University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

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r one who imagined herself the savior of her country and acted accordingly. Does not the very concession prove her a more remarkable character? Take away all possibility of divine assistance, and she becomes a still greater hero. Psychologists agree that nothing but Joan’s exalted character made her work possible. “Except ye become as a little child”—that was the secret of her power. Innocent of all evil, filled with a divine trust, her very inexperience became an armor protecting her from fear and from dread. Follow Joan across the battle field, weep with her as she weeps o’er the fallen enemy, go with her into the courts, watch her negotiating with the foe, and you will agree that the Maid of Orleans detested war. Peace, justice, truth, were what she desired; and for these she said, “YVe must work as well as pray.” What a lesson in these words alone, that to realize the ideal we must battle with the real! Yes, Joan the Maiden became Joan the warrior. She abandoned the externals of womanhood and assumed the arduous role of man, performed the duties usually regarded as most antithetical to woman’s nature; and yet research has revealed the astonishing fact that she never once became a creature unsexed or indelicate. Ever was she in the noblest sense a womanly woman. Her life has taught the succeeding generations that a true woman's sphere is wherever she can help mankind—in the workshop, at the desk, in the school, in the hospital, or on the field of battle—and that everywhere she may keep her life clean and holy. Though there may have been forces at work which would have accomplished the redemption of the French without Joan, yet the fact remains that a peasant girl accomplished in less than three years what centuries of princes and kings were unable to do. Who can estimate the silent influence this had upon her fellow countrymen? “The populace saw in her a likeness to the Virgin Mary;” they exalted her, they sainted her, they worshipped her; the men at court, realizing that she personified the power of the people, fearing her influence, damned her. That diabolical trial at Rouen, that black blot upon history, was really a tribute to Joan’s greatness. A weakling, a creature plastic in the hands of the powerful, might have lived to enjoy the fruits of her labor. Joan was too magnificent to live. We may say of her, as was said of Phillips Brooks, “Greater than this life was the leaving of it.” While seeking to condemn her, the judges unconsciously revealed to humanity the immaculate purity of the life of the peasant warrior. Then, as she mounted the funeral pyre—mounted without a friend to comfort her—and as the fire rose in billowy flames, what did her deportment reveal? Frenzy? Soul-torturing anger at her countrymen’s ingratitude? Ah, no! Exalted peace, faith in humanity, faith in God, “purest trust in the universe.” “Ten thousand men wept.” Well might they weep! Her executioner knelt at every shrine praying for pardon. Well might he pray! “We have burned a saint; a white dove is arising from the ashes.” Poor, blind humanity! How often do we stand too near a monumental character to realize its greatness! Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, and the fire that consumed her tender flesh has burned deep into the minds of humanity and made the world think long, long thoughts. Joan’s was not a temporal kingdom; but as the centuries have come and gone, and as empires have risen and fallen, and republics have sprung from their ruins, there has been builded for the Martyred Maid a great spiritual kingdom in which she reigns as a true womanly woman, the type of our twentieth century ideal. We see in her a hero who lived for her country but suffered and died for humanity; PACE FIVE

