Scituate High School - Chimes Yearbook (Scituate, MA)

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28 THE CHIMES Let us imagine a foreign ])o ver preparing for war against the United States. Great Britain, Japan, Italy, and all the rest have huge air forces to which our country has no equal. Any one of these foreign powers might set sail for our country with their planes safely housed in the huge airplane carriers. They would anchor their fleet one hundred miles or so off our coastline and from jthere they would send out their scouting planes and huge bombers which, loaded with dealy explosives, would fly over the chief cities of the United States and drop the deadly missiles on the unpro- tected occupants. One of these shells, says General Mitchell, would completely annihilate a city. All the anti-aircraft guns and coast defence guns would be helpless before this onslaught. So we can see that there is really something in the theory of this expert. Let us hope, however, that no more wars will menace our country, and bring into ' play that deadly implement of destruction, the airplane. ALUMNI NOTES FROM THE KIBITZER A Magazine Written, Edited and Published by R. Bresnahan, ' 30; E. Dillon, ' 30; H. Dwyer, ' 30 It is with great thankfulness and satisfaction that I have finally heard from our noble Alumni. After years of hard unceasing work, I have at last received word from the three members of that noble body. I, as the Kibitzer Alumni editor, have been w orking since 1950 in an effort to get in communication with them, so that the Kibitzer readers could read of what success each had made of his life. It w as not until 1953 that a letter arrived at the Kibitzer office suite from x lfernageopatheaticowisti, Siberia, stating that Mr. Ernest Dillon, formerly of the Kibitzer staff, was in that city, which we all know is the largest in the world. After receiving this letter we immediately got into commun- ication with Mr. Dillon with the aid of some multi-vibro thought waves. After co-transmitting thought with him I got a lead as to wdiere the other two members were. By 19 ' 55 we found that Mr. Robert Bresnahan was in the city of Lepigwistan in the now frigid equatorial zone. In the early part of 1956 w e located Mr. Herbert Dwyer in Torri- didia, in Antarctia. As we have not developed our thought wave transmis- sion to a very high degree I asked each member to write a letter telling of his life. I have taken pains to recopy each

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THE CHIMES 27 children in this Httle village until the time came for h ' im to go to school. The school was another low-thatched cot- tage. Alost of the teachers at this time were men masters and many of them were very stern. Each day opened with a short devotional service. One morning while all the children ' s heads were bowed and all was very still, a curious intruder came down the rope which tolled the bell. After the service was over, the school-master offered a prize to the child who would write the best verse on the incident. To some of the little folks this was a huge task but Burns was not troul:!led with the assignment. In a short time his poem was finished and he had captured the honors. His poem was much longer 1)ut only these few lines are remembered : The rat that had no better stairs, Came down the rope to hear prayers. And so this lad li ' ed and grew until we know him as one of the celebrities of his country. He did much to ennol)le the humble, Scottish peasant ' s life. After he had joined the better class of people, he was seen talking to a K)or man with shal3by clothes one day. Upon being reprimanded for association with such a man, Burns said ' Tis not the clothes that make the man. ' ' THE AIRPLANE AS A WAR WEAPON George Lowell, ' 31 There appeared in one of our local newspapers recently, a series of articles written by General Mitchell, a famous authority on aircraft, in which he discussed the future pos- sibilities of airplane warfare and ridiculed the United States to a certain extent because of the unpreparedness of this country for the use of air forces in future wars. A hen we stop to consider, we can see that the L ' nited States has not any too many fighting aircraft. It is true that we have wonderful coast defense, mammoth guns, anti- aircraft guns, super-dreadnoughts of the sea, tanks, mach- ine guns, and other war equipment that was used in the past World War. But what good wall all these do against huge bombing planes capable of launching with deadly accuracy a bomb of two-ton weight filled with high explosives and deadly gases? The most powerful battleship afloat could not withstand this menace. Future wars. General Mitchell says, will be fought entirely from the air. A can see that this is not entirely impossible.

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THE CHIMES 29 letter in full, and I hope that the Kihitzer readers will Ije pleased with the information contained in each. L8 E26 Al f ernageopatheatico wi sti , Central Siheria, Fehruary 6, 1953 It is with great pleasure that I have heard from my old friends again. I am, as you probahly know, in Central Siberia. I will tell you something of my home city. It is the largest in the world with a total area of twenty-five square miles and a population of three billion people. (This which I am calling a city is really only an enormous build- ing.) In the center of the building is a small meeting room. The streets of this city, or building as you may wish to call it, are not marked as they are in Scituate for the simple rea- son that there are no streets ; there are only corridors. From the meeting room I have just mentioned the building radi- ates in all directions in the form of a huge cylinder. It rises to a height of three hundred and fifty stories and des- cends into the earth the same distance. From the center to the outmost edge is exactly the same distance as from the earth level to the roof. As you will notice, I have started my letter with L 8 E 36. That corresponds to your street and house number. The markings of the rooms all start from the central meeting room. For instance, where I live the L means lower or subterranean. L 8 means eight stories beneath the surface while E stands for east and E 36 means east thirty-six stor- ies. This system makes everything very easy to find. On top of the city the roof has a ten-foot covering of earth so that agriculture, and all ordinary land conditions exist here. This roof might be compared to a large plot of your country property. Light, ventilation, and electricity generation are all carried on by means of water which is supplied by the rainfall. I will explain the process. All the rainfall which is not ab- sorbed by the earth on the roof is allowed to filter through onto glass sheets which conduct it to a huge reservoir situ- ated on the top floor. This reservoir has access to the di- rect rays of the sun. By a process, which I, myself, will have to modestly admit the inventing of, a preparation put into the water, causes the water to confine the rays of the sun until we wish to make use of them again. Through a