Cleveland High School - Beacon Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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PRAYER FCI? DEMCDCRACV CLARICE KENIUS Prize Winning Poem Oh Heavenly Father, protect our land, The earth, the sky, the sea, Guide our freedom with Thy Hand, Preserve our Democracy! The battle's o'erg our cause is won, Men, once again, are free, But those that passed will tell You, Preserve our Democracy! Our God, with Your Great Power, We look to Heaven for Thee, To aid us in this hour, Preserve our Democracy! Liken our land to Your Kingdom, Where one lives peacefully, America needs this tradition, Preserve our Democracy! W5 fi Q Lqfs-f my

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DEMOCRACY PAUL V. LUTZ Prize Winning Essay What is democracy? Did you ever stop and think? Oh! everyone knows what democracy is, one will say. Try pinning the man on the street down to a definition, and nine out of ten will hem and haw and get nowhere. As for the others, each will have a different conception. Now, just what is this thing called democracy? The much quoted Webster has this to say, Democracy-1. Government by the people, gov- ernment in which the supreme power is retained by the people and exercised either directly or indirectly. 2. Belief in or practice of social equality. Karl Marx stated, . . . the dictatorship of the proletariat is the only true democracy. Here are two separate and concise definitions for which people have died. If we accept Mr. Webster's first definition, then we may conclude that the United States is a democracy and the U.S.S.R. is not. Proof being that We have political freedom which they do not possess. On the other hand, by taking the second definition offered by Webster and that of Marx, Russia becomes the democracy, and we do not. It does not take an intelligent person to see that Russians have complete social equality whereas we do not. Are we to say that our glorious revolution was not fought for democ- racy? No! Yet did not Russians die in 1917 for their democracy? Already we can see that democracy goes deeper than we ever dreamed. Let's go still deeper into the first definition concerning political equality. Even firm believers in this disagree on the method this form should be con- ducted. Alexander Hamilton firmly believed that a strong central govern- ment was necessary for a true democracy. Thomas J efferson was just as firm in his belief of a loose federation of states. So began our first two political parties, the Federalists supporting Hamilton, and the Democrats behind Jefferson. They both believed that democracy could not be left in the hands of the easily swayed masses. Then about 1826 Andrew Jackson came along with the novel idea of placing the entire government in the hands of the people. Lincoln said that true democracy could not exist half slave and half free, contrary to Pierce and Buchanan. Theodore Roosevelt and his big stick, Bryan his free silver, Wilson his watchful waiting, Harding his program of normalcy, Hoover his chicken in every pot, Frank- lin Roosevelt his New Deal, and a score of others had their ideas. All had their own conception of democracy based on political freedom, at least a dozen deviations from our first definition. Yet, the very fact that they could express their ideas proved that we had the political democracy. 10