Reading Memorial High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Reading, MA)

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Page Eight The Pioneer g alutaton} Parents, teachers, friends, for the Class of 1926, I extend to you a hearty wel¬ come to our graduation exercises. We welcome our parents who have sacrificed so much that we might gradu¬ ate. You are here in response to our urgent invitation. Do you smile at re¬ membering that we have not always been so anxious to have you visit school? But this occasion would not be complete with¬ out you here. We welcome our teachers and all those in the school, who, by faithful teaching and patient effort, have led us through this peiiod of our training . We know that we have been trying many, many times, but you kept on showing us that persevering, well-directed work in our studies and extra activities was worth while, and now is your hour of triumph as well as ours. We are also happy to have the mem¬ bers of the school committee here with us. It takes a strong guiding hand behind an educational system to keep everything running smoothly. You have been inter¬ ested in the progress of the students and will continue to guide the affairs of the school wisely. To all our friends we extend a true welcome because we know you are inter¬ ested in our success and joy. If, in the past four years, we have been discouraged by petty failures, if we have been downhearted because of twists and turns along the way, we have, with the encouragement of our parents, the assis¬ tance of our teachers, and the steady guidance of the school board, at last com¬ pleted this most important step in the path of life, and are eager to take the next step, whatever it may be. We know that we shall have some work to do. To get the full benefit of work we must do it purposefully. As freshmen we came to high school unfamiliar with the routine. We were given a daily pro¬ gram card which started us at our work systematically, forcing us to plan our studying at school and at hbme to fit in with our recitations. The teachers di¬ rected the way which would be the most beneficial for us to follow. By this co¬ operation on the part of the teachers, we got the correct start in high school, and then much of the responsibility rest¬ ed with us. Work is a conscious effort guided by the desire to accomplish a task. If we know what must be done and want to do it, we shall succeed in our studies or in whatever else we undertake. The Class of J 26 has had supervision and co-operation from many sources. It has followed the motto “ Directed Work Conquers Everything ” and has won. As we continue to work may we continue to conquer. May every way we take be as happy and as successful as the one we are completing. Once again I wish to make you wel¬ come. We hope that you will get as much joy and satisfaction from our ex¬ ercises as we in presenting them. Nelcena Copeland. (Elasii Unttora CECIL RHODES AND THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS America has always been noted for her ardent devotion to the cause of educa¬ tion. No amount of money has been too great to spend in the training of her youth. Rockefeller has contributed mil¬ lions to the promotion of learning, and Carnegie built libraries and endowed col¬ leges without number, and, in addition, gave a large pqrt of his huge fortune to the Peace Movement. Yet it remained for a • cool-blooded Englishman, a South African diamond king, to conceive a plan whereby, through education, universal peace may be secured. Though Cecil Rhodes was the originator of one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching schemes of modern times, people in general know comparatively little about the man, himself, and still less in regard to the scholarships, the greatest in the world, which he founded at Oxford. And so, on such an occasion as this, it would seem to be altogether appropriate to give a brief biography of this man, one of the most remarkable of all time, and also to describe his great contribution, the Rhodes Scholarships, to the field of education in particular and

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The Pioneer Page Seven success, gradually approaches the truth. None of you are living in the world in which you were born, scientifically or in¬ tellectually. The break with many stan¬ dards of the past has been abrupt, but the work is not complete. The task of scrapping must continue until our entire household of ideas is freed of its bur¬ densome furnishings and new T and better ones added. Voltaire said: “We only half live when we only half think.’ ’ Are you not only half thinking and therefore only half living when you are fanatical, or fear to meet with ideas which frankly scrutinize the value which is so easily ac¬ cepted as final? When you are breaking the fetters of conformity and oppressive standards and seeking the highest and fullest levels of thought, you will be liv¬ ing. There is nothing too sacred to be investigated. Listening ungrudgingly and considering radical theories and statements may leave you tingling as from a series of electric shocks, and your mind awhirl with combined astonish¬ ment, pleasure, anger, and bewilderment, but it will force you into active and for¬ ward-looking thought, and help you to clarify and refresh your ideas. The belief that final judgments are futile and human standards perishable, Shelley expressed when he said: “Naught may endure but mutability.” This is not a forboding, but a prophecy of good for¬ tune. It may mean the substitution of impartial politics for party politics, free¬ dom for limitation, knowledge for igno¬ rance, peace for war, and better and better generations. All of these miracles will be accomplished only by a revision of the ideals of each individual. Why not take a part in this onward movement and join the forces of progress wdiich will bring about this revolution for freedom, —freedom of the mind, that consummate freedom ? Valedictory Address And now to all of you—Mr. Safford, Mr. Sussman, teachers, all, school com¬ mittee, parents, and friends—who have made it possible for us to enjoy so many wonderful opportunities to gain knowl¬ edge and wisdom throughout our school course, it is my pleasant privilege to ex¬ press to you the sincere and heart-felt appreciation of the Class of 1926. This a pitifully inadecpiate expression of our feelings in view of what we have receiv¬ ed, but though we have no way of knowing what we shall accomplish in the future, we hope to hold our standards so high that you will be proud, and feel repaid for your effort and sacrifices in our behalf. Classmates, with confidence I hav e represented us tonight as champions of free thought, of sincerity, of progress. It is a glorious attitude, but not un¬ usual, for so youth has always been and will be. But no special credit is due us. Not through any wisdom of ours do we find ourselves less hampered by the standards, the prejudices, and the fixed ideas that bind our elders. We have merely inherited the eternal torch of free- doom and progress carried by the youth of all ages. We can easily see the flaws cf our elders, but we cannot boast until we have taken their places and have suc¬ cessfully met the problem of scrapping our own worn-out ideas. With this in view let us determine to continue to think, and prove ourselves superior by a perennial willingness to investigate new ways and to distinguish between them. That will be our answer to the cpiestion as to whether we are degenerating and lowering the standards, or are indeed seeking freedom and truth. The past four years that we have spent together have brought satisfaction, as well as disappointment, in some measure to all of us. The future will bring the same. These things need not concern us particularly, since we cannot control them, if with unswerving determination we keep the attitude of service ex pressed by Carl Sandburg in these lines: Loy me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together. Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders. Let me be the great nail holding a sky¬ scraper through blue nights into white stars. Frances Porch ’26. I

