Somerville High School - Radiator Yearbook (Somerville, MA)

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SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR 15 With an enrollment this year of more than a hundred less than last, the school is no longer handicapped with an excess of pupils. The de- crease is due largely to the Junior High schools, and therefore it is the Freshmen who are in the minority this term. The greatest effects of this diminished enrollment are that it tends to make many of the classes smaller, and to abandon the back rows of many of the recitation rooms as study seats. With the smaller classes recitation may become much less formal, and greater in- terest centered on the work. The lack of study pupils in recitation rooms will lengthen the time devoted to class work, and will lessen the amount of distraction. How often history repeats itself! This is a truth that is borne in on us the more carefully we study the narratives of past events, and the rela- tive facts concerning the nations and empires of the past and present. How much we of the twentieth century enjoy, that is believed to be comparatively new and novel but is really the survival of an ancient custom or idea in a modern disguise, we seldom realize. Perhaps the greatest illustration can be found in the present war. Every age seems to have been rolled into one along the battlefronts of Europe; past, present, and future seem to have been realized at one and the same time. Never- theless, all branches of the struggle have been executed more or less successfully in the past with the exceptions of the submarine and aerial warfare. The barbarous Vandals and Huns of old are recalled by the spiteful spirit of the Teutonic warfare, and the struggles in the passes and gaps of the towering Alps revive the days of Hannibal. Only a short time ago, a French soldier helped to “clean out” an enemy trench with a primitive mace-head which he had picked up in his own dugout, before going into action. Archaeologists who commented on the incident are of the opinion that the weapon dates back 20,000 years, and one of them mentioned that “under the feet of the belligerents, embedded in the gravels of the Somme valley, lie the oldest implements of com- bat known to humanity.” After the battle of the Marne, it was considered an innovation that the Germans began to “dig in,” but trench warfare was practiced by Ver- cingetorix against Caesar before Alesia in 51 13. C. The modern machine gun is but an en- croachment on the clumsy, multi-barreled held pieces of the Swiss of the sixteenth century. Cities are no longer defended by streams of burning pitch, but modern warriors do not hesitate to ply their enemy with liquid tire and poison gases. The modern “mass formation” was used with the in- stitution of the Greek phalanx, and the giant British “tanks” are scarcely less formidable today, than the “turtle formation” of Caesar’s day, or the Persian scythe-bearing chariots of Alex- ander. The grenadiers of the past few centuries which gave way to the more modern infantry have made their appearance in the present war as bomb throwers. [It is said that ball players make the best bomb-throwers. Ball players take notice!] The armor of our modern knights recalls the days of chivalry and the later warfare so vivedly depicted by Shakespeare. The shield is again doing good service, and likewise it is with the face-mask, the protecting eye lunettes, and other details of mediaeval armor in the days before gunpowder. Soft hats and caps which were once the soldier's headdress, no longer top the ranks of our lighting men. Once more the up-to-date warrior dons the long discarded metal helmet, all of which goes to prove the truth of another old adage, “there is nothing new under the sun!” Our predecessor on this paper, Phillips A. Noyes, has already won distinction. He received an “A” on his first English theme, the first one to be granted to a freshman first theme since 1910. Congratulations, Noyes. In consideration of the method in which the Athletic Association took the entire school un- awares on September 25, the general opinion is “They did us two bits” instead of “We did our two bits.”

