Cane Juice

"School, it is like this. School, it is like big sugar-house. It crush and maul us and spin us round. And we go out sweet like sugar. . . . Life, it is like this too. It whip us and pound us, but we come sweet like sugar. . . . We might come like bagasse. Just cane with all the juice crushed out."

So writes Dr. John Earle Uhler in a novel, Cane Juice, which he published last month.* A Yankee, born in Media, Pa. forty years ago, he had gone to Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge) to be a member of its English department after teaching for eleven years at Johns Hopkins. He admitted he wished to "write a lyrical story of Louisiana life." He visited Louisiana bayous, talked to Creoles and Cajun folk, watched them at work in sugar-houses. Last week Dr. Uhler's cane juice was seething, fermenting angrily.

Dealing with the career of an uncouth but righteous and ambitious Cajun who makes good at Louisiana State, Cane Juice is earnestly, sometimes ably written. Like many another contemporary novel of student life, it introduces toping and lechery. There are observations on the sugar industry (Louisiana State has an Audubon Sugar School) and in the end the hero wins a refined girl ("union of sweet nurtured cane with the rough stock of the wilderness") and is indicated as a potential sugar tycoon.

A Baton Rouge priest, Rt. Rev. Mgr. F. J. Gassier, read Cane Juice with rising indignation. Last fortnight he circulated a mimeographed attack upon it. Excerpts: "Utter ignorance of Creole customs. . . . Did the author perchance pick his 'young ladies' in a bawdy house? . . . Caricature. . . . Unsullied reputation of our Creole maidens. . . . Nauseating. . . . Filthiness. ... A monstrous slander of the purest womanhood to be found in the U. S. . . . Slimy animalism and mental filth. . . . The author might be a handsome young man for aught we know. The skunk also is a beautiful animal. . . ."

Then began another cause celebre which resulted, as is often the case, in people muttering about "academic freedom," getting up petitions, holding meetings. Dr. Uhler's resignation was at once demanded. Few days later, in spite of sputtering members of the American Association of University Professors (of which Dr. Uhler is a member) and a committee of New Orleans writers headed by Lyle Saxon (Old Louisiana, Lafitte, The Pirate), he was suspended. Then met the University Executive Board, of which Governor Huey Pierce Long is a leading member. Forthwith it dismissed Dr. Uhler.

Louisiana observers remarked: 1) that Baptist Governor Long, engaged in tussling with Lieut. Governor Paul Cyr over his job (see p. 13), might win Catholic sympathy by a tactful gesture in the direction of complaining Mgr. Gassier; 2) that Dr. Uhler (and three others) won a libel suit a year ago against one Kemble Kenneth Kennedy, 29, friend and protege of Governor Long who had published an obscene, yawping edition of the University Whangdoodle, calling Dr. Uhler a narcotic addict and a lecher. For this Protege Kennedy was sentenced to a year in jail, was at once reprieved by Governor Long.

Lean, highbrowed, toothbrush-mustached Dr. Uhler issued a detailed defense of Cane Juice, pointed out errors in Mgr. Gassier's charges. He said that the attack indicated the decline of "charitable spirit" and the troubled condition of Christianity. Nonetheless, he respected the Catholic Church. Though Episcopalian himself, he said he was related to twelve priests, three bishops, one archbishop, one monk. He announced he would sue Mgr. Gassier for defamation and libel. The American Civil Liberties Union, always happy to have a cause to champion, offered to support a suit to recover this year's salary in full and a mandamus action to compel a public hearing. Editor Henry Louis Mencken of the American Mercury sent congratulations, said Dr. Uhler was lucky to escape "servitude in such a hole." Said Dr. Uhler: "I realize that behind -my dismissal there are sinister and powerful influences, difficult to combat. ... I feel like one of the witches bound at the stake in Salem. . . ."

Booklover

Officials of Harvard University's Widener Memorial Library were used to the sallow, bespectacled little man who habitually smoked a corncob pipe. Because he said he was preparing himself to be a professor they let him roam the library as much as he liked. Last week they became sharply conscious of Joel Clifton Williams, 49, of Dedham. Mass. He was under arrest, charged with pilfering 1,804 books worth $15.000 from Widener Library.

Widener Library has lost in all some $200,000 worth of fine books. It is believed that many were disposed of through a ring in Manhattan. Last year a turnstile was installed in the lobby; the losses decreased. Last fortnight a Cambridge bookseller reported that Mr. Williams, graduate of Boston University and Harvard (M. A., 1909), onetime principal of several Massachusetts high schools, teacher at Groton two years ago, had sold him two books which he thought came from the Library. To Mr. Williams' home went police and Library officials. They found many a scholarly volume--history, astrology, art, economics, biology--many, they said, with library marks, some partially deleted, some completely visible. He denied any theft, said he was a booklover, had bought books from a former classmate whose name he did not rightly remember. Mrs. Williams wept. When photographers came, Booklover Williams muttered: "This is a beastly performance." The books were loaded in a truck, sent off for Library officials to check over. Booklover Williams was held in $500 bail.

Edwards, Calhoun, Trumbull

To the $12,000,000 worth of steel girders, tan Gothic stonework* and shiny plumbing given by Edward Stephen Harkness to Yale as an eleven college "house plan" development (TIME, Jan. 20, 1930, March 9, 1931), names out of Yale's past will be given. Already named are Pierson, John Davenport, Branford, Saybrook and Berkeley Colleges. Three new names were added last week:

Jonathan Edwards College, for the famed Presbyterian theologian (1703-58). Graduated from Yale at 17, Edwards preached dogmatically, saved many a soul, wrote many a book. In 1757 he succeeded his son-in-law Aaron Burr (father of Traitor Aaron Burr) as president of Princeton University, died of smallpox inoculation in the following year. Princeton also reveres him, has an Edwards Street, an Edwards Hall.

Calhoun College, for Statesman John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850) of South Carolina. Graduated from Yale in 1804, he was U. S. Representative (1811-17), Secretary of War under President James Monroe, Vice President of the U. S. (1825-32), U. S. Senator from 1833 until his death, save for a year as Secretary of State under President John Tyler. With Henry Clay, he helped precipitate the War of 1812. Statesman Calhoun amplified and clarified the theory of State's Rights, clashed over it with Daniel Webster in a famed debate in 1833, brought it to bear (he was a slaveholder) on the Abolition movement.

Trumbull College, for Jonathan Trumbull (Yale 1779, LL.D.), Revolutionary patriot and Governor of Connecticut, no ancestor of Connecticut's recent (1925-31) Governor John H. Trumbull, father- in-law of John Coolidge. Father-in-law Trumbull's parents were Scotch-Irish immigrants to the U. S.

* Save for John Davenport and Pierson, recently completed, which are red brick Georgian. To match nearby buildings Davenport has a novel Gothic facade. Scornful of Yale's architecture, the perky Harkness Hoot this month lists these styles, all to be found on the campus: Nondescript-General Grant, American Colonial-Georgian, French Renaissance Classic, Moorish, Lombard-Romanesque, Venetian, Greek Temple, Gothic.

*Century: $2.50.

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