West High School - Hesperian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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r THE SCHOOL 8

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The Hesperian, this year, is dedicated “ I'o our boys in service whom we honor” and you have asked me to say a word in recognition of the West High boys now enlisted in the service of their country. One docs not need a personal acquaintance with these boys to understand the spirit, the motives and the ideals which prompted them to turn from paths of pleasantness and peace into highways of alarm and war. One can appreciate easily. item: the enthusiasm of the moment, or item: the sense of duty, or item: the horrible vision of unholy might, any one of which is. in itself, sufficient apology for what these boys have done. What we cannot so easily visualize is the evolution in sentiment, in life and in character that is taking place in camp and on battlefield today and every anxious day and night as long as this struggle lasts. It is to this evolution in the lives of our boys, of your boys, of West's boys, that 1 wish to pay tribute; because in it lies, in large measure, the success of the proposition to which every loyal American has subscribed—a democracy for all the world and a democracy safe for all the world. The lessons of camp and field today are lessons that will never be forgotten. Nor in the years to come will they be mere reminiscences. They are being driven and burned and welded into every fibre of the being of these boys and when the war is over the memory of these lessons taught by the God of Battles will give us pause. There will be. I doubt not, tho 1 know hardly a dozen of our 350 heroes, an erectness of carriage, a seriousness of purpose, and a conception of the responsibilities of citizenship in a safe democracy that will make us realize in the deepest possible sense that paths of glory have other objectives than the grave. The enlisted boys of West are the natural and unquestioned leaders in the coming generation of Peace. That much has their experience taught them; that much must our gratitude and our loyalty ascribe to them. All honor, then, to the stars of blue in the field of our service flag representing the virile well-trained manhood that is coming back to us. and all honor too. to the stars of gold representing those who have paid, already, the last full measure of devotion” to school and home, and country and democracy and humanity. 7 L. N. McWhorter.

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THE LUNCHROOM