Salisbury High School - Pillar Yearbook (Salisbury, CT)

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Ye Sarum Booke II hold, but if held will work advantageously for its owner so long as he will treat it properly and use it for worthwhile unselfish purposes. WHEN WILL WE LEARN? A LTHOUGH the human race has progressed industrially compared to the cave-man days, we have, since the first day of life upon this earth of ours, in the standpoint of desires, stayed absolutely still. By desires I mean the longing for power, the greed of out-doing the other persong and as the world becomes more and more civilized, the increasing want of money. Prejudices, too, continue in all their strength. Our Lord, jesus Christ, was killed without a fair trial, so are some of our citizens still treated. Down south a few men executed a colored- man who was deprived of a fair trial. The various countries of today are crazed with the idea of world supremacy, as the Greek and Roman empires were in ancient times. To satisfy this craving, scientists have dis- covered deadly chemicals for both gases and explosives to be used to kill many an innocent and peaceful person for the profit of one or two political enemies. The dictators of the world have taken the inhabitants of their countries and have made them into military slaves to be slaughtered as pigs in the next war, if it can be called a war. Nowadays, gangsters go to any extremes to earn small profits. The crooked politician takes the very bread away from the poor, so he will be able to live like a king out of the pockets of honest citizens. These men throw innocent by-standers into prisons for criminals to make the public believe they are protecting the commonwealth, so that the public will vote for them next election. As these things are true about the world as a whole, so are they true of the individual. Each one of us is like a machine, we will not run unless we have fuel, and that fuel is money. We waste all our lives earning and spending it, and we do not take time out to see what nature has in store for us. We are always meddling in other people's business, and mocking them when they do something out of the ordinary. People, boys especially whether they want to or not, are always siding up with the majority against some person or other gain to popu-

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IO Ye Sarum Booke LEADER N ORDER to succeed in life it is necessary to have ambition- an ambition which, through pain and disillusionment will be able to emerge victorious. Ambition is something quite incomprehensible and un- tangible. It is not something concrete but an indefinable quality which exists in a person only through that person's attempts to gain it. How easy it is to say when hearing a nobly inspiring piece of music, 1 am going to be a musician. The test comes after the piece has ended and an attempt is made to become an artist of some instrument or other. just anybody can not become a master performer if he lacks the ambition to drive him on through the dull periods of scale-practising and linger technique. Perhaps it would be better if it were possible for a person to skip to immediate prominence with no previous labor. Unfortunate- ly the world is not so made, for nothing can be had freeg there is always some sacrifice to be made towards the attainment of perfection. The sacrifice may be long years of oblivion, loss of social contact with the world, but, whatever it is, this sacrifice has to be made and it is a person's ambition, almost lust for success that enables him to continue his efforts steadfastly. Ambition is insatiableg it will not stop even at the top, for it must continually be seeking new fields to conquer, new hard- ships and sufferings to overcome for the attainment of a glorious end. A person blessed with such a characteristic is bound to become a winner, provided that he does not permit his inherent desire to put things off conquer his ambitious will. Of course there is always the danger that ambition will be used towards an unrighteous end. This is, of course, totally dependent upon the character of the person. If he is com- pletely forgetful of his own interests in the fulfillment of the interest and good of others, then his ambition will not lead him astray or render him a character undesirable to the welfare of his community. Ambition cannot be assumed at once like a new coat or anything tangible. It must be sought for over a long period of yearsg a person's life. It is unreasonable to think that leaving nature to run its own course, an abundant supply of ambition will suddenly be thrust into a person's character. lt must be striven after, laboured for, and tightly grasped and protected from escape when once obtained. It is as slippery as an eel to

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I2 Ye S arum Booke larity. We love to make others suffer and to make fools of them. The argument will probably be that it is human nature to do all the things mentionedg but I ask when is human nature going to learn that wars are only destructive menaces to the world and accomplish nothing? When is human nature going to learn that power is only a very minor thing in this World? When is human nature going to learn to stop being greedy for money? These are the eternal rhetorical questionsg but only by asking them and searching earnestly for the answers will man have any chance to advance. SWING FEVER HE FIRST question that must be answered is whether Swing can be classed as an editorial topic or not. It Seems to me that it should be so esteemed since it occupies a prevalent position in the eye of youth. And with the present youth being the future America, it seems logical to assume that swing will have some effect on this country. Therefore with a temporal significance it reaches out into the future. When jazz came into being, our grandmothers and grand- fathers were horrified. They simply could not understand how their children could appreciate such noise. The same has happened today with our younger generation, except that the change has been from jazz to swing , instead of light classics to j azz . It seems that the happy medium between the classics and swing is rather hard to find, for I remembervone time when I took a music lover to Benny Goodman's, and he did the most amazing thing. After we were seated, all he said was, My God, What a noise! and before I knew quite what was happening, he had taken the insides out of a roll and stuffed them in his ears. Of course when the quartet started we left. Of course that is the blacker side to swing and cannot be understood by this generation. The other viewpoint can be felt when hundreds of couples stare open-mouthecl at Gene Krupa's drumming and far prefer to get a table next to the trumpet section than dance .... or go to the Onyx to sit and listen to Stuff Smith and the boys. Something has happened to popular music in this past yearg it has taken on some kind of a frenzied tempo that has made us more than ever music conscious.