Oakfield High School - Oak Leaves Yearbook (Oakfield, WI)

Page 14 text:

Cuba, known more poetically and descriptively as the “Pearl of the Antilles. One hundred million dollars were offered to Spain for the island and refused. In 1895 an insurection broke out there against Spanish rule and the United States quickly recognized the new Republic of Cuba. Spain gathered all her forces to put down the uprising, as well as the one which had arisen in the Philippines, and resorted to terrible cruelty, even the peaceable Cubans being driven from their homes and left to die of disease and starvation by the tens of thousands. Our government considered it proper to exert pressure upon Spain in order to make her recognize the Independence of Cuba, but the action was resented by the Spanish. Soon affairs between the two powers grew more complicated, and when our battleship “ Maine was blown up in Havana harbor, things were brought to a climax. War was declared on the eighteenth of April, 1898, and on December tenth of the same year, Cuba and Porto Rico were in the hands of the United States Government. Meanwhile, in the farther Past our soldiers were wresting the Philippines from the Spanish, inspired by the victories in Cuba. It was not long after, that the Treaty of Peace was signed, leaving those important colonies in our possession. And then the grand old “ red, white, and blue” was hoisted in the new accessions and Spanish mle in America was ended. Thus were added to the I nited States by the force of arms, two other great territories, bringing with them, responsibility indeed, but power also, and increased domain. In the light of this great romance of conquest, so proudly wrought by our Federal Government, together with the staunch Americans supporting it, the words of Mr. McKinley, spoken at Omaha, seem to be a sure and not too optimistic prophecy for the future:— “The genius of the nation, its freedom, its wisdom, its humanity, its courage, its justice, favored by Divine Providence, will make it equal to every task and the master of every emergency. Jennie Pratt.

Page 16 text:

SENIOR ROLL CALL Ralph Randall “In the spring1 a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Clara Gordon— “Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnares And beauty draws us with a single hair.” Guli Orvis— “A rosebud set with little willful thorns.” Jennie Pratt— “Age can never wither her, Nor customs stale her infinite variety.” Maggie Smith— “A woman she seems cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows.” Flora Morgan— “ hat a whirlpool full of depth and thinking is her head and what a whirlpool is all the rest about her.” Phebe Crumb— “A girl convinced against her will. Is of the same opinion still.” Hugh Worthing— “The baby figure of the great form yet to come.” Claude Cragoe— “He has common sense in a way that’s uncommon, Hates humbug and cant; loves his friends like a woman.” Eva Paynter— “For I hoped by something rare To prove myself a poet. But while I plan and plan, my hair Is gray before I know it.” Harold Bennet— “An earnest, hardworking lad.”