Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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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

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(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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IEE Osher Coles N father. Run; child, and let him in. I go to bring the supper,’ and she hobbled off-on her tired feet. ee “Heinie has a letter from Minna today,” she remarked when they were all seated round the red table cloth. “He is happy tonight.” Heinie de- voted himself to his wienerwurst, and his bulbous ears grew red. The father chuckled, “Rudie should hear that.” “Ja, Rudie laught always at Heinie. Such a boy he is, Rudie! How he looks at you with his great eyes! Dost thou remember, Hans, how he was always marching, marching, marching, and now he is a fine, big sol- dier? But someone rings! Run quickly, Heinie!”’ “Tt is a letter, meine mutter!” “Das liebe Gott! Give it to me quickly. It is perhaps news of Rudie!”’ She was tearing at the envelope with her clumsy, toil-worn fingers. Heinie waited, swallowing a great lump in his throat, while her near-sighted eyes traveled slowly down the paper. Mechanically she turned a page, and then raised a gray, lifeless mask, the skin of the cheeks drawn tight around its staring eyes. Heinie looked at the papers. They were blackened, and he saw a ragged hole through them and brown stains on the inside ones. Suddenly her hands went up. “Oh, my Rudie, my tall, my strong, my boy, he’s dead, he’s gone, oh, Rudie, my son! my son! my son!” Through that night Heinie lay awake in the next room and always that hoarse moaning. Toward dawn his father came out of the room with haggard face. “We will go back to the Vaterland tomorrow, my son. You will buy the tickets and make all ready.” He went back, closing the door softly behind him. Heinie lay awake. Outside, the paper boys were calling shrilly: “Extry! Extry! Another American ship sunk! Congress calls spe- cial session! Extry! Extry” He listened dully. Tomorrow he would be on the big German liner bound for the fatherland, of which he had been told ever since he was old enough to understand the word. Ten days from tomorrow he would stand on German soil, he would see his mother’s home, his brothers’ graves—the Kaiser! Yes, he would see the Kaiser, but he would not see his little shop dear to him through years of work, or hear the cheery greeting of the young policeman on the corner: “Morning’, Dutch!” He would not see again America, “the land that makes room for all peoples.” Well, it is growing light; he must get his tired bones out of bed and see about those tickets. That afternoon, the three stood on the deck of one of the foreign- bound steamers. In one night the hands of the little mother had lost all their well-known knobby redness, and looked curiously fragile and unreal as they clung to the big father’s arm. Heinie stood beside her, his round, red face aged twenty years. Around them the blue water sparkled as if