University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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8 Qlurks anti Giants 1918 exotic places filled with picked and sometimes pampered youth. Let us thank God that the bugle call has shown them in a high and different light and that like France in her agony, they have plucked everlasting renown and glory out of this time of test and trial. Five hundred of our own youth responded to the call. Two thousand of our alumni sought service wherever they could find it, and fifty thousand American students left their desks to march under the flag. The new national army, it may well be claimed, is oflicered by those who walked in college lawns and quadrangles in April, 1917. We who really know such places as the University of Virginia know that all this is as it should be, for here lives a spirit which unobtrusively teaches youth the way of honor and the path of duty. Here burn quietly the lires of patriotism and here call steadily the obligations of citizenship. There is no needlthat this brief word of remembrance and dedication shall seek, by rhetoric or eloquence, to drive the sons of Virginia to the doing of their duty on the battle line across the seas. They know better than we can here recite that their country is in danger, that their cause is just, and that the world is in peril of brutal domination. They know, too, that out of this travail a new world shall be born and that they shall be the architects of its fate and fortune. Some of them will give their lives to this emprise and live in our annals as names to stir the blood and exalt the soul. Others will return to reconstruct and readjust a chastened and re-invigorated democracy to the end that it may indeed prove itself the ultimate wisdom in the social order. Our task, therefore, is not so much to incite them to action as to lift up our own hearts and strengthen our own wills in this vast conHict of national morales, in this supreme test of national resolution, courage, resource and energy. That nation or group of nations will win this war which has the highest and finest will to win this war. Victory will surely come to those who can longest maintain moral and social unity, and America will not fail; Some proud day our youth will come back to us, and we shall hear upon

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l 1918 Qlurk5 ant: Qlu'rls 7 m a. - -----th N??? h'IIlllllIlllIlllIIIIIlmammiNK-tprnwnuIllllllll'll lb. Aug Pg$o .ll' 1 4 g mm mm s .uIlIIIIIET u- s. s....... M-,m.mw.ym h sac?! ill fallow HT is the time-honored custom of this Annual to commemorate in its dedica- tion some son of the University who had, in his life, illustrated the best traditions and finest spirit of his Alma Mater. In this fateful year the custom properly passes the bounds of individual excellence and attainment and includes the hosts of the men of Virginia, young and old, who have so simply arrayed themselves under the colors of the Republic in defense of civi- lization. CORKS AND CURLS, therefore, celebrates and acclaims, with solemn pride, the alumni of the Universisty, of all services and in all lands, who wear the nations uniform and defend the nations rights. The University of Virginia, like all of her sister colleges, had no love of strife and war. The place was indeed literally steeped in idealism and peace, but when the bolt fell there was no pause or delay. As a part of a s proud tradition, her sons everywhere instinctively arose to the call of man? hood and duty. There is nothing more dramatic and appealing in our history than the reaction of the American colleges and universities to the call of their country in this war for democracy and the independence of the world. Men thought of colleges as homes of learning and idealism and leisure. and there were critics who adjudged them Visionary and impracticable-select,

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1918 alotk aznu earls ' 9 our streets the measured tread of their feet. Victory will sit upon their bright bayonets, and on their tattered Hags will shine a new glory that will never fade away. My single prayer is that there may then out of our deepest cont sciences arise the power to say: htWe, too, in quiet homes, in shop and mart, in factory and held, helped these young soldiers of democracy to save the world for justice and liberty? . . EDWIN A. ALDERMAN.