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The Pioneer Page Nine the service of humanity in general. Cecil Rhodes was born in Hertford¬ shire, England, July 5, 1853. He started in life with almost every possible handi¬ cap. The son of a poor English clergy¬ man, and one of the youngest of nine children, he was moneyless and sickly. At the age of nine the boy was sent to attend a local grammar school. Seven years later he graduated a tall, fair-hair¬ ed youth with a shy, reserved manner and delicate health. In the hope that his health might be benefittted, he was- ship¬ ped off at the age of seventeen to an older brother’s farm at Natal. A year after his arrival in South Africa there arose great excitement over the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley. There was a rush of wealth-seekers to the scene, and the boy, eager for the chance to gain sudden fortune, hastened thither, making the journey of four-hundred miles in an ox-cart and carrying with him no other equipment than a spade, a bucket, and a few thumbed volumes of Latin and Greek classics. Kimberley in those early days —the year was 1871—was a place neither inviting nor healthful. It lacked santi- tation and was upset by fevers. Young Rhodes even found it hard to get whole¬ some food, and the outlook for anything approaching success, far from promising. However by dint of stick-to-it-iveness and perseverenee, within a year of his arrival he had gained himself claims valued at $25,000. Indeed he displayed such keen judgment and of such uncanny business ability that no one wTio dealt with him could believe that he was only a boy of eighteen. It was about this time that the young diamond digger determined to further his education by going to Oxford. He set sail in 1873. His health was still wretch¬ ed and there came a time when he was told by his physician that he had only six months to live. But this was a man who defied adverse conditions and over¬ rode obstacles. He simply refused to die! and winter after winter he jour¬ neyed to England, where, at the great university he studied diligently. It was not until 1881, eight years after entering the schools, that he finished his course. At Oxford, Rhodes came under the in¬ fluence of John Ruskin, then a professor there. Inspired by him, it seems, Rhodes ' ' conceived the great purpose in life which was to guide himi throu to the end — service to humanity. He is said to have ' made the statement, however, that “it’s no use to have grand ideas if you haven’t the ihoney to carry them out. ” Witlu this in mind he spent the early years of his life in amassing a fortune. He continued to increase the extent of his diamond claim, out-manoeuvering all rivals, until, seventeen years after his start in the diamond fields, he had amalgamated all the South African mines into one great company, with himself at the head. In fact, at the age of thirty- five he personally controlled the diamond business of the world, having formed the greatest business combination ever estab¬ lished in the world up until that time, which produced nearly all cf the dia¬ monds, regulated the supply, and fixed the prices. If time permitted, we could go on and tell how this international diamond king branched out and gained control of a large share of the South African gold mines, how in numberless ways he stamp¬ ed himself as one of the most gigantic financial and business figures in the his- - tory of the world; but that would be be¬ side our point. Service to humanity, we - have said, was his great purpose in life. What was his idea as to how this service ■ would be best rendered? Let us go back to that great teacher in Oxford Univer- . sity, John Ruskin, whose gospel of pub- - lie service was—“have a fixed purpose,- of some kind for your country and for yourself, no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish.” Fixed and unselfish indeed became the life pur¬ pose of Cecil Rhodes, but restricted would be far from the right adjective to acompany the other two. He has been called the empire builder, the man who “thought in continents,” and this brings us to his great work, the thing made possible by his magnificent success in money-making. He cared nothing for money except for the power its posses¬ sion gave. Throughout, he had kept it in mind as only the means to the end, and that end, the great ambition of his life, was the promotion of the best in¬ terests of humanity by creating a power