USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > The sesquicentennial record : in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., May 18, 19, 1928 > Part 2
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Go back sixty years and you will doubtless find in most important schools very much the same ideas of school discipline and the means of enforcing it that pre- vailed in Phillips Academy in the '6os and '70s. Uncle Sam scolded the boys for their sins. When their in- fractions of the rules seemed to him too serious to be corrected by exhortations he suspended or dismissed them. There wasn't any flogging, so separation from the school was the only available form of correction. Of course, in sixty years the attitude of schoolmasters towards boys has changed very much. God looked different to our grandfathers than He looks to us. What Uncle Sam thought of boys no boy in my time ever knew. As far as they were concerned he was the great natural obstacle to sport. Nevertheless his pur- pose in life undoubtedly was to make as good scholars as possible, as good characters as possible and to keep order during the process. To the boys who were earnest students he must have seemed much less awful than to those to whom lessons were not much more than an
Page Eleven
"The Theologs of the Semin- ary figured in the picture of that day when the Seminary was still an Andover institu- tion.
unavoidable incident of connection with the school and an indispensable preliminary to admission to college. To poor boys he was tireless in aid and counsel.
After Uncle Sam died the school went on for the rest of the year under the domination of William G. Gold- smith, the head of the English Department. Some of the seniors left and continued their studies elsewhere. The next year came Frederick Tilton from Newport and continued as principal for two years and it was under his administration that my class graduated.
I suppose it is not fair to expect justice of school masters. There is the story of a man who walked down Pennsylvania Avenue with a justice of the Supreme Court, and said as they came to where they parted:
"Good-bye Judge, go in and do justice." But the old Judge turned back to him: "Justice!" he said, "what has that got to do with my job?"
True enough the job of a high court is to define and expound what the law is, so that men may know what they can do, and what not. Enforcing the law as it is, may do an injustice and often does. No doubt school masters' justice is something like that. Their purpose is to maintain a discipline that is essential to the useful- ness of their schools. To do that they must enforce such rules as seem necessary and in enforcing them they may often do injustice toward this or that pupil. Being fallible sometimes they decide wrong; but oftener, in the (Continued on page 69)
"The gymnasium in the old school building above the Seminary did an active busi- ness."
Page Twelve
THE
MORROBB
HOUSE BATON
G
CLUB.
Left to Right: "Andy" Gilmour, '92; Edgar Rice Burroughs, '94; "Gus" Thompson, '92; S. C. Conde, '95; Frank Burroughs, '93; May Morrill; Wirt Thompson, '94; Mancel Clark '94; B. F. Rice, '93; "Art" Foote;' 92.
A Horrible Example; or the Man Who Could Not Say No
BY EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, '94
E VER since I was first honored by an invitation to contribute to the Sesquicentennial Record I have been endeavoring to refresh my memories of Andover, but thirty-six years is a long time, and once again I am forced to regret my inability to say no. As I sit before my typewriter I discover a growing suspicion that I shall not be alone in my regrets.
Beside me are copies of the Philo Mirror for the Fall Term of '91 and for the Winter Term of '92. I had not opened these for, lo, these many years. Perhaps it would have been just as well if I had never opened them. They contain poems and numerous illustrations of my composition, the less said concerning which the better, except that they point the horrible example of the man who could not say no.
Some one must have asked me to commit these crimes and in my weakness I committed them. Doubt- less, had they asked me to murder my grandmother, I should have been equally spineless, and my contention is borne out by evidence, for about the same time I was asked to play a guitar in the Mandolin Club and agreed with alacrity, although I cannot conceive that I could have done so without misgivings, inasmuch as I had never played a guitar, am totally devoid of any sense of music, and did not know one note from another.
As the Mirror does not record my name in the roster of members of the Mandolin Club of 1892, I am forced to the conclusion that there were among them youths of stronger fiber than myself - youths who could say NO, and did; but I discover other evidences of weakness among my fellows. I learn, a fact that had escaped my memory, that I was President of P. S., '94. Perhaps I was the only member of the class who attended the election, but the chances are that it was just another
instance of my inability to say no, that has dogged my footsteps through life and which, a few years later and at another school, resulted in my appointment as a teacher of geology, a subject which I had never studied. As a professor of geology I was a star guitarist.
The time-yellowed Mirror records the class colors of P. S., '94 - pale blue and burnt orange. When one considers their choice of a presiding officer the selection of blue seems nothing short of an inspiration, but the fruit should have been lemon.
