"Aut Vincere Aut Mori"--To Conquer or To Die--is the ringing motto emblazoned on the Cambridge Fire Department's silken standard, designed and sown by one of its own members. "Organization and efficiency" might be a suitable, if less heroic, description of the innards of the light brick building in the spacious square under the shadow of Memorial Hall. Gone are the days of penny ante outside in the sun, of shirt-sleeved players and the inevitable kibitzers, who represent the common conception of the way a fireman spends his spare time. Science has forced the jovial, slapstick era into the past, and has introduced a strict, well-disciplined machinery to replace the former hit-or-run system of fire-fighting. The modern chief has a fingertip knowledge of the latest fire prevention methods, is a combination of business man, doctor, psychologist, race-track driver, and engineer. Every one of his men looks forward to officers stripes some day, and knows he has to work to get them. The old time courage is still there, plus the new scientific element which makes it a hundred times more valuable. Experience is reinforced with study and advancement is strictly on a merit basis. It no longer depends on the cigar dispensing technique once used so effectively by shennanigan-minded "politicians."

That's what makes the Cambridge department one of the best-run and most frequently imitated in New England. Ensconced in their almost new $24,000 building, equal in comfort to most Harvard clubs, the men have a strong sense of common responsibility not only towards the property which they protect and the lives under their care, but for their own living quarters as well. The "housework" is distributed among themselves on a sort of Platonesque basis, and the 50-odd men take turns in doing the floor-waxing, window,-scrubbing, and brass polishing which keeps their establishment as spotless and shining as one of our new destroyers. Spare time is not idled away, but is spent in keeping up to date on current innovations in the trade. Sabotage and its detection is a popular subject these days, as well as lectures on fire-fighting in war areas. Ping-pong, pool, pinochle, reading Time and the New Yorker take up only a small portion of the fireman's 70-hour week. Inn line with the modern organization is the system of "group shifts," which allows for a 48-hour leave every six days.

But when an alarm rings in, the well-oiled mechanism speeds into high gear without a check. At night, the men can awaken from a deep sleep, jump into their "night rig," scoot down the pole, and be away with sirens screaming in 26 seconds. Every motion has been carefully studied to see where life-saving minutes can down. The rescue squad, with first aid equipment, goes out on all alarins. Sometimes it in called by doctors who need oxygen immediately for, heart cases; suiciden, drown longs and gas victims always rate the rescue truck manned by experts n accident work.

Soft-voiced Chief Harman E. Guthcim, his uniform glittering with braid, is a lay as any Harvard professor who makes bi-weekly trips to Washington. He has been working steadily with the various local defense boards to coordinate his department with others in case of air raids. "Pretty soon we may call out some of you fellows as volunteers," he said somewhat doubtfully. "We'll need about four hundred ready to work on the College buildings in case of a bombing." Turning towards a cigar-smoking clerk, he added: "That is, if we can depend on 'em. They think everything's a big joke. Why, we had to send a ladder truck down last spring to get a Lampoon man off the roof of his own building." But feeling in the delta of Cambridge Street and Broadway is friendly to the Harvards. "They don't give us much trouble," one burly engine-driver confided with a wink, "but if they don't each buy a ticket to our next ball we'll let the whole damn College burn up!"