Cornell University - Cornellian Yearbook (Ithaca, NY)

Page 556 text:

frontier of freedom. Every interest of everybody was entirely subordinated to the job of winning success for the cause upon which the future of Civilization rested. - - Juniordom found the Class of 1919 greatly depleted by enlistments. And Cornell was a vastly changed place from the complacent, easy-going university of peace times. The war atmosphere was the end-all and the be-all of existence. Nothing counted except service to the cause. Cornell's courses were altered to permit the remaining students to take up work calculated to better prepare them for real service to America when the call should come. , A survey of Cornellians in the service at the beginning of the 1917 Fall term showed a total of I,805 undergraduates, of whom far more than a fourth were 1919 men. The folks still in college were forever pondering about the future, while devoting every spare moment to. furthering every Government cause and campaign. 1919 and Cornell did yeoman service for Uncle Sam in helping float the Liberty Loans. Athletics, once the prime interest, went by the board. Cornell gallantly put teams in the field. But they were not the teams of previous times. Cornell's athletes were gone from college halls, and were fighting greater, more vital battles for country and Alma Nfater. So Cornell teams met with disaster at every turn. But it was disaster mellowed by the thought that Cornell's energy was not being spent on the gridiron, the court, the diamond, or the lake. Cornell's energy and best efforts were being spent on freedom's battlefields. By Christmas time, a quarter of Cornell's Faculty had entered the service, and Cornell was practically transferred from Ithaca to the training camps over here, and the battlefields over there. 1 WVar Work was the one big undertaking, and all other interests were slighted. Some measures of victory in athletics came to Cornell when the remnant of Moak- ley's great 1918 track team won the Intercollegiate Championship. But Cornell was not vitally interested in even championships. By the Fall of 1918, Cornell was almost barren of all her best and finest. And that Fall will go down into history as a blank page in the story of Alma Mater. Cornell was metamorphosed into what was politely termed a training camp. Concurrently with the banishment of booze on October 1, came the organization of the sadly pitiful S.A.T.C. regime. And the Cornell of yesterday was forgotten in the dust and drought of the Fall. An absolute failure, the reign of the S.A.T.C. gang merely afforded another contrast to pre-war Cornell which made everyone long again for old times. The S.A.T.C. expended its ire upon the fraternity houses of the University, and succeed- ed in nothing except tearing those same houses to bits, in military extasies and indoor calisthenics. And when the Spanish 'fflu conspired with the S.A.T.C., the two dread maladies almost transformed Cornell into a nonentity. But at last the nightmares were over, and daylight drove away the bad dreams of the night. With the signing of the arrnistice, Cornell began gird- ing her loins to anxious antici- pation of staging a mighty COIT1C-b?1Ck- Mouse I'IALL FIRE 5.53

Page 555 text:

A - fn ., LAYING CORNERSTONE or SCHOELLKOPF lMiEMORIAL The rip-roaring, but disastrous Salt Works fire was one of the high-lights of November. And then came the return to supremacy of Cornell at the Inter- collegiate Cross Country meet, as Moakley's runners staged a notable come-back. Red and VVhite athletes carried off the chief honors at the Penn Indoor Meet, as usual, and in this victory IQIQ men had an active share. Cornell had devoted much time and effort during the months preceding the war to various war relief undertakings, and her considerable contributions to the relief funds involved' many cheerful sacrifices. And then came WAR. And a moratorium was declared on everything as existing before the war. Everything was off, as the nation and Alma Mater assumed war-paint. Spring Day, athletics, social life,-everything walked the plank as Cornell embarked on pa program of real war service. Alrna Mater was the first institution to grant generous academic privileges to undergraduates volunteering for war service. Alma Nlater turned over every facility and all equipment to the use of the Government for the period of the war. And the Government soon established one of the most successful of the aviation ground schools, housed in Cornell's great new Armory. The most glorious news of all was carried in the brief dispatch of The Associated Press which told of the first advance of The United States flag to the front in France, -a Hag carried into action by an all-Cornell ambulance unit under the leadership of the late Captain F.. I. Tinkham, 'I6. Gver here, the war fever had penetrated into every nook and cranny of Uni- versity life. Between April 6 and Nlay 25, forty-five per cent of the male under- graduate student body were with the colors in service. Cornell ship builders hastened to enlist in the industrial army which was to build the bridge of ships which were to transport America's strength over there. Hundreds of Cornellians rushed to volunteer for service in the Navy's Nlosquito Fleet, dedicated to the job of ridding the seas of the U-boat monsters. From the declaration of war, Cornell lived in a frenzy of excitement, breathing a supercharged atmosphere of patriotic service. The peace-time Cornell of yesterday was banished until America should win victory in France, on the JD

Page 557 text:

Y 1916 SPRING DAY Cops But Alma hflater grieved. For the Fall had taken from the University its greatest friend and helpmate, President Andrew Dickson White. So the task of finding the way to the glorious Cornell of old seemed doubly hard because of the loss of Cornellls beloved leader. Out of chaos came the return to the near-normal, as the new term started December 30, 1918. Day by day, Cornellians returning from service made the Campus a brighter, happier place. Cornell activities and athletics got under- way again with all the spirit and enthusiasm in the world. And the baneful war atmosphere was banished forever from the Quadrangle. The Varsity basketball team staged a great fight for Alma Nfater, and chalked up the first come-back after the war. Then came the happy, carefree Hardly Fair, heralding the visit after fifty years away from Alma Nlater, of Colonel Grand Hoax Hardly, who superintended the opening and housewarming of the great new drill hall, all for the benefit of the Athletic Association. The loss of Doc Sharpe to Yale was a severe blow to Cornell football, basket- ball and baseball teams. The Doctor's fine work in instilling a clean, manly iight- ing spirit into Cornell athletics remains as one of the finest of Alma Nlater's heritages. Considerable mortality was recorded as the result of the chaos of term examina- tions. But Cornellians returned from short vacations to find a changed Alma lVlater. The Old Guard was back on deck again, and the Class of IQIQ staged many informal, joyous reunions with classmates who had been gone out of sight and hearing during the period of the war. Thus Cornell assumed all the ear- marks of pre-war conditions. Varsity baseball folk and crew men plugged away at early Spring practice determined to bring victory to the Red and White banners in the Spring battles for supremacy. And then came the great IQIQ Spring Day, and the Yale game and the Princeton race,-an unbeatable combination. Q Finally, I9IQ,S Commencement Day came over the calendar's top. Under the normal program, IQIQ would have graduated on that day as a body. But war had wrought many strange changes. And the June graduates composed but a tiny fraction of the mighty Class of 1919 that had begun work at Cornell in the Fall of 1915. As an individual unit, the Class of IQI9 is but a memory of freshman times in 1915-1916. . But in spirit, the members of the Class of 1919, whether graduating with ,zo or 321, still consider themselves permanent fixtures in 1919,-and so they are. To the cause of Civilization, 1919 sacrificed its unity and its individuality. But no one regrets 'the glorious sacrifice. THE END. 554