"Semper prodeuntes"! That was our motto. As to its meaning I remind myself of one of the defense attorneys in the recent Hickman trial out here where the sun shines three hundred and sixty-six days a year, who said that dementia praecox was from a French word meaning early youth - I do not know it. It might mean continually bobbing up, for I am quite sure that many of the asinine things that I did in my youth are going to keep continually bobbing up from now on to fill me with confusion and cover me with blushes after these confessions fall into the hands of the three superior young monuments that I shall leave behind me to signalize the fact that I have not lived entirely in vain.
Because I could not say no one day in Lawrence, Banty concluded that Andover could wriggle along toward its destiny without me. I feel that he was ill- advised, for if he had kept me there under observation, and learned what ailed me, I might have been taught to say no and a great guitarist thus saved for humanity, and horrified book reviewers and librarians delivered from a constantly recurring incitation to murder.
But he let me go and, years afterward, when some- thing within me told me to write a book I could not say
(Continued on page 68)
Page Thirteen
COMMANDER RICHARD E. BYRD, U. S. N.
Commander Byrd started his adventurous career at the age of twelve when he made a trip around the world alone. During the war he established and operated U. S. Naval forces in Nova Scotia, sending planes out to sea to watch for Ger- man submarines. He later had charge of the navigation of the N. C. transatlantic flights. He was sent to England in 1921 to navigate the ZR-2 to America, and in the summer of 1925 he explored 30,000 square miles of Arctic Territory in the MacMillan expedition. In 1926 taking off from King's Bay, Spitzbergen, he flew directly to the North Pole and re- turned. In the summer of 1927 he flew the Fokker monoplane America from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, to Ver-sur- mer on the coast of France. It was in 1927 that Commander Byrd spoke at Andover and it is this magazine's greatest honor to be able to have him among its contributors.
Page Fourteen
My Trip to the South Pole
BY COMMANDER RICHARD E. BYRD, U. S. N.
I APPRECIATE your including my name in the list of those asked to contribute to the Record in honour of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy. It is indeed an honour.
I shall try to give an idea of my forthcoming Ant- arctic expedition by answering, briefly, a few of the more important questions which the interested reader would be most likely to ask.
Probably the first one, and certainly the easiest one, to answer is:
"WHEN ARE YOU GOING?"
I propose to sail from New York in September 1928, and hope to fly over the South Pole during the season of 1928-29 or 1929-30.
The second, the most insistent, and by far the most difficult to answer, takes one of these forms:
"WHY ARE YOU GOING?"
" WHAT IS THE USE OF GOING TO THE SOUTH POLE?"
"WHAT IS DOWN THERE THAT COULD BE OF ANY VALUE TO THE WORLD?"
The difficulty of making a satisfactory answer to this question makes it almost unanswerable. But let me try to frame a reply.
The Antarctic Continent is, roughly, the size of Europe and Australia combined. It is a huge, high plateau, most of which appears to be covered with a vast ice sheet. Except on a tiny fringe at one or two spots, where seals and penguins abound, this white wilderness is, so far as known, as lifeless as space, and almost as cold. It does, at first sight, seem unreasonable to spend large sums of money and face great hazards in order to know more about so uninviting a part of the world. The only thing the expedition can promise is a tithe of abstract information, though our tour will be primarily a scientific one. As a result of apparently aimless research we now have many famous inventions and devices which add immeasurably to our comfort and safety. Each, though it seemed to come suddenly, was the culmination of generations of plodding, ab- stract inquiry into the unknown, and more often than not the inquirer was jeered and scoffed at for his pains. Arctic exploration is just such an inquiry after abstract knowledge. We anticipate no immediate gain from it, unless it is from our meteorological investigations. The expedition's Scientists can, perhaps, unfold something of the past. Our justifiable incentive is that we shall add to man's store of knowledge in the abstract, if only by gazing upon, and mapping a portion of the four million square miles of Antarctic territory never yet seen by a human eye.
With aeroplane cameras we should be able to secure photographs of rocky peaks, whose rocky sides, because of their vertical position, will be bare. This will give
an accurate geological section and a better one than could be obtained by a land explorer. It is possible that mineral deposits may be discovered. (It is an interest- ing fact that the only known cryolite in the world is found at Ivigtut in ice-covered Greenland.)
It is possible that an ice-age covered the Antarctic at a comparatively recent date and destroyed all land life. If this is true the fact can be disclosed, by investi- gation, and we will thus learn more about the geological ages into which the past of the world has been divided.
The next question is:
" WHY HAVE SO MANY FAILED IN ATTEMPTING TO REACH THE SOUTH POLE?"
The answer to this oft-repeated query is an easy one. The mystery of the Antarctic has not been solved because the approach to the frozen continent is guarded by a great icepack belt, sometimes hundreds of miles wide.
