Boston Latin School - Liber Actorum Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Gardner's Classroom, Bedford Street

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After the first World War there came about a great turn- over in American values and ideals. There arose the new generation, the lost generation, the members of this new generation, the war babies , bred of cynicism and disillus- ionment, cut a cacophonied caper through the decade of the 'twenties, brandishing a bootleg whiskey bottle in one hand, a Wall Street tip-sheet wrapped in a copy of The Daily Worker in the other. Such institutions as family life, filial obedience, love of one's country, respect for the laws of the land, first were classed as out of date, then were bitterly derided. In his jazz-minded society, sober classical educa- tion was of course scoffed at and its usefulness questioned. Last Spring came the Fall of France, which struck fear into callous hearts, and caused the conscription of American manpower. We are now living in a militarized world, con- cerned with munitions and tanks and battleships and air- planes in the thousands. Amidst all this striving for manual and mechanical proficiency, the student of the humanities and of the classicsvthe Latin School student-wanders dazedly, feeling as out-of-place as a pastoral in the pages of a pulp-fiction magazine. ln Liber Actorum, we present these pictures-pictures which will take on a significance when it is realized that they represent Latin School, its students, its masters, its ac- tivities in the fateful years of 1940 and 1941. Perhaps they make up the last strain from a classical symphony. lf the tone of this foreword has seemed ominous and even pessimistic, recall the glorious examples of Hellas. The aim of Latin School is to interpret and spread the clas- sicsg the core, the crux of classicism was Greece. The Hel- lenes were thought to have been decadent by the time of Christg two thousand years later they proved to the whole world that Greece was still a vital nation, whatever might be its fate in the Spring of 1941. Hellas' magnificence inspires the paraphrase: There'll always be at Latin School l

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Glovrfs Classroom, Avenue Louis Pasteur f- -Q