By Shirley Simkin ’42
We recently stumbled across Connecticut College News, an earlier precursor of The College Voice, and fond the topics and stories to be facinating. This will be part of a series of reprints from the 1940s where readers can compare current Conn news to news from almost sixty years past.
“Do not feel sorry for me; it is a great privilege!” exclaimed Mr. Allen Bennett Lambdin, Business Manager of Connecticut College since 1922, in reference to his anticipated departure for Camp Blanding, Florida, as finance officer of the 43rd Division of National Guard. Mr. Lambdin, who holds the rank of colonel, has been granted a year’s leave of absence from the time of his call to duty which he expects in the latter part of February. He feels that the United States will be actively engaged in the war within three or four months, and he is eager to do his part in fighting and, if necessary in dying, for the vital cause of aiding Britain and defeating Germany.
Mr. Lambdin said that his chief duty at Camp Blanding will be to see that the 22,000 men stationed there receive their pay checks once a month. “But it will be no vacation,” he laughed. Mr. Lambdin, who served as a flier for eighteen months in the previous World War, has been a member of the National Guard since 1923.
Although most of the activities of a business manager take place behind the scenes, Mr. Lambdin has two outstanding hobbies which have made him well-known on campus. In 1932 he organized the Oratorio Society which included singers within a radius of thirty minutes around New London, and has directed their semi-annual performances with great success. He said that Dr. J. Lawrence Erb will direct the society in his absence. His second musical venture is the arrangement of the Connecticut College Concert Series which has brought many celebrated artists to the Palmer Auditorium during the past two years.
When asked how soon he thought we would enter the war, Mr. Lambdin answered quickly, “We are already in the war! It is only the American people who do not realize that.” The he took a thoughtful puff on his ever-present cigar and continued to explain his conviction that we would be in the actual “shooting war” within three or four months. He feels that our aid is necessary first to keep Britain from being defeated, and secondly to bring about the defeat of Germany. There is no doubt about the success of the Allies if America joins in the war, according to Mr. Lambdin. He explained the advisability of entering war by reducing the world situation to a personal equation in order to illustrate his point. If you were taking a large payroll down to the bank to deposit, and were held up by a robber, you would have two choices, he said, that of surrending the money and maintaining personal safety, or that of risking your life to save the payroll. He would not hesitate to choose the latter course, and he feels that most Americans would react in the same way. As to our present state of unpreparedness for entering the war, he said, “A democracy is never prepared, any more than he individual who might be robbed.”
Far from feeling that the youth of America are unfortunate to be living in the present age, he feels that it is the greatest time of all history in which to be alive, because of the fast tempo at which events are moving. Mr. Lambdin compared life to a game of cards. In the past, he explained, one nation played a card, then, after fifty years had elapsed another nation played a card and at the end of two hundred years, after all four cards had been played, no one knew who had taken the trick. Today, all four cards may be played within a week, and we know who takes the trick on the day after the last card has been placed on the table.
“If I had my choice of all the places in the which I wished to be today, it would be London,” said Mr. Lambdin. On the other hand if he were a young man of twenty-two today, he would join the air force during the war, and go to South America, where he feels that the greatest expansion and development will take place, after the war.
It is obvious from these statements that Mr. Lambdin is eager to experience life to the very fullest extent. “But I am not afraid to die,” he said. “There are many things worse than death.” He regards death itself as a great experience and feels that it is wonderful privilege to die fighting for one’s country, upholding some ideal in which one sincerely believes. “You would not be afraid to die,” he said, “even though you think now that you might.” He is firmly convinced that the youth of America have something which they hold dear enough to fight for, and to die in winning. With a clear and steady look in his eyes, and calm conviction in his voice, he said, “Two hundred years ago men died so that I might enjoy the happiness of a free life. Today I am ready to die in order to preserve this same privilege for future generations.”
