A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette Mrs. La Follette INQUIRING of an acquaintance the other day concerning her daughter who is attending an old and stiff-standard college in the East, I...
...As our boy wrote from the Philippines, with his lusty pen, "Was cynically amused at —'s comments on the value of Spanish...
...If you knew anything about it you would realize that even our trade relations with this area are infinitesimal...
...Probably, as in so many cases, we ordinary mortals will have to create a demand if we want our educational institutions to offer the necessary material to help us meet intelligently the problems that lie ahead of us in the Pacific...
...Yet these are the people who with great confidence and freedom express opinions on Gen...
...For many months, almost every night before going to sleep I picked up that book and browsed through its fascinating pages...
...I remember how disgusted a friend of ours was that Phil and I should return to Europe on our various visits rather than going to Hawaii and further in that direction, he (because he lived there) believing that we would have a great future in our relations in the Pacific...
...It is a start...
...I can understand weak mental powers and black ignorance in low places, but I fail utterly to see how a university society can nourish such a shrivelled intellect and the dwarfed values accompanying it...
...Her smile of pity for my ignorance only increased...
...THERE is no doubt but that the vast majority of Americans have been in the past, to a greater or lesser degree, "Atlantic minded," as some one recently remarked...
...Why should that please you...
...I asked...
...Mac Arthur's policies in the handling of Japan...
...Not that the men who have been over there can know much about that vast half of the world with its ancient cultures and varying customs, but at least it has become a real place to the men who went there and the families who wrote to them...
...Raise the question with a history department and you will get the reply that they have three professors in ancient history, two in medieval, two in the Renaissance, three in English and American, etc...
...Smiling in a superior manner she opined, "Spanish—my dear...
...When Phil first went to the Pacific a fellow officer was kind enough to send me an Australian book called The Pacific Islands Year Book...
...I am no geographer, but it has been a great pleasure since Phil got home and friends who were with him out there drop in to see him, to have at least some impression of the area and lands they are discussing...
...Phil told of a friend in New York who frankly informed him upon his return from the Pacific, "We in the East are not interested in the Pacific war...
...I queried...
...The recipient of her outburst murmured gently, "Oxford is in a slightly different position from Madison's," but to no avail...
...They are not even interested in learning that MacArthur has on his staff men who have spent years in Japan and the Far East, and this would presumably, if education and experience mean anything, qualify them to do the job better than most of us for whom the Pacific is a blue area dotted with spots on the map...
...I took a series of lectures which opened up new vistas on that dynamic part of the world, and I have read as I have had the opportunity...
...Within the past year Mac-millan has brought out an American edition...
...I recalled that at the outbreak of the war she had been outraged that our city of Madison had not responded to the British War Relief drive with the generosity of Oxford, England...
...and that they can't afford a man on the Orient...
...The war in Europe is over, and we are all tired...
...Phil suggested that the hundreds of thousands of boys who will return from the Pacific will act as a leaven, but a professor who is expert in certain aspects of the Orient c&untered, "The young people coming to our schools and universities may have an interest in that area but where are they to get the information...
...Do you mean that you just dismiss a whole continent to the south of us, not to mention a good-sized section of Europe...
...Our eyes have always turned to Europe, which has been natural considering our background...
...At this point I gave up* She is a college graduate...
...The other evening a group of us were discussing this problem and what could be done to inform the average citizen on that vast area of China, Japan, Korea, Indo-China, India—-an area that contains half the population of the world...
...In other words, although for over four years we have had thousands of boys fighting and dying in the vast areas of the Pacific, our educational institutions for the most part ignore that part of the world...
...La Follette INQUIRING of an acquaintance the other day concerning her daughter who is attending an old and stiff-standard college in the East, I was amazed to have her conclude her report with the statement that she was happy to note that said college did not accept credits in Spanish...
...OF course, if Phil and our boy had been sent to Europe I would not have had this impetus, and Phil has said over and over again how grateful he is that the Army sent him to the Pacific about which he knew very little...
...What have they to give us culturally...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 44
