Washington, January 2, 1934.

Usually at the beginning of a new year the country turns to business and financial leaders to ask what they think of the future trend. Today the tendency is to turn toward Washington and ask what the White House thinks or what Congress plans to do. This change is not merely significant of a few weeks or months. It has become characteristic of the age in which we are living. For it means that the government of the United States plays a profound part in the ordering of our lives. The government has assumed the responsibility for bringing back economic recovery and has unhesitatingly asserted its leadership over the economic affairs of the country.

If the President were to unbosom himself to the American people--and he has studiously refrained from public or private prophesy--he would be compelled to concede that there are so many elements over which the government has control and so many over which it has no control that any attempt to forecast the future is necessarily a matter of guessing what each element will do in a given set of circumstances.

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Generally speaking, the President would say the future holds brightness and encouragement, that we are slowly emerging from the depression, that we have made and shall make progress, and that the patience and self-restraint of the people is in itself the best augury of our ultimate victory.

But such a statement would be a long-range prediction. It does not encompass the immediate future. It does not satisfy the business man who is planning for the next three months or even for a year. The cardinal fact about business is money. It is usually called capital. But there is another cardinal fact--how the volume of business done shall yield a profit.

Most disconcerting, therefore, is the talk from Washington about abolishing the profit system, increasing taxes to the saturation point, increasing the doles and grants and spending billions more than have already been spent.

The business man who makes his plans in the face of such a welter of uncertainties has an iron nerve, indeed. And the 440-yard dash while sprints will be entrusted to Edwin E. Calvin '35. Climaxing his season by winning three first places against Yale, Robert S. Playfair '36, will be entered in the mile and 1000-yard run. Thomas F. Locke '35, Anthony A. Bliss '36, and John White '34 ar also expected to show up well