Major Edwards High School - Mesa Yearbook (West Boylston, MA)

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We have not taught you to stick to- the job when the going gets tough. You gave up when the task proved difficult, you quit a course because it was hard; you found too many excuses for not doing your work. Some of you couldn’t take it when you weren’t winning. Although high school has not given you experience vital enough to develop stick-to-it-iveness” in you, I know that when the chips are really down you’ll have v;hat it takes, VJe said the same things about your brothers and sisters, who have proved themselves all over the world and have shown incalculable stamina and heroism. We said it about Russia. Remember when people were betting that Russia would be conquered within three months? We said it about our own country, en President Roosevelt asked for 100,000 planes a year people laughed and said it couldn’t be done, but we produced 125,000 planes and more. What we have done for war we shall do for peace. ”The difficult takes time, the impossible a little longer.” And so, despite what we have failed to do for you, I send you forth with optimism and hope. We have been living and fighting to preserve democracy, and democracy is something that a nation must always be doing. The very turmoil of the age in which we live creates for us unprecedented opportunity. There is much work to do in our schools, to make them more effective in- struments for educating each child according to his abilities. There is work to do in our communities adequate housing, rec- reation facilities, better race relationships. The churches are crying for leaders of vision and power. Industry needs manage- ment which is imbued with the spirit of cooperation rather than of competition, G-overnment Is looking for stalesmen who can trans- late into practical experience the realization that the welfare of each citizen is the responsibility of all citizens. Science — technology — the possibilities are limitless. We can build a brave new world only by starting right here at home and building brave new people. Though the dangers are real, youth accepts the chal- lenge to get on with the work. Russel Davenport in My, Country . has said it thus: ”And still, hovrever far her sons may go, To venture or to die beyond her sight,,,.. ....That ' all the peoples of the earth may know The embattled destination of the free — Not peace, not rest, not pleasure — but to dare To face the axiom of democracy: Freedom is not to limit, but to share; And freedom here is freedom everywhere.” - 15 -

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