Soldan High School - Scrip Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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In our own country, Harriet Beecher Stowe lighted the torch that blazed in our Civil War. And while this family feud raged, our inspired Julia Ward Howe chanted her Battle Hymn of the Republic. In turn, were these inspired writers created through their own acts of creation. Thus the influence of literature cannot be estimated either in its effect or its reaction. The literature of the early wars was purely a history of events, or a lauding of military prowess. That of the Revo- lutionary War exploited England's injustice to the colonies. The French Revolution produced many epics of the Reign of Terror. And the literature of the Civil War was based upon slavery and its influence: and when the brilliant South could not explain slavery-it remained voiceless. This present war is singular-in its origin, in its manifestation, and in its development along every line. It is of greater magnitude than any war the world has known. Living under epic skies, we are just beginning to reap its results in the field of literature. Involving, as it does, so many different nations, its fruition along every line will be the mightiestnever realized. We find awakened to these new interests the vivacious French, the deep-thinking English, the dreamy Italian, and the ever versatile American, each to the mighty expression of the litera- ture each is making. But while we are living literature, we cannot always perfectly shape literature. In the transplanting from home to the trenches, to the hospitals, or to other war service, there has developed in many men unsuspected, latent talent. The pressure of the mighty events gives them not only new visions, but the power to convey these visions to an awakened world. A new constellation has appeared in the firmament of literature. Out of intellectual obscurity these stars of genius have burst forth. Mental development, requiring years, is now accomplished in a few months. The outlook upon life is vastly broadened and the stimulated emotion gives rise to a clarity of thinking and a splendor of utterance never before realized. War develops variety in literature. Many are the poems-pathetic, solemn, humorous, merry, frivolous, beautiful, yes, and tragic. Imagine a boy-the youngest of his family, protected, petted, and spoiled. He likes to read and has read much. But for athletics and manly sports he cares nothing. This boy goes out to fight. From his experiences he produces a world book. It is humanistic, in that its language and its allusions show its author to be cultivated. It is humanitarian, also, in its love and delight in mankind. He creates a sketch-out of his narrow yet deep experience-that bears a marked resemblance to that great Barrie drama, Der Tag. This war has impelled this utterance. Per- haps Fate, under ordinary circumstances, would have kept this voice mute. But War gives to the world a book that changes literature, one that gives us the simple yet solemn truths, which we ourselves might 10

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nations talk, the less likely they are to fight. President Wilson, ex-Presi- dent Taft, Viscount Grey, as well as both the great national political parties, endorsed this platform. In the discussions of the league, this great national question came up: Would the United States have the will and power, once the league was formed, to oppose aggression so firmly as to make it unprofitable? The answer came sooner than expected. Is not the United States at the present moment at war with a power that has pursued to its own sinister ends the policy of aggression? In the future, no power will resort to aggression if, by so doing, it will raise against itself invincible odds. When President Wilson addressed the league at Washington, he shattered forever the tradition of American isolation. He offered not only his services to assist Europe in forming such a leagueg he was empowered by the people to offer the united strength of the nation to back its authority. Here was, in fact, an American re-statement of the old motto of the Renaissance, What concerns mankind is inevitably our affair. A new principle now informs world politics. For the first time, a great power is prepared to stake its own peace, not merely to guarantee its own interest or to further the aim of its allies: it is determined to make an end forever to the possibility of profitable aggression. It aims to make the world safe for democracy. As Mr. Bonar Law, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, says, We are preparing for peace, for a peace which will bring back to us in safety those who are fighting our battles, and a peace which will mean that those who will not come back have not laid down their lives in vain. in fl' xx 1 nbygaf at Yff ' .Q if il-,QL N Q. -Harold S. Cook. Literature and the Wat HERE can be no greater change than in our latter day atti- tude toward history. History has, in the past, immortalized the great warriors, the great orators, the great statesmen, and the great teachers. Other things than deeds, however, make our modern history. Literature is, indeed, no act, but it inspires deeds, and the memory of these deeds literature as history makes permanent. Heroes die, acts cease, but literature makes remembrance more real than their own reality. War is the background of history. Whatever arouses the emotions, inspires creation, and nothing so appeals to the emotion as war. Nowhere is this more manifest than in its present effect upon literature. Every war has shown this essential truth. The fall of Troy immortalized Homer. The Roman occupancy of Britain infused some culture into the crude Anglo-Saxon writings. The Norman conquest produced Chaucer, and the Revolution in England under Oliver Cromwell gave us Milton. 9

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. .ZF -A-? cf, A--,L .ff A - -1-.Y .,-,R -.-f:f- ' - purposely avoid, were they not presented to us in this arresting manner. We can only mean Donald Hankey's Student in Arms. In the book Carry On, Coningsby Dawson makes known to the world, as he has the opportunity to observe, the hopes, the fears, the desires, and even the thoughts of simple, unaffected men, fighting to save the ideals of mankind. We are heralding a new era in literature. We are learning to appre- ciate through meditation and inspiration world emotions never before fully realized. The struggle of men for that which is so highly spiritual, as well as their right to pursue happiness, is beginning to play a mighty part in the drama of literary change. We are in a new Renaissance. Literature is not only purified, but made so splendidly true that it appeals to the most sluggish thinker. We never tire of honoring our heroes who battle for us-in drama, in poetry, in song, and in story. Rupert Brooke will live forever in the tale of his splendid dual heroism :-soldier, poet, almost demigod. As his dust will make the hallowed land where he sleeps forever England, his song places him in the choir of earth's immortals. Our own Alan Seegar, too, has kept his rendezvous with death, but the voice of his singing has not been stilled, cannot be stilled. Literature, heretofore, has spoken in terms of tribes, of nations, yes, of mighty nations. Now world ideas must be absorbed and digested and clothed in the language intelligible to the man in the street. Is it not wonderful that the clearest voice of all who strive to educate the world through literature comes from our own land? His sentences have become our aphorisms, our proverbs. All other political utterances beside his sound shallow and trivial. His state papers pass into our consciousness and pervade the soul of our American thinking. Woodrow Wilson has made literature the very breath of our American life. -Mary Dougherty. The Price of Liberty 'S N answer to the groans and cries of suffering Cubans, President McKinley issued a call for a hundred and twenty- five thousand men. In less than forty-eight hours, a quar- ter of a million young men rushed to arms. This was the most magnificent illustration of unselfish patriotism the world ever witnessed. Then, men went forth, not to defend their own hearthstones, but to deliver a million suffering Cubans from the enslaving rule of the Spaniard. Once again the head of our great nation has sounded the tocsin. He calls every loyal citizen, whether man, woman, boy or girl, to join hands with our brothers and sisters across the sea, with all who are fighting for the cause of human liberty. This is a louder and a far more insistent call than that which President McKinley uttered and which 11 'QT53 X 55 7