London South Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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L. S. Cyl. ORACLE 33 AT MENIN GATE A. curving street flanked with tall, new shops leads out of the southeast corner of the Grand Place at Ypres. It seems to come to an abrupt end about two hundred yards farther on, but closer inspection shows it passing under a lofty archway and through a temple-like edifice. On the parapet above the arch are chiselled two large urns cov- ered by a toga. The walls within are inscribed with names-54,000 of them- names of those who have come out of great tribulation and whose grave is known only unto God. The street leads through this vaulted chamber, crosses the moat by a causeway, and, as the Menin Road, passes on out to the immortal salient. Above the arch on this outer side the valiant British lion is keeping his stern, perpetual vigil, as of old, toward that quarter whence the menace was impending. As night falls theparapetis silhouetted against the saffron sky. The murky waters of the moat reflect the outlines of Vauban's ramparts, stretching away to right and left-those marvellous earthworks faced with masonry which could withstand four years of up-to- date bombardment. Above the interminable rows of names one reads the inscription: Ad majorem Dei Gloriam Here are recorded names of officers and men who fell in Ypres salient but to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honored burial given to their comrades in death. There is an air of hushed expectancy in the crowd which has imperceptibly f r I. gathered within this place. On the stroke of nine the bugles go. Three Belgian civilians are giving Last Post. No other sound. Against the walls memorial wreaths and fresh flowers are massed. Some women are wiping their eyesg some men, too. Others have set their faces in that look of brooding sorrow, of silent, tearless grief perpetuated in the St. Julien memorial. The buglers finish, the crowd melts away, lights are dimmed, motors re- sume their way, the place is deserted. Deserted? Not yet. The archway is suddenly filled with marching men, in full kit. They are moving up from Poperinghe to the line. Amazing numbers in this column of wraiths-over 54,000-of whom 6,000 wear the Maple Leaf. They are sing- ing an incomprehensible dirge as they swing along. Two thousand years ago the Roman Horace declared in deathless words: Dulce et decoffum est pro patria mari It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for the fatherlandf' To whom is it sweet and fitting, for God's sake? To the gassed at Vancouver Cross Roads who first inhaled the hellish fumes and gasped out their lives in torment? Pro patrial Was it sweet to these? Yes! The Roman was right. To die was sweet. Now the song of the wraiths becomes intelligible: Tell Canada, all you who pass this gate, The rest we now enjoy came all too late.

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34 L. S. C. ,I. ORACLE REMEMBRAN CE DAY SERVICE Remembrance Day was very littingly commemorated in London South Col- legiate. The Literary President, Marjory Lister, announced the programme. The service opened with the hymn Abide With Me, for which illuminated slides were used very effectively. A line solo, The Trumpeter, was rendered by Mr. Kenneth Smith, accompanied by Miss McRobert. Then came the address of the afternoon by Captain Gillanders, D.F.C. . He said that the eleventh of Novem- ber was no longer called Armistice Day but Remembrance Day by our Canad- ian Parliament, as being a better ex- pression of the true meaning of the occasion. The Hag outside the school was a symbol of.our liberty and of the great British traditions recalled es- pecially to our minds on Remembrance Day. The poppy, had been exalted from a despised position to a precious symbol of the red blood of our Canadian man- hood spilt on Flanders' Fields. The flower of forgetfulness had become the flower of remembrance. The impressiveservice was concluded by a solo, The Boys of the Old Brig- ade, sung 'by .Mr. Archie McCulloch, Mr. E. W. G. Quantz, accompanist. THE CANADIAN SPIRIT By E. G. JARMAIN It pervades our fair Dominion from Cape Race to Nootka Sound, from bleak Hudson's Bay to the smiling Great Lakes, this Canadian spirit, that ties our hearts with a band of patriotic love which naught can sever. On the mountain trails of the glorious Rockies, in the harvest fields of the broad prairies amid the forest hosts of the Laurentians or in the fisheries of the Maritimes, still the spirit that is Canada prevails, the dominant sentiment of every Canadian. It inspires men to the execution of the bravest of brave deeds and to the establishing of the highest of high ideals. The polar explorer, risking his life that we Canadians may know more of our country, is actuated by the same pulse of patriotism that moves the soul of the doctor, risking his life by exposing it to dread disease that we Canadians may live to do something for Canada. We read but lately the tale of the steadfast devotion to duty that kept a trooper of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the staff of the Communist party for nine years, an unsuspected agent of the Canadian government. Nine long years of perpetual risk and of unwearied. waiting for the proof his commanding officer needed to wipe from the face of Canada's history the stain this anti-Canadian party had placed thereon, was the toll his duty demanded. Yet his spirit' guided him through. He is an outstanding example of the Canadian spirit as it is manifest today. You may read these lines, and, per- chance, you may say to yourself: I shall never get an opportunity to dis- play my spirit of patriotism. Nothing that will ever happen to me will make it my duty to sacrifice myself for my country. But you will be wrong. Some day, in some way, you will- be tested, and do not let it be said of you that you failed to pass the acid test of patriotic sacrifice that' reveals one's true worth as a Canadian. , C ' I