Brockton High School - Brocktonia Yearbook (Brockton, MA)

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We young people must guard against wrong goals and wrong judgments of success. We must not put the dollar sign before our own happiness. We must not put the desire for personal advancement over the desire for peace and good will. Our school and its teachers have worked for four years to teach us certain thingsi they have tried to teach us how to think-to distinguish right from wrong, they have tried to teach us how to act-to perform our duties without procrastination. ln the nome of all that is right, let us show that we have assimilated those teachings. This country has talked about tolerance for one-hundred-sixty-odd years. Let us in our generation do something about itl Thirdly, our parents have always been imbued with a desire for improvement, as we should be in the future, Although this present adult generation is charged with being responsible for this contemporary chaos, they can, on the other hand, be praised for the rapid developments made in science and industry, for the reforms started in regard to crime, its punishment and preventionj for improved labor conditions, for advances in agriculture, education, and business. Our parents have devoted their lives to raising the moral and cultural level of the youth of this Country, and the least we can do is to respond to and continue their efforts. Lastly, we come to the problem presented by our form of government, There are men who believe that freedom and democracy are relics of the past-that tyranny and oppression are the dictates of the new order. We know that this is not true. President Roosevelt, in his last inaugural address, said, The life ofa nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live, We have that will, now as never before, We are a nation of individuals, working together for a common cause. We are unhampered by fuhrers, komissars, or duces, who would tell us howto think and act. Our fathers had that will, when many of them gave their lives to make the world safe for democracy, twenty-five years ago. Eighty years ago, in the Civil War, brother fought brother, because each had that will to live. The Free Soilers settling Kansas in l85O had that will. I quote their hymn: We cross the prairies, as of old Our fathers crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homeland of the free. Our ancestors also had that will to live when they came here from foreign lands to make new and safer homes for their children. We have grown up under the shadow of this heritage. Men and women have fought, bled, and died, in order that we might live. Surely, then, we must include the preservation of democracy in our philosophy. Surely, out of respect to the courageous men and women who have made this country the land of opportunity, we shall struggle to keep it the land of opportunity! Without our democratic way of life the great spirit that is America will perish, and we shall become merely the pawns of fate. The four-point plan which has been presented, it will be seen, centers about just one word, That word is unity. Unity. lt is such a simple word, but what power it contains! With unity as its motto, this nation can become a great and good force, finally turning the world back to the course of peace. And what are we citizens to do to achieve this unity? A quotation from the Essay on Man, of Alexander Pope will answer that question: Act well your part, there all the honor lies. Every one of us, from the newsboy on the corner to the President himself, is only a cog in that great structure which is present-day America. lf each of us does his small part, forgetting the dollar sign, forgetting prejudices, forgetting all else save the preservation of our way of life, then, and then only, by the grace of God, shall we have the America of which we dream. Zl

