FRIDAY, MAY 8, 1942
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE SEVEN
Editor's Note: The following letter has been received by Betsy Dodge, fine arts junior, and Mary Beth Dodge, student at the University the first semester. The letter is from Ingrid Frestadius, who was a special student from Stockholm, Sweden, in 1929 and 1940.
How's the world with you all in dear old Salina? I have been thinking so many times to write you. Last Thanksgiving Day I thought of the days spent in Salina in 1939. It was just at that time when the Finnish winter-war broke out. Well, now I am in Finland and here is again a war, this time much harder for the country, because so many men are lost and the food situation is so grave. The first of April I got a job in the department of archives of Foreign Office in Stockholm. From there I got transferred this fall to Helsingfors to stay here a year. I am doing secretarial work at the Legation of Sweden here. We are three girls from Sweden and four Finnish ones who of course, all speak Swedish fluently. To get here was quite complicated. I traveled with two friends on a Finnish boat and it took twice the time it usually takes to get to Abo, a little port in south-west Finland. The boa was in Swedish territorial waters the whole night and then we went across the Baltic Sea in convoy because of danger of mines etc. Nothing happened and late at night we got to Abo where everything was in black-out. Then we had to stay over night in Abo and next morning we got on the Helsingfors-train. All trains here are frightfully crowded, because there are so few in traffic. We were very fresh and invaded the dinner car where we sat six hours drinking soda water and "ersatz" coffee. The trip took almost 2 days but you can fly in 2 hours! Already the first night we had an alarm and I was the one who rushed up and began to unpin my hair. "It is no idea to make yourself fancy for the bomb-shelter," said my friend with whom I am living, "because we never go down there." Nothing happened, we only heard some heavy shooting. The next day bombs fell at some places in town, one about 300 meters from the legation, it was rather exciting, although nobody was injured. For about a week we had alarms very frequently, but now they have completely ceased. Maybe they will start again. England has just declared war on Finland, but I don't see what she can do. An alarm at daytime does not affect me a bit, but at night I feel more helpless when I hear the sirens. I am staying with a girl whose husband is at the front. She is an old school-friend of mine and we have quite a nice time together. Tonight we have been at the Swedish Theatre here and have seen a nice comedy. As you might know 10 per cent of Finland's population is Swedish. A lot of them live here in Helsingfors and in other towns in the South of Finland. All the time here I speak Swedish and get along practically everywhere with it. I have started to learn some Finnish though, but I am confident it is the world's hardest language. It has no resemblance with anything else I have heard of before and it has 16 cases! Here is really everything terribly different from life in Stockholm. The think that is hard to get used to is the blackout, especially when one is a stranger here. Now they have started with half lights in the streets and it is somewhat better, but first when I got here it was pitch dark, when I went home from my work at 5 o'clock p.m. You see few men here. All conductors on tramways—busses don't go any longer because there is no gas and no new times—are women and also one sees lots of women doing streetwork and working at new buildings. Every morning when I go to the legation I must cross the great market at the harbor. Huge queues, all for fish. Now fish is very scarce and is only called "under the counter" as it is called. You see, here people are allowed to buy at present for 24 weeks, if you wish.
be ceilers. So they got to get fish. Vegetables are already very scarc and terribly expensive. I have not seen white bread at all since I got there. Very seldom one can buy some Danish apples, but all Finnish fruit is no more. It has all frozen these last very cold winters. Of course, no canned fruit is to get. Now one does not get any butter at all, only sick persons and children. A small ration will be given though for X-mas. Still I think that in families who have been able to store, one can eat fairly good, but for poorer families it must be very difficult this winter. They have a severe rationing of clothes. Woolen stockings etc. are absolutely impossible to get. One can see in the great shops now empty of goods they are. Some of them decorate their windows with matchboxes and so on. As Finland cannot import very much except guns and war materials and so on, all other things cease to exist in the market after a time. So many of the country's own factories are closed on account of the mobilization and lack of raw materials. Restaurants close at eleven and no dance anywhere. Kids under 18 have now been forbidden to go alone without parents in the street after 10:30 p.m. They have been doing so much fuzz. The movies they show here are all old and mostly very bad.
My very best friend's engaged has fallen on the Eastern front recently and it has been a very hard time. When one thinks that there is hardly any family in this whole country who has not a near relation, it is just terrible. A little country of 3 million cannot afford this. Also everybody here is very tired of the war and hope that it will for Finland's part soon take an end. And so I hope for all the world. You don't understand how terrible it is when one lives close to it. It seems so meaningless that one should marry in these times and work hard to give a good education for the next generation that then would go into another war. And war is so full of horrible things, atrocities, when one hears the boys here on leave tell stories from the front. Sometimes I tell myself it cannot be true, human beings cannot go so far that they do such things, but one must believe eyewitnesses though. One thing I pray for and that is that the minds of the peoples will not be too full of hatred after this war that we will not be able to cooperate. After all, all the different nations need each other so much.