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14 SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR EDITORIALS With the arrival of the sharp, snappy, autumn atmosphere, we naturally turn our eyes toward football. The season before us promises to prove one of great success if reliable opinion can be formed from hearsay. The student body has not displayed such general interest, and so enthusi- astically supported an athletic team, for many years. The controversy at the outset over the question of whether or not athletics should be continued the coming year has now been for- gotten as far as the school as a whole is con- cerned, but the players cannot free their minds from the recollection. It is this thought alone that will spur them on to many a hard won victory, for in their opinion, the season cannot be successfully completed until they have proved their worth in the eyes of the school, of the faculty, of the School Committee, and of the public. It is the players alone who are making, and will make the team. Their efforts are pitched to the utmost, and under such conditions, defeat is hardly possible. The season has started with a rush; may it finish with a touchdown! Boys, we are behind you, we are supporting you, we are cheering you! Do your best, and the victory you so richly deserve will be yours! Great credit is to be given to the Freshmen in Room 113. All have become members of the Athletic Association, and the pupils were also the largest donators to the Library Fund in the school. The Somerville High School extends to you a hearty welcome, Freshmen, offering you many opportunities of acquiring knowledge and of de- veloping moral, mental and physical strength. Al- though you are much smaller in number this year there is no reason why we should not hear just as much if not more from you. For in these war times each one exerts himself as he never exerted himself before. In starting upon your high school course one thing is especially important and that is: Start well. The way one ends almost always depends upon the way one starts, whether it be success or failure. You have four years ahead of you in which to make either a success or a failure. If you wish the first you must go out after it and work for it. Those who gain honor in school activities get it only by conscientious, steady application and if you once attain this name it is not difficult to keep. School spirit is a thing which the Freshmen, as well as other classes, ought to manifest. So, class of 1921, everyone of you cultivate school spirit. If those cheer leaders at our mass meetings who always tell us how little noise we make would stop trying to stand on their heads and would ask us to rise, better results would no doubt be obtained. “School spirit,” says a teacher of one of the western schools, “is doing by the school what you know down in your heart is right.” How about it?

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16 SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR 7VOTFS OF THE ALVMNI CA2 ?BELL-08 The following graduates of S. H. S. are enrolled in the freshman classes of various colleges and schools: 1917-A Wellesley: Madeline Stockwell. Simmons: Ruth Cunningham, Margaret Sy- monds. Mt. Holyoke: Ruth Jones. Salem Normal School: Eunice Higgins, Helen Honnors, Josephine McCarthy, Marguerite Shea. Lowell Normal School: Grace Driscoll. Bridgewater Normal School: Doris Barber. M. I. T.: Frederick Brittain, Walter Clapp, John Grimmons, Lambert Weston, Francis Whitworth. Tufts: Stanley Cliff, Malcolm Pratt, Eldridge Stowell, Lewis Weinberg. Jackson: Inez Atwater. M. A. C.: Clarence Wood. Dartmouth: Alexander Youngerman. 1917-B Radcliffe: Madeline Brine, Amy Stone. Wellesley: Esther Miller, Helen Jackson. Wheaton: Enid and Winnifred Kenny, Alice Padelford, Marjorie Stevens, Francis Watson. Simmons: Gertrude Casey, Florence Parker. Mary Roberts. Sargent: Dorothy Atwood, Dorothy Dooling, Helen Jones. Jackson: Eleanor Geiger, Mary McHugh, Mary Shields, Mildred Steere. Salem Normal School: Helen Ahlner, Doris Hicks, Jeanette McLaughlin, Katherine Roche, Dorothy Ryder, Dorothea Shay. Framingham Normal School: Esther McPhee. Trinity: Margaret Desmond. Lowell Normal School: Elizabeth Sullivan. Harvard: Edward Derby, John Martin, Harry Moore, Arnold Whittle. M. I. T.: Merritt Farren, Donald Hatheway, Allen Higgins, Paul Howe, Albert Kiley, John Vaupel. Dartmouth: Leon Bateman, John Herbert, Raphael Murray, Phillips Noyes. Tufts: George Hall, Arthur Harrington, Wil- liam Hanold, George Jones, Paul Keating, John Leland, Ernest Peakes, William Perry, Roland Pillsbury, Chester Reynolds, Brooks Peakes. Boston University: Dorothy Haskell, Wilda Chipman, Arnold Benson, Chester Prothero, Anna Peterson, Ernest Dickey. Holy Cross: John Bennett, Charles Gallagher. Boston College: John O’Neil, Edward Smith. William Bigely. M. A. C.: Walter Cronin, Henry Rice. Ernest Gilman had charge of the Boys’ Play- ground at Broadway Park during the summer. Clifford Trefry has a position at Stone Web- ster. James Foley has joined the navy. H. Maxwell Robson is in France with Battery C, 101st Field Artillery. Walter Love and John Hopkins, both of ’17-A, are in the navy. James Sawyer is employed in the office of Shraafts. Doris Ordway is attending Radio school. Theresa Cameron is employed in the office of the B. M., at the North Station. 1916 Arthur Burnett, Dean Academy ’17, is em- ployed in the Exchange Trust Co. Marion F. Hersey and Claire Treat are sopho- mores at Wellesley. Ruth and Winnifred Arrington, Mildred Fitz