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

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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

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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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V. crucible than that of American institutions could so many various elements be poured without the destruction of the crucible itself. To the England from which came the Pilgrim Fathers, we owe an everlasting debt of gratitude for the strong basic elements of our crucible. There, first among the nations of Europe, were asserted the rights of the many against the rights of the few. And there, from Magna Charta to the Bill of Rights, the rights of the many gained in ascendency until monarchy was but a check upon democracy. When the fathers of the American constitution constructed “the most perfect piece of work ever struck off at one time by the mind and purpose of man,” they cut off from monarchy and aristocracy the last vestige of their inheritance of the ages, and made the will of the people supreme. From England we received our body of common law, and from the same England we received the spirit of the laws—the spirit of “fair play.” To the mother who gave our nation birth, then, be everlasting thanks; for “Law is the deep, august foundation, whereon peace and justice rest.” Add to English law perfected the principle of religious toleration ingrained in the American system—the principle which permitted Puritan, Huguenot, and Catholic to unite in the formation of our national government, and the principle which has freed us from the Old World curse of religious feuds. Much we owe in the development and maintenance of American institutions to this toleration which holds sacred to every man his choice in the worship of his God. The nineteenth century bequeathed to civilization many precious gifts, but none more close to human welfare than the principle of universal education, the gift of America. Democracy brought forth the first application of this principle; for no democracy can long exist without it. In a government by the people, “ignorance is a crime,” for ignorance, a necessity to the existence of despotism, strikes at the heart of democracy. America, through free schools, is lifting and shall continue to lift the ignorant and morally uncertain masses into the clear realm of reason and rectitude of purpose. With the greatest instrument ever possessed by any people, this nation shall produce the mightiest intellectual and moral host the world has ever seen. English law, religious toleration, and our system of public instruction afforded the opportunity for the making of the America of today, and in them lies the making of the America of tomorrow. Put into this institutional crucible the suppressed and hidden powers of peoples of eighty races. What infinite possibilities shall leap to light! What mighty forces shall come into action! What glorious works shall be wrought! But who shall watch over the molten and seething mass? Who shall see the promises of gold in the mixture? and the evidences of impurities? Who shall draw off the dross and mold the gold? We, the already assimilated Americans. We, who number among our ancestors many Old World races. From as many sources come these new people. Peasantry from the hogs of Ireland, from the squalid villages of Italy, from rugged Norway, from the plains of Hungary and Poland and Finland, wanderers from the old Grecian cities, worn toilers from Sweden and Germany, Jews from out the realm of Russian oppression, blindly seeking for the better thing—all these alien hordes, congregated in the tenements of the “slums,” working in factories and in mines, arc the substances with which we, as the chemist, must work. The clods of many nations—a million and a half added in 1907 to the already innumerable throng; men whose nobler and finer instincts have GI TCI IE GUMEE PACE SEVEN