Well, dear girls, this letter might not be such a gay one, but I felt so much the need to write to you two who were so nice to me. You don't know how often I think back at my stay in the U.S. and how happy I am that I was so fortunate that I could go to college in your country. Just this afternoon I got a bunch of Life—from September and October—forwarded from home, and it has been such fun to look at them. I know that you, Mary Beth, now have your blond basketball player's pin. Maybe you are already married. And you Betsey, what are you doing? If you have time to send me a line some time and tell about your lives and your families, I would be very happy. You must really give everybody I know in Salina my very best regards.
And don't forget now that after this year in all your
And don't forget now that after this war is all over, you must come to Sweden and to Stockholm. I will love to show you around.
I wish you and both your families a Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year 1942. INGRID FRESTADIUS.
Snooping Around
☆ ☆ ☆
Highlight of the weekend at the University of Oklahoma was the Sooner's annual carnival the first in wartime. Special features were a merry-go-round, a ferris wheel, and an airplane ride. . . . other concessions were organized and run by various organizations. . . . estimated to have grossed more than $1,000, profits will be used to buy war bonds to be given to the University or some other worthwhile institution. . . . "This carnival will probably be the last for the duration," prophesied the Oklahoma Daily.
Having enlisted 100 Minnesotans in the Golden Gopher squadron, the naval aviation selection board has started taking applications for enlistment in a second such squadron, similar to the Jayhawker squadron organized for Kansas University mem.
A battle over the student magazine question, which has been going on for some time, broke into warfare last week in the editorial page of the Daily Tar Heel, student paper of the University of North Carolina. In the past, there have been two magazines, Tar an' Feathers, a humor publication, and the Carolina Magazine, a serious publication. It seems the staff of Tar an' Feathers abhorred the literary Mag, which feeling was reciprocated by the Mag staff. A third group, tired of the old feud, recently put out a "Baby-Esquire," which was unlike either of the others. Arguments pro and con were flying freely, according to the Wednesday Tar Heel, and the student legislature settled the question Thursday night by combining the two publications.
Michigan high school journalists spent Friday and Saturday on the M. U. campus for the 21st annual Michigan Interscolastic Press Association convention. . . . this event is similar to the annual fall meeting for representatives of Kansas high school publications held on the Hill and sponsored by the department of journalism.
names, initials, or what-have-you.
Presente do the Indiana Union by the senior class, the table top was mounted Friday and placed in the Commons.
Seniors at the University of Indiana gathered around a table top one day last week to carve their
All candidates for positions of business manager and advertising manager of The Daily Kansan should file written applications in the office of Elmer F. Beth, acting chairman of the department of journ al ism. Closing date is Monday, May 11. Every University student is eligible, no matter what his major course is. Both positions pay salaries.
The Student Book Exchange at Purdue University opened last week for its tenth semester of service to the students. . . . It is a non-profit enterprise conducted by the Student Union and the Student Senate. . . . last semester 1,136 books changed hands at the Exchange, and an estimated $900 was saved for the student body.
The written application should explain in detail why the candidate's training, experience, interest, and talents make him a suitable person for the position. Appointments will be made by the business committee of the Kansan board, consisting of Profs. Beth and L. N. Flint, Mr. K. W. Davidson, and Frank Baumgartner, business manager of The Kansan.
L. S.U. professors and their methods were on the pan Thursday at an open forum of six students, sponsored by the Mental Hygiene club. . we wonder what effect profs and their methods have on the "mental hygiene" of other students?
University of Michigan faculty members have undertaken 31 war research projects for the federal government.
STUDENTS IMPROVE--carefully before he writes; as a result, he is incoherent and ineffective. It isn't that the student can't write well, but that he simply doesn't put himself to it. Part of the difficulty, though, lies in the effect of note taking in class on a student's writing. A theory is offered by the instructors in the laboratory that if students could be helped to take good notes in class, they could overcome much of the difficulty in their other writing.
The student's chief difficulty has been found to be carelessness. He doesn't think the subject through
(continued from page six) analyzing another person's treatment of the same subject on which he has written.
"How To Write in Three Easy Lessons" might be the title by which some students think of the laboratory. The average student stays three weeks in the course, spending only fifteen minutes a day, three times a week in the laboratory. The results obtained by the lab have not been startling. Some students show no improvement whatsoever, but most acquire a clearer style of writing.
The writing laboratory is held in room 201 of Fraser Hall from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The amount of time spent there is optional for the student; and whenever he wishes, the student may drop the work. So, if that last letter home for money wasn't effective or if those term papers are worrying you, perhaps you ought to drop in for a visit at the writing laboratory.
WANT ADS
ROOMS FOR RENT: For summer school. Single and double. Airconditioned. One-half block off campus. Call Mrs. Feder, 3009. 689-138
LOST: Brown oil silk raincoat in case, Wed., April 29th; at Fraser Hall or Union Building. Call Mary Ewers, 267. 687-133
ROOMS are available at the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority for summer school students. Call 2716. 686-136
LOST—LIBERAL REWARD! Platinum diamond wrist watch, small,
rectangular shape, gray cord strap,
Lost Monday morning near Thayer
Museum. Return to KANSAN Business
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