Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

Page 7 text:

(rie O.Reaae UE 5 Valedictory Address Percy M. Stelle Classmates: For the four years of our High School Course we have worked and played together. We have prepared ourselves to go out into life, to take our places as citizens, and to work with and for the com- munity. -As we part tonight, may we take with us those ideals which have been held up before us during our school life; may each one of us do his part in the life of the city; may we all stand by our country now in her hour of need, and when this cruel war is over, may we be ready to be citi- zens of the “new civilization.”

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4 TREVOR AGERE Salutatory Address Fannie Mann It seems an unnecessary formality to bid you all welcome here this even- ing; but this Commencement season is the only time in which we have an opportunity, as a class, to greet friends and to express our gratitude for their interest and support. We are especially glad tonight to give our friend, Dr. Maxson, our earnest con- gratulations upon the completion of his twenty-five years of unselfish ser- vice to our school, and to express our heartfelt thanks for his warm friend- ship and inspiration. By your words and example, Dr. Maxson, you have taught us lessons that will never leave us. May we always strive to be “optimists” and “road-menders!” and to fulfil the ideals you have set before us. We would also include in our greeting and gratitude the gentlemen of the Board of Education, who have supported our superintendent; so loyally ; our principal, who has been our sincere friend and adviser, our guest, who. is to speak to us this evening, and all our friends of Plainfield. “At first and last a hearty welcome.” Long ago,-in the palaces ot ancient (Greece, or in the castles on the Mediaeval Saxons, when friends gathered together for pleasure and inspi- ration, they called upon one of their number to entertain them with a story. And through their bard, they learned of the past, handed down the stories of their heroes, and drew lessons for the future. This evening I am going to tell you a story, a legend of a far-away land, a land where battles have been raging, where the armies of the Great War, shifting back and forth, have laid waste the beauty of the quiet country, and brought terror and death to the innocent folk. The thought of this legend has come down to me from one who lived in this far country, where for many years it has been told by father to son.

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6 SSE Osis, ANG den oe Mein Vaterland (As told by Adele Patton, Winner of the First Babcock Prize) Reader, if the thought of Germany is to you as a red rag to a bull, if you grow rabid at the name of Wilhelm, and think that each lamp post upon our street corners would be beautified by a Teutonic Adornment, pause! This story is not for you. For we do not attempt to conceal it— our hero is not only roundand unmistakably Teutonic in build, but rejoices in the name of Heinrich. Moreover, he has been brought up from child- hood on sauerkraut and the “Vaterland,” and to him the Kaiser is as Zeus to the Greeks or Ty Cobb to a member of the back lot nine. Yet behold him as he stands upon the doorstep of his little delicatessen shop, his round face lit up with childish enjoyment as he watches the evening struggle between package-laden commuters and ever-active paper boys. Stout as he undoubtedly is, Dutch as he looks, is there anything terrible about him? No “Gott strafe’s’? ever issue from between those mild, pink lips, nor is there anything more bomb-like than a big red cheese concealed within the little shop. Why, then, should we fear? Let us even follow him inside and beard the wild Hun in his den, Within a voice out of the darkness asks in guttural German, “Hast thou the paper, my son?” The gas light flares up in the close little room with its atmosphere of comfort and onions. “Tt is. here, mein mutter. But why dost thou sit in the dark; the gas does not cost so much. We make good money this month, and who knows, in a year—perhaps two—we go back to the “Vaterland,” and thou wilt see again thine old home and friends in Berlin. That will be good, Er, Liebe mutter?” The eyes of the tired little woman by the stove brightened for the first time since that day when her oldest and best-loved son had died a sacrifice to the “Vaterland.”’ She had not grown bitter against her coun- try or grudged it her second son Rudolph; only set! her lips tight, and gone on her daily way, never mentioning the name of the dead and’ leaning more and more on Heinrich, her youngest and American-born son. “Oh, Heinie, my son, I am now so old; if I could go home to the “Vaterland” and to my own people. It is there we belong, not here among strangers. And to think that thou hast never seen the land of thy fathers! Oh, I long to leave this land, this America, and go home.” . “But, meine mutter, this America she is a good land; she is peaceful, and she makes room for all peoples.” “Ja, Ja, she is good, but she is not the “Vaterland.” But there is thy