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

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,Arg - f f ,L .?, 1, T, 527 Y V - 14, -.- f,,.,-- people say. Yes, but a schoolmaster of the world, a builder of republics, the foe of autocracy, and let us hope, a father of democracies. He dreamed no dreams of conquest, he craved no blood-bought empire. He had the faith in human nature, in the love of his fellow- men. Patiently he bore their sluts, with a smile he acknowledged his mistakesg and when all else failed, and only until then, did he resort to war. But once in it, he has never faltered, but has led straight through to a swift and victorious conclusion. Through it all, however, he has always looked forward to peace, an unseliish peace, a just peace. Not such a peace as the Kaiser described when he said, God is with us. If the enemy does not want peace, then we must bring peace to the world by battering in with iron fist and shining sword, the doors of those who will not have peace. This was a German peaceg but Wilson dreamed of a true peace, a lasting peace. In his famous fourteen points he said, A general association of na- tions must be formed, under specific covenants, for the purpose of afford- ing mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. To-day, with Wilson's far-seeing vision to guide them, the nations are binding up their wounds and looking forward into the dawning of a new day, a day in which reason, truth, freedom, and justice shall rule. -Elwood D. Adams. A Message to Americans With a Foreword VER Sagamore Hill, on january the seventh, appeared a great fleet of air ships. They circled and dipped. Occa- - ' il sionally, they came close to the earth, dropping wreaths f . 1 of laurel. ,Q A- These fearless bird men were announcing to the sky, to the air, to the earth, to the sea, that Theodore Roosevelt had completed the great adventure-Life, and had gone on to the greater adventure--Death. Some three months ago, following the death of a heroic son in battle, he sang his swan song, called by him the Great Adventure. We cull from this prose poem his last great message to Americans. Let us for a moment consider it together: Only those are Ht to live who do not fear to dieg and none are Ht to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. Never yet was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety Hrst. Never yet was a country worth living in unless its sons and daughters were of that stern stuff which bade 18

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J.-,X-y: ' -R ' Y ' -j L -if ,EA 5-:' ' ' f .25-ji law of nature, it has been the conqueror who has filled the pages of history. Made history, yes! but where are their empires now? Where through the ages can you find one great conqueror who lived to enjoy the fruits of his victory, or who upon his deathbed could say, I die in peace, my empire is still mine? There's not one to be found. Yet time has produced man after man, who, in spite of all reason, in spite of the wrecks and ruins of previous empires, has thought, I can conquer, where all others have failed. The mighty Caesar with his Roman legions, with all the pomp and power of Rome behind him, sought to possess the world, to force it to his will. He came close, closer than any conqueror has ever come, yet, after all, he was only mortal, and it's not ordained by God that a mortal is to rule this world. Next of the great conquerors came the beast Attila with his hunnish hordes. Out of the barbaric East he swept through Europe, wiping out all civilization before him and leaving a path of ruin and desolation. He called himself The Scourge of God Q what god he served he only knew. Where is his god now and where is his empire? Then came the great Napoleon. With a master mind, a terrible ambition, the wealth of France at his command, he, too, set his foot on the conqueror's path and all the world trembled, all Europe bowed to his sword. He followed this path to the end, an end of sorrow, lone- liness, and despair. - And now again the world has been swept with blood and strife. Millions have died, whole nations have suffered. Beautiful cities lie in ruins. Once blooming fields now lie burnt, scarred, and blasted. Armies have swept back and forth, great victories have been wong but for every victory won there has appeared a new field of little wooden crosses, for death can't lose when a great conqueror comes. Wreck and ruin, famine and pestilence have come that one mad, ruthless sover- eign might realize his dream of conquest. Down in his callous, scheming mind he conceived this vision, a vision of a throne from which he might look to the four corners of the earth and call it his own. Back of him he had a nation drunk with the victories of previous wars, steeped in the teachings that might was right, and that they were the supermen. With such a people behind him, he built his hopes one by one, waiting, waiting for the dayf' It was he and his kind that combined the savagery and barbarism of the Huns with all the arts of modern science depraved to uses repugnant to civilized people. Attila called himself The Scourge of God 3 Wil- helm said, I am chosen of God, woe to him who denies my mission. But amidst all this chaos there has slowly stood forth a kindly, earnest-hearted man, the real man chosen of God, the man with a mis- sion, the man with the true vision. He is only a schoolmaster, so some 17

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'ff' 'A ' ff -fl'--N 11 '--- -e-if 11- .,,' i 'ff'-f rf,- 51 35:21 libg- them die for it at need, and never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life not as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual but as a link ,in the great chain of creation. The wife of a fighting soldier at the front recently wrote as fol- lows to the mother of a gallant boy, who at the front had fought in high air like an eagle, and, like an eagle, fighting had died: 'I write these few lines-not of condolence, for who would dare to pity you?- but of deepest sympathy to you and yours as you stand in the shadow which is the earthly side of those clouds of glory in which your son's life has just passed. Many will envy you, that when the call to sacrifice came, you were not found among the paupers to whom no gift of life worth offering had been entrusted. They are the ones to be pitied, not we, whose dearest are jeoparding their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.' With all my heart I believe in the joy of living! but no nation can be great unless its sons and daughters have in them the quality to rise level to the needs of heroic days. In America to-day all our people are summoned to service and sacrifice. Pride is the portion only of those who know bitter sorrow or the foreboding of bitter sorrow. But all of us who give service, and stand ready for sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with the torches until we fall, content if we can then pass them to the hands of other runners. The torches whose flame is brightest are borne by the gallant men at the front, and by the gallant women whose husbands and lovers, whose sons and brothers are at the front. These men are high of soul, as they face their fate on the shell-shattered earth, or in the skies above, or in the waters beneath, and no less high of soul are the women with torn hearts and shining eyes, the girls whose boy lovers have been struck down in their golden morning, and the mothers and wives to whom word has been brought that henceforth they must walk in the shadow. These are the torch-bearers, these are they who have dared the Great Adventure. -Benjamin M. Loeb. ai fig il QE . if l 19