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making labor honorable; sending Frobisher to penetrate the polar seas, Sir Franci: Drake to circumnavigate the globe; administering justice in the courts with impar tiality; ruling her country “for the people if not by the people”—to this Virgin queen GITCHE perhaps, we may accord the title of the truly great. We agree that as queen, Elizabctl GUMEE is almost incomparable; but as a woman, was she not the personification of artfulncs and maliciousness? and have not her most zealous biographers questioned her right to the title of “Virgin Queen”? Later, we come to Victoria, that pure flower of English history. Marvelous was the colonial development during her reign; for, although this was growth quit independent of constructive statesmanship on her part, yet, in the words of Lore Laurie, “The cause was primarily the personality of Queen Victoria.” She had sounc judgment and a good heart. Though gone, Victoria still lives in the hearts of hci subjects. Her life, while one of utmost beauty, was not characterized, however by any act of supreme self-sacrifice for the good of Great Britain or the world. Where, then, shall we seek for a character whom we may exalt as an ideal: Go to the hills of Lorraine. Pierce the mystic solitude of the Dromremy forests The early morning sunlight seeks to filter thru the dense foliage. Matin bells of distant hidden monasteries ring thru the holy silence. Joan of Arc is at her shrint communing with the saints. A maid of medium stature, with hair hanging in beautiful profusion, and with a face plain but transfigured with an expression which is as the mirror of things divine. She is listening to voices—voices calling her away from the fields, away from the sheep, away from her home, away from her shrine; calling her to plunge into battle, to save her country, to suffer contumely, to meet death at the stake. And what abilities, what preparation, had this simple country maiden of sixteen to win the confidence of courtiers and kings; to arouse her fainting countrymen to new deeds of patriotism; to march against Orleans; to win the memorable victory of Patay, and to rescue France from the bondage of the English? She had neither money nor influence; she lived on the frontiers of civilization; she had never left her native hills; she knew none but simple shepherd folk; she had never been in the saddle nor had in her grasp a sword; she could neither read nor write; but she could spin and sew, and she knew the fabulous stories of the saints. This was the extent of her learning. What did she know of courts, of armies, of war? Nothing. Thus equipped with simplicity and poverty, she went out as commandcr-in-chicf of the first army she had ever seen, and saved an empire! We do not claim that other women have not done great deeds. We agree that the world owes to Godiva, to Deborah, to Florence Nightingale, to Frances Willard, to Jane Addams, to thousands of noble women, the greatest homage. But we do claim that Joan of Arc triumphed over the most terrific odds ever faced by man or woman. Without education, without influence, without experience; distrusted, ridiculed, scorned; facing prophesied death and, what was worse than death, the heartless ingratitude of her own nation,—she accomplished the most remarkable victory ever recorded on the pages of history. Ask Joan whence came her strength to struggle against these odds, and she will tell you that she was divinely sent. To her, if not to us, the voices were a reality. She believed in them and in herself. Some cry out, “Our own hearts teach us that God, the All-Loving One, detests war, and that he would never inspire woman to lead man into the gates of hell. Joan was the victim of hallucination.” Let us concede the point that the Maid of Orleans was a mere dreamer of dreams, PACE FOUR

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died to teach that the world is growing better; died to point out the way to th “great, far-off Event towards which the whole creation moves,—when the blindir veil of ignorance and superstition shall be rent in twain, when the dastardly care of the scaffold shall be terminated forever, when politics shall be clean, and juri unbribed; when woman shall have CAT CHE GUM EE “Set herself unto man, Like perfect music unto noble words; When man and woman Sit side by side,—full summ’d in all their powers, Distinct in individualities— But like each other—even as those who love. Then comes the statelier Eden back to man. OSHK.OSH+ THE CRUCIBLE OF THE NATIONS BERT N. WELLS N the dim light of medieval tradition, there is revealed to us the figui of the aged alchemist, who wills to draw from his many elemen the gold for eager men. He gazes intently at the materials befoi him. He takes one element; he rejects another; he puts the chose ones into the melting-pot. Strong as the molten mass within is hot, the crucible holds to the shape its maker gave it. The fusio is accomplished, and with infinite patience the process is repeated agai and again. Fired by the hope of a golden gleam, the man grows gray with the endle: selection and endless mixture of the substances at his hand. '1 here is a modern chemist whose material is human beings, whose crucible w« shaped in a new and better mold and tried in the furnace of civil war, whose cn is the gold of national character. It is given to this American people with its crucibl of Anglo-Saxon institutions to search out the character elements of the myriads c foreigners within our borders, to eliminate all that is base and unworthy in then to preserve the qualities that arc good, and to fuse them into one mighty whole,-into a more perfect civilization than the world has ever seen—more perfect becau incorporating more of the elements of a complete humanity. God has given to no people the solution of a greater problem. War will n( solve it. All the force of a million arms cannot accomplish it. Only by the wa of brotherly love, of broad human sympathy and deep human insight, will the gol be secured. To no other people could such a task be entrusted, and into no othc pace six