University of San Francisco - USF Don Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

Page 9 text:

(ftmtflirt of Haw att Htbrrtg Awarded the Gold Medal i the University ( )ratokical Contest. O-DAV while the powers of the world turn with grateful hearts to the sons of America, the defenders of democracy, “the champions of the rights of all mankind.” to-day with the joyful blessings of rescued civilization still sounding in their ears— those very sons returning to this, their home—the land of the free, are confronted by a situation which threatens to destroy their own sacred personal liberty and crush them ’neath the heel of a tyranny more dangerous and despicable than that for whose defeat they have labored and bled in France. And what is this tyranny? It is the natural offspring of narrow-minded reform—it is the tyranny of prohibitive legislation. Its seed has been scattered broadcast and its pernicious growth is to be recognized in nearly every social reform with which the American public is now being harassed. Think for a moment—the anti-liquor league, the antismoking league, the health insurance faction—together mayhap with the anti-tea and coffee association and the anti-pastry party. What, ladies and gentlemen, is the meaning of all these organizations to free and sovereign Americans? Simply this—that the people of the United States, bewildered by the fanciful representations of an impractical idealism, fascinated by the shimmering veil of tinseled illusion which their laudable hope for human uplift has hung before their eyes, have been rendered insensible to the real—the awful dangers that lurk beyond the curtain of artifice and sham, and are nursing to-day at the very thresholds of liberty and justice, a creature whose verv nature makes it the mortal enemy of all personal freedom. This masquerader is prohibi-

Page 8 text:

Spring Ho' Spring is on the meadow lanes, With all her flowers adorning; 'fhe garland of her glory reigns O’er every hill and vale; The lavelock’s cadence greets the glow Of blossom-scented morning, And nodding beds of daisy heads Are trooping down the dale. And, ort beyond the poppy gold. The gvpsy roads are calling, The purple spell the mountains hold. The woodlands and the streams, And all the fragrant breeze ablow, Through orchard blossoms falling.— The winds of May that call away To Spring and Youth and dreams! Vincent II'. Hallman.

Page 10 text:

8 run igx.it .ix live legislation, a creature which, in the character of a multitude of your neighbors, may one day reach into the sacred precincts of your home and dictate your conduct in matters of a purely personal nature. Vet this is America—and the members of that despotic throng will dare to call themselves Americans. W hat mockery i this? What sacrilegious violation of all that our forefathers held closest to their hearts? And who are these usurping pillagers who here in the time-hallowed temples of democracy would hurl down from their accustomed niches the statues of equality and freedom and set themselves up as the sole arbiters of virtue that their opinions may become the criteria of our morality ? Who are they, we cry—and the answer is at once apparent. They are the self-constituted angels of reform, the heckling, probing, narrow-visioned magicians who by waving the wand of prohibitive legislation, are going to transform their less holy, less enlightened brothers into radiant angels of incorruptible virtue. They are rather the helpless mortals who think they have found in prohibitive legislaton. the necessary prop to the weakness of their own wills. And this is the type of men who have so far succeeded in deluding a host of your fellow-citizens that they too now cry that to save you and me from the ravening beasts of appetite which exist within ourselves, the State and not our God-given conscience must regulate, and dictate our most secret, most personal habits and actions. Oh, how degenerate have we become—how far fallen in virtue below the standards of our ancestors—if now with all the material advantages of our superior education and vaunted culture to aid us—we yet must call on government legislation to support our weakling wills in the battles of the aspirate souls. I»ut there have arisen those who would help us, they say in our plight. Who arc