Scituate High School - Chimes Yearbook (Scituate, MA)

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THE CHIMES 5 YOUTH HOSTELING David Colman, ' 39 The youth hostel movement has grown by leaps and bounds since the first American youth hostel was established at Northfield in 1934. There are now 184 youth hostels in the United States, nearly half of which are in New England. A youth hostel is a place where any AYH (American Youth Hostel) passholder can obtain a lodging for the night at a cost of twenty-five cents. The hostels are supplied with cooking facilities and some of them have a recreation room. From my experience last summer, I found that the sleeping-rooms ranged all the way from individual rooms in a house with all the luxuries of home down to a hen-house, garage, or other spare building with a few bunks arranged in tiers if the shack was high enough. Blankets are always supplied at the hostel. An AYH pass costs a dollar for those under twenty-one and two dollars for those over twenty-one. It entitles the owner to the use of any hostel in the world for twenty-five cents a night or its equivalent in foreign cur- rency and to the quarterly magazine, The Knapsack. It affords a means of securing a vacation and plenty of good exercise very economically. Hostelers usually allow a dollar a day for total expenses, but by skimping one can get along on seventy-five cents a day. The AYH is financed en- tirely by donations and endowment. No person in the movement has any pecuniary interest in the organization. On my trip last summer, I started out by renting a bicycle at Northfield. For the most part, I followed what is known as the loop. This is probably the most popular route fo llowed by hostelers and is generally considered to be a two weeks ' journey by bicycle. It starts at Northfield, goes up through New Hampshire via Winchester, Meredith, and Sugar Hill, across Northern Vermont to Stowe or Jeffersonville, down the western side of Vermont to North Poultney, and then southeasterly across the lower part of the Green Mountains back to Northfield. The New Hamp- shire part of the route goes by the Monadnock region in the southern part of the state and the White Mountains in the northern part. The Sugar Hill is one of the best-known hostels on the loop and it is used quite a little as a base for side trips into the White Mountains. The ' route through the northern part of Vermont is through some very beautiful farming country. In the northwestern part of the state are found the best scenery and the highest peaks of the Green Mountains. All of the peaks are within a day ' s hiking distance of hostels. A good many of the state highways and nearly all the side roads are unpaved. The state roads, however, are good dirt roads and almost as good for cycling as macadam roads. The side roads, however, are impos- sible. They are as crooked as new rope, very bumpy, and in many places steep.

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4 THE CHIMES PEACETIME ARMAMENT — SIGNIFICANT? Maurice Bartlett, ' 39 Let us go back just a few years in the world ' s history and see if we can determine to some extent whether or not there Hes in peacetime armament any real significance. By the end of the Franco-German war in 1871, the world could clearly see the marked advantage of Germany ' s short service army. Therefore the rest of the nations abandoned the old long-term armies in use up to that time; and then began a race — an awful race — by all the major pow- ers of Europe and Asia, to produce the largest and best equipped armed force ever to have existed. This race lasted for forty-three years — forty- three years of the hardest and bitterest military struggle ever engaged in — and for forty-three years Germany set the pace — a stiff pace which even the best were hard put to keep. And all this time the dove of peace smiled sweetly and serenely down! From 1890 on, this great struggle for peace-time war supremacy in- creased in earnestness and intensity. What had the world to fight about? Why all this preparation? So far, no reason or cause whatever. Then Power began to shine in his own light and nation feared nation. Alliances and entanglements were made and the fight went on. Everywhere the short service term of enlistment was in use, and the cream of the world ' s man power was trained for wholesale murder. So, by 1913 the greatest mass of potential force ever to exist was ready to annihilate itself. For what? The glory of war! And now as we look out upon the earth today to see nations once more engaged in a titanic peace-time struggle for military supremacy, what can we think? Has human nature so changed that this time the contest is merely one for show? No, we would hardly think so. Thus it would seem that this tremendous struggle is highly significant, and it shows us only too well how generations of learning by experience have left the world still ignorant and uneducated, still with the idea that only war can end war. Shall we never learn? That depends upon us — you and me; we are the world of today — and tomorrow. It is up to us to show forth in its own glory — the right — and might — of Peace.

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6 THE CHIMES The hostels are usually located on farms. The house parents are gen- erally kind and accomniodatinji. To anyone interested in an inexpensive vacation, I would recommend taking a trip by bicycle this summer through New Hampshire and Vermont. The hostels are not open to automobilists but only to those who travel under their own steam. MY JOURNEY TO BLINDNESS Sherman Gates, ' 40 Light is leaving, slowly leaving — My eyes grow slowly dim. I reach to rend this heavy, falling veil, But it leaves unmarked its blinding trail. What strange fear on me does it compel Which I dare barely to retell? Slowly, slowly, how slowly it descends What woeful wrong does it portend? What dreadful sin destroys the light above And all the sights which I have loved? If such will end all harsh travail. Proceed till total darkness shall prevail. LET ' S PIN THEM DOWN Helen Poland, ' 40 Modern psychologists claim that our hobbies have a strong influence on character and personality. Everyone has some kind of hobby even though he may not consider it as such. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to find out what our teachers, whom we consider a species different from the ordinary individual, do in their leisure hours. I have, consequently, taken great pains to interview many of the mem- bers of our faculty to ascertain for myself how they amuse themselves after school hours. I am surprised to find them quite normal individuals. All professed to enjoy reading, a not unlikely occupation considering the re- search they demand of their pupils. The types of books are varied — travel books, political and economic books, historical novels, biographies, books on mathematics, and even detective stories. Teaching must be a wearisome job, for one of the teachers, distinctive because of his new blue suit, immediately declared that sleep was his de- light. He also claims to be a poet of a high degree and to enjoy aesthetic dancing. Another of our ambitious male teachers delights in cutting wood. Still another practises amateur radio communication. Among the women.