Southwest High School - Roundup Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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OUR AMERICAN HERITAGE By VIRGINIA ANDERSON We, as Americans, have inherited many things: great mineral resources, large rivers and deep harbors, fertile fields, and beautiful mountains. But our most precious heritage is our liberty and freedom. We enjoy the rights of Englishmen : freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief, the right to trial by jury. We may do Whatever we wish, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of any other person. In fact, the original thirteen colonies became the United States of America because England refused to recognize the fact that the colonists, our forefathers, were entitled to enjoy the rights of Englishmen . We know that our great American tradition is liberty and political free- dom, that liberty and self government are the basis of American and of every other democracy in the world: yet we are allowing our country to be poisoned by pro-dictatorship propaganda, the arch enemy of democracy. A dictatorship is built by one man on the strength of his military power. It is not a govern- ment by the people and for the people, but a government by a man: and though supposed to be for the people, it is often for the glory of one man -the dictator! Dictatorships grow out of a period of economic and political distress. Thus it is important that the American people keep calm and think straight during this troubled time. Unthinking people are apt to look to communism or fascism as a means by which their economic problems can be quickly solved. They forget that the problems were formed by a long series of events and that they cannot be solved in one month, or even in one year. Nineteen

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Indians never harmed them even though sometimes they felt Apache eyes watching them and even caught glimpses of blanketed Indian flgures. These seemed to hover over them and protect them, making the pioneers certain that their wagon bore a charmed existence. 111 WINTER AND SPRING By HELEN CASALO S Old winter held earth in his grip, With ice and snow and gale. He sealed the ponds and froze the streams And made the earth look pale, Now spring of gentler mood has come, In flowing gown of green, Bedeckea' in blossoms fair and bright: And winter's no more seen. Eighteen

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These dictators realize that they can exist, as dictators, only so long as they can force the mass of people to think, not their own thoughts, but the thoughts of the dictator. Why do Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin have thou- sands of plain clothes men policing their respective countries? Not to protect the people, but to see that nothing is said or done which qoes not conform to their own ideas. Imagine one man, or a small group of men at the most, trying to direct the thoughts of every single person in that country: telling them what to wear, Where to work, how large a family to have, what to read, what to eat, what they may say, how they may worship, and what they may think! Since a dictatorship is entirely different from our American plan of govern- ment, it is difficult to see how some professed Americans can entertain the idea of a dictator in America. They are willing to give up their liberty, free- dom, and rights of Englishmen, for what? The American people must reflect so that they will appreciate just what a dictatorship means, and just what a democracy means. They must be made to realize the value of their great heritage. And we, as the citizens of tomorrow, must consecrate ourselves to liberty and to democracy. Twenty