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

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-, '-'Pia e-Cif A v Wi ' -r'G'J '4 '- -Y -- W -qg-?,':3 Tf- x.3,- r eins -w . was so loyally responded to. Then, only the destinies of a million people were involvedg now the welfare and the liberties of the human race are at stake. A national crisis! No, a world crisis calling on every lover of liberty of whatever race or color to throw fortune, life, all,-in behalf of the cause of human freedom that in the present crisis is threatened with annihilation. Sacrifice and suffering have ever been the price the race has paid for liberty. But history reveals the indisputable fact that, although the sacrifice has been severe, and the sorrows and suffering may have been heavy, the resultant reward has not only far surpassed the sacrifice, but has more than fully repaid any resultant sorrow or suffering. What though the sufferings of Valley Forge were severe, and though the patriots of the little continental army wore rags and left bloody foot- prints on the frozen snowy all this suffering, this sacrifice resulted in the birth of a great nation. And ever since this nation has been a haven for the oppressed, a day-star for the downtroddeng it is to-day a pattern for liberty-loving peoples throughout the world. What though sixty-one saw Bull Run and sixty-three Antietam, what though three hundred thousand men were sacrificed on Southern battlefields, the greatest democracy was kept intact, and the shackles of bondage struck from four million slaves. Once again the cause of human liberty is threatened. The beast of militarism already has crushed under its ruthless heel the self-respecting, liberty-loving, little principalities. Now it threatens to place this yoke of autocracy on the whole civilized world. Shall we not then rally as did our fathers to fight the battle of freedom, to preserve the cause of human liberty, to make the world safe for the generations to come? The supreme hour is at hand. The nation is called upon to rise as one man to the support of our president. Whatever the sacrifice demanded, of time, of wealth, of life, all should be freely paid that those to come may possess liberty. Where is the soul so narrow and the heart so selfish, that in this greatest of human crises it continues to turn a deaf ear to the cries of suffering humanity? Our fathers counted no sacrifice too great for the cause of freedom. If they gladly gave their blood that we might be free, shall we be so selfish at this hour as to withhold ours? If they joyfully sacrificed their home and goods, shall we do less? In this momentous hour of human history personal feelings and self-seek- ings should be buried. We fight for a cause that affects the future, not of one nation, but the world. If we are to continue to hold our place among nations, every man, woman and child should stand ready to answer our leader's call. Far better that a few of us die in this glorious cause, than that the nation itself should cease to be a protector of free- dom and a defender of liberty, a pattern to a waiting world. -Howell Evans. 12

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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

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.-va,--eff 4- wir, .f L' .. sf e- - fb' 3 ..- .2 ,Yi-.2 - fg.!A-N:- . V QQ-V 1. i-.7-f . P 'Y x 1 1 4, KH P: fl -L 5l,,Qis i53 No Prisoners Taken F H, BITTER wind swept across a shell-plowed field in Flanders. Qfigun Fragments of storm-driven clouds scudded across the sky. The sun came down to the western horizon--stared for a moment at the pitiful conflict of pigmy men, then sank into - a purplish bank of fog and mist. Night had come-bleak, mid-winter night of Flanders. Now and then No Man's Land sprang out of the darkness as a star-shell burst above it. From some distant pill-box came the tattoo of a machine-gun, and from farther on, the sullen boom of bigger guns. Scotty Blake, of the Third Canadian Reserves, lay huddled up in the dugout. For thirty hours he had given the best that was in him. Every aching muscle was reacting from the gruelling strain of the last great drive. His eyes were half closed. He tried to forget the awful picture of the day, the cutting wind that now crept in, the Hurries of driven snow,-the sleek trench rats that slunk back overgorged from No Man's Landf' It was almost Christmas time, and as he lay there, his body half numbed with exhaustion and cold, but his mind keenly alert, his thoughts flew back to a little cottage in Missouri-to a little one-street town where he had spent his boyhood days. He saw his mother- bustling about the kitchen. He even was conscious of the tantalizing odor of baking pie crust. He saw them all-Bob, the little brother, with a squad of his childhood friends, parading around with dishpans and broom handles, playing soldier. Scotty wondered if little Bob got the drum he had wanted so badly for Christmas. Then his mind went back-to her. Always she was the goal of his thought-he could not forget-he had tried so many times, yet the thought of her was the real vital thing that dominated his heart and life. Three years ago he had left her. A childish quarrel-hot and bitter words-all so pitiably out of keeping with what they had since suffered. In the hot surge of 'anger he had left her, just as the great war was calling Canada's men to Europe. He went with them. He had not written and of course she could not know where he was-and yet, never an hour but his thoughts had gone back to the girl whose heart was bound up in his own. And this night in Flanders, huddling in a cheer- less dugout, the pitiable folly of it all came back to him. He saw her again just as he had seen her that first time in the old apple orchard back of the little one-street town in Missouri. There she stood-the apple blossoms all about her, the june sun streaming over her, and as he saw her again he could hear her pleading for him to come back. He could feel the longing in the wistful, blue eyes looking up at him so beseech- ingly. So powerfully real was the vision that Scotty had reached out his hand to touch her. Scotty !-Scotty !-Oh, Scotty !-God! I thought you'd been killed! I3