time perfecting the focus...
...Varsity photograph, '43...
...The varsity photograph...
...Why, right there in front of you, on the sanctified steps of Old Bartlett...
...Roehlk vaited for de sun to sink...
...And with the passing of the kaleidoscopic years the photograph would turn a deeper and deeper shade of brown until it looked, like all varsity photographs, as if it had been taken by a brown photographer with a brown camera in front of a brown Old Bartlett on the brownest autumn day in the history of the world...
...Not a muscle moved while Mr...
...Dormitories, dining-halls, athletic fields, libraries, and teaching staffs have been democratized by the great democratizer, Moloch...
...It's just that the property has been opened up to the lower classes, at the insistence of Moloch, for the duration of the national danger...
...And now they are leaping right out and on to the gray bridges and crow's nests of battlewaggons...
...And each of them would look at the photograph, once or twice a year, with increasing wonderment, and say, "I wonder what ever became of old Smith"— or old Jones or old Robinson—"I haven't seen him from that day to this...
...A brace of beautiful girls loped down the street, expecting the usual hoots and hi-babes that beautiful girls expect from raw, dumb, unmannered Americans...
...They're uniforms...
...The last photograph of the squad together, the photograph that each of them would hang on the wall of his den and look at, long and thoughtfully, many years after he had earned what the coach called his major letter in the great game of life and his hair was gray (what was left of it...
...They're "sailors...
...So nobody is or was getting an education...
...Jews, Negroes, and undesirables generally are admitted to colleges, medical schools, and law schools where the numerous clausiis or the exclusus clausus formerly protected the desirable rich from them...
...They come and go through the Gothic halls in huge anonymous batches...
...They're space-displacers...
...the little fellows stood, in a longer row, on the step above...
...Where was the ball, inscribed '"43," that had gone over from the 1-foot line on the fourth down for the winning score against Cornell, or California, or Northwestern...
...Roehlk, varsity photographer since the great 2-0 Michigan game of '05, focussed his big old camera on its oak tripod in the very middle of University Avenue, his head and shoulders hidden under the black cloth that only photographers and hangmen have any use for...
...All men are equalized, especially the poor, and more especially the poor of draft age, in their right to stand on the hallowed steps of Old Bartlett and to yawn in the hallowed halls of the higher learning...
...These 40-odd near-illiterates whose lives, fortunes, and sacred honor have been commandeered in the service of Moloch, are Navy signalmen...
...Where Was The Ball...
...Varsity photograph, '43...
...It was the varsity photograph, '43...
...They are known to the natives of the place as "the sailors," and though three-fifths of "the sailors" who were with us a year ago have long since set out to be corpses or cripples, the natives assume somehow that "the sailors" standing on the steps of Old Bartlett there are the same "sailors" who stood there a year ago...
...Ignorance is the most easily cured of the evils inside men, and the schools are, or should be, the cure for ignorance...
...But why were they wearing blue uniforms instead of maroon, and why in the name of Old Bart-lett's stone steps were they wearing hats, and little round white hats at that...
...But where were the sweaters with the big letter on the front, and where were the shimmels and the stockings and the cleats...
...Can we afford, when Hitler has been hanged, to pretend that the kids who couldn't go to college until they had to be sent there to learn to kill still can't afford to go to college...
...The rest will go back to the "useful citizenship" of uneducated men grubbing for a living and spending their arid leisure listening to the useful words of Jack Benny and the useful tunes of Jimmy Dorsey...
...Where on the steps were the obviously well-tubbed young men whose parents could afford to send them to college and who would wind up in the brokerage business and the country club...
...Well, of the 40-odd Smiths on the steps of Old Bartlett there, three-fifths of them will, according to the cautious estimate of their commandant, be killed, or so badly wounded as to be unfit for what the commandant cautiously referred to as "useful citizenship...
...If the nation was in danger before the war, and is still in danger after it, shall we train the few to make money and vote the straight ticket or educate the many to be useful citizens, ruling and being ruled in turn like freemen and equals for the common good of all...
...They were posing, like so many varsity squads before them, for their varsity photograph...
...They have no identity for us, no actual human existence...
...The Great Democratizer "I wonder what ever became of old Smith," or old Jones or old Robinson...
...The cooperative commonwealth is here...
...Some of the names, and some of the faces, would be lost entirely and forever in the brown haze of the years...
...And each of them, as he studied the photograph once or twice a year, would have increasing difficulty in recalling some of the names of some of the faces...
...Roehlk vaited, as he had vaited for so many years, until de sun vas yust ride, and then he raised his hand in terrible authority, squeezed the bulb with awful might, and snapped the shutter...
...I vill vait ten minuds," he said...
...Varsity Photograph, '43 Of course these undesirables are being trained to kill, and the desirables who used to attend the institution were being trained to make money and vote the straight Republican ticket...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 41
