Conneaut High School - Tattler Yearbook (Conneaut, OH)

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Carl Wilson “His life is gentle, and the elements So mix in him that nature may stand up And say to all the world, ‘This is a man! ’ ” Junior Farce, 07. President of class, '08. Oratorical Contest, ’08. Salutatorian. Editor of Literary Department of Annual. The Management of the Annual wish to extend their thanks to MISS ALLIE CULP for the generous assistance she has been to them in typewriting their copy for the press. 20

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Robert Thomas “ ‘Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery s the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit. Will condescend to take a bit Oratorical Contest, 1905, 1906 and 1907. Country Oratorical Contest, ’06 and 07. Managsr of Track Team, ’07. Manager Base Ball Team, 1908. Sec. of Athletic Assn, '06. Pres. Athletic Assn. 1908. School Correspondent. Valedictorian. Will Wardman “Every man has a bag hanging before him in which to put his neighbor s faults, and another behind him in which he puts his own.” Base ball team, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908. Captain base ball team, 1907. Track team, l9C6and 1907. Foot ball team, 1907 and 1908. Easket ball team, 1907 and 1908. Vice President Athletic Association, 1907 and 1908. Sec y Athletic Assn. '08. Delegate to County Athletic Assn, meetings, '07- 03. 19

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Valeditory. POLAND, THE LAND OF OPPRESSION. History is always fact, never fiction. Still sometimes the annals of the past stir our feelings to a greater extent than has ever fiction’s greatest creation. These plots of history are all the more interesting because they often involve whole nations and because they are true. All along the path of civilization are strewn crumbling ruins, each of which mutely testifies to a tragedy in the history of mankind. But for all that in their darkest hours neither Egypt, Greece, nor Rome ever presented a more pitiable spectacle than does today a certain nation in Eastern Europe. That nation is Poland. Divided and oppressed, its people are enacting the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. That part of Poland’s history which has to do with her oppression is embraced in the last hundred years of her existence. But behind that time lie a few facts that bring into bolder relief the injustice which the Pole has suffered. Never can the world forget Poland’s defense of Christanity during the medieval ages, nor her protection of the Jews in the time of their early persecutions. Still less can she put aside Poland’s action in 1683 when the Turks laid seige to Vienna. In the issue of that great struggle lay not the fate of Austria alone. For had the Turk once secured Vienna Prussia and Russia would also have soon fallen under the Sultan’s authority. Nor would it have ended there. All Europe would at length have bowed beneath the Turkish yoke. The flower of European civilization would have been plucked at its budding. At that crisis Poland alone dared to aid the besieged city. With one bold stroke she routed the Turk from the Austrian ramparts and sent him scurrying back to the protecting walls of Constantinople. For that deed Poland merited the deepest gratitude not only from Austria but from all civilized Europe. Yet what was her reward? By the irony of fate she had saved her bitterest enemies. Less than one hundred years later those same nations, whom she had benefited most, forgot what Poland had once stood for, what she had meant to them, forgot all except one frenzied desire to crush out the vital spark of life from the body of their deliverer and divide her remains among their own greedy selves. Thus it was that in 1795 Poland disappeared from the map of Europe, and in her place came the rule of Prussia, Austria and Russia. But if Poland did not deserve to be parcelled out among these three powers much less has she merited the subsequent oppression 21