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We refer to a much higher sense of humor. Its quality and value are graphically illustrated in the following anecdote, taken from the first American address of Lord Halifax. A London woman, warned to leave her house because of a time bomb lying close by, declared, 'The landlord has tried to turn me out, the bailiffs have tried to get me out, l'll be blessed if l-litler's going to do itll' Can people with such spirit be defeated? As long as a nation can be cheerful about the darker side of life, there is no need to worry about their courage. We know, then, that the ability to smile is healthful, just as morbidity is dangerous. From morbid gloom are bred discontent, hatred, revolution. Any nation whose mind is in this state is going to crumble at the first hint of pressure. Someone once said, trying to cheer the hearts of the people, Let us look at the well as though it were half-full, instead of half-empty. Would not that be a good motto for us to choose as the first point in our philosophy? Let us maintain our sense of humor, let us always see a little of the sunny side, no matter how difficult the road. In the second place, the issue of democratic tolerance, in a nation built on democratic principles, will forever be important. We have, to a certain extent, created the America of which the writers of the Constitution dreamed. All races, creeds, and colors work side by side in our industries, on our farms. Despite this, a new problem has arisen. lt is the problem of our economic sanity, For years, the almighty dollar has reigned supreme as the god and goal of the American people. For years, the bank-book, not intelligence, nor character, nor leadership, has been the admission ticket to the various circles of American social life. lt has been the master key which opens the doors to opportunity. This materialistic worship of the dollar sign has spread even to our government. One of the chief reasons for our entrance into this second European holocaust, we are told, is not to help a nation which already owes us millions in war debts, but simply to protect our economic interests in foreign lands. We are, above all, aiding the democracy at home by our intervention. We have finally heard l-litler's solemn promise that he would cut off all our export trade when he won the war. l-low can we, as a country, be tolerant-democratic, when we must constantly see such intolerance, when our vision is constantly distorted by the green of folding money, so that we judge people solely by their bank-books. That hypnotic power wielded by the dollar sign is becoming more evident each passing day. At one time we thought the Standard Oil scandal of the late nineteenth century was the biggest blot on our economic history, but the thousand and one little scandals now being revealed constitute a problem ten times greater. The actions of which we read daily do not speak well for the unity and integrity of our people as a whole. We must surrender the selfish, egocentric idea that wealth counts more in the evaluation of a person than his character, his intelligence, or his personality. Our erroneous train of thought has spread in still another direction. Because of a wave of misguided patriotism, some of us no longer trust many intelligent people who are not citizens. An instance of this came to light at one of our local draft boards. An Armenian immigrant, when registering, revealed these facts: he had studied at the universities of Palermo and Milan, in ltaly, receiv- ing high grades and graduating as a chemist. Yet, because he was not a citizen he could find no employment in this great nation, regardless of his technical training. l-le became discouraged, hungry, desperate. l-lowever, the story has a happy ending. Uncle Sam was only too glad to receive a man with chemical training, and he is now a valuable worker in the Chemical Warfare Division of the United States Army. ' 20

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GRADUATION ADDRESS Tl-lE AMERICAN DREAM-By Herbert E. Murray To the observer of world affairs, the situation at the present time seems rather dark. Truly the lights have gone out all over Europe-the light of culture, the light of learning, and the light of human brotherhood. The contributions of the greatest minds the world has ever seen assembled at one place at one time are balanced precariously on the brink of destruction, As the democracies of Europe stand with their backs against the wall, the dreams of liberal minds over the centuries seem to be fading away. Yet there is one cherished dream which is still alive, There is one citadel of human hope that has not yet surrendered to a panzer division, There is yet one last frontier of liberalism in the world. The dream that is still a force in the minds of men is the American dream. To some, the words, American Dream are just glittering generalities-virtue words. That is merely because they have not been defined. They mean faith in the common man-belief in the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and happiness under a democratic form of government, As such, they stand for what America has been trying to accomplish for over one hundred and fifty years, We have seen that idea take form and substance in the successive waves of westward migration, lt was known as Manifest Destiny then-the idea that it was our destiny to push westward, to build advance settlements for marching democracy. ln that frontier era, if a man had an axe he could literally hew his freedom from the wilderness. After he had cleared his wood- land and established his home, he was bound to no man, and his soul was his own. Then in l89O, the physical frontier closed. Its influence as a revitalizing force on American democracy was gone, and America was faced with the sociological problem of making its ideal of the freedom of the individual conform to a rising industrialism. Then began a new tide of European immigration which soon swelled into a flood, There followed the process of infiltration and assimilation-concrete proof that the American dream would work. The oppressed of all nations came to America because to them America was a symbol of new life, They had not heard of the American dream, but they knew the individual was judged here for his value as a human being-not as a mere cog in a vast machine directed by those in power. Certainly, there have been episodes in America's upward march that would not bear too close inspection. Though muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens have pointed to corruption in municipal and national government, though iconoclasts and cynics have claimed that the ideals of America are just a hollow mockery, they have emphasized what was bad, and subordinated what was good in the American structure. Surely we can apply to the pageant of America the words of Whittier- Step by step since time began I see the steady gain of man. One thing that has always distinguished America from the other nations is the fact that here the limits to which a man may rise are found only in his own capacity and ability. This freedom for advancement has given rise to a para- doxical society-a nation of closely unified individualists, Nowhere has so much emphasis been placed on the individual as in America. For this reason America has been favored over the years with a race of leaders from every station of life As someone has said, Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he rose above it, As one surveys the leaders who have played such an important part in the American scene, he can truly say with Carlyle that l-listory is the essence of innumerable biographies. Z2