And even when this belt is penetrated, the land is still further guarded, so far as we know, by a solid wall of ice that sometimes reaches the height of 250 feet. It is often very difficut to find locations where these cliffs can be scaled. Then the weather conditions are worse than in any other part of the world. The Ant- arctic region is a frozen one, even in the summer time, and is subject to sudden and violent snow storms which may rage for days at a time.
The next question is:
"How ARE YOU GOING?"
We are going by ship, probably a whaler which has been built to withstand the buffeting of the ice in the Antarctic waters. The ship will be reinforced at the bow and around the water-line with extra thick iron plates so that it will be able to withstand the terrible blows we may have to give the ice to get through it. Since we shall be so long away from our last port of call that the coal bunkers will not be able to hold anything like enough coal, we shall have to arrange several of the cargo holds of the ship to hold hundreds of tons of extra fuel.
In another specially arranged hold we shall carry our three planes - one a big monoplane with three engines and a wing-spread of seventy-two feet, and two smaller monoplanes with single engines. (All of these planes will be equipped with interchangeable landing gear - pontoons, skis, and wheels, thus making it possible to land or take off from water, snow or land.) The ship will be equipped with powerful radio, with which we shall make an effort to keep in constant touch with the outside world. There will be a year-and-a-half's supply of food stored in the ship. This will supply the per- sonnel of the ship in the event that it is necessary to spend the Antarctic night before returning.
Page Fifteen
Perhaps the next question will be:
"WHO IS GOING WITH YOU?"
In the South Polar region lies the greatest adventure in exploration and aviation. So I am not alone in my enthusiasm, for there are literally thousands of volun- teers from all over the world who want to go with us. The selection of personnel is of the utmost importance, because this is the most hazardous region in the world, from aviation standpoint, and we are determined to prepare, so far as is humanly possible, for whatever dangerous situations may arise.
My old and tried shipmate Floyd Bennet* will be second in command. I can say nothing better for Bennet than to state that there is no man in the world whom I had rather go into the Antarctic with than him. Tom Mulroy, Chief Engineer of the North Pole Steamer Chantier, will be one of the Executives, another will be G. O. Noville, Lieut., U. S. N. R., then comes Bert Balchen. There will be fifteen others who accom- panied us on our Arctic Expedition last year. I hope to take several Norwegians because they are used to the cold and know the ice. We will take with us a zoologist, a geologist, an ornithologist, a biologist, a meteorologist, an ichthyologist, a geographer, and an expert on magnetism.
And now we come to the last question. I do not assume that even a meagre interest would not give rise to many other questions, but I am attempting to answer only a few of the most important ones.
"WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE WITH YOU?"
Besides the food supply mentioned, we will carry material for the establishing of sub-bases every hundred miles. We shall carry an additional small radio set,
* This article was written before the death of Floyd Bennet.
besides the large and powerful one; this set will have a high frequency and short wave and will be cranked by hand, so that we may reach the base in case we have to land on the ice.
We will carry mapping cameras, scientific instru- ments, four or five portable houses, fifty Eskimo dogs - Mr. Arthur T. Walden, of Wanalancet, N. H., is now engaged in preparing a freight-dog team - though the majority of dogs will come from Alaska. We will carry coal, gasoline, and oil for heating and cooking purposes, sleds (some of them air-propelled), supplies for work- shops - some of these work-shops will be cut out of the ice at our bases. We shall undertake, as soon as we arrive, to secure a kill of seals to lay by for possible use during the winter months, for there is no scurvy where there is fresh meat.
Our main base will be outfitted to maintain itself indefinitely without outside help. We shall have a small, light team of dogs and a sled which we will take in the plane with us on the final dash for the pole.
And finally, let me say that I shall be thrilled with the greatest satisfaction when I look down into the tens of thousands of square miles never before looked upon by man. But the greatest of all will come if we succeed in planting the American flag at the bottom of the world. It has never been anywhere near there. But we shall probably take with us the flags of several other coun- tries in honor of their noble deeds of exploration. That I think is the spirit of America - the spirit of friendship she has for other nations. It is in their sporting ad- venturous exploits that nations can strike a common chord and meet on high ground. I believe that an air expedition to the South Pole can also be made a good- will expedition with the great new instrument of peace and commerce - aviation.
PHILLIPS ACADEMY IN 1778.
Page Sixteen
A Word from Dr. Lewis Perry
Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy
THERE is no school which has more pleasure in the thought of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniver- sary of Andover than her sister school, Exeter. Over the stretch of the years these two schools have had the same ideals, the same struggles, the same questionings, and many of the same successes. So when Exeter enthusiastically congratulates Andover, she knows whereof she speaks!
As one thinks of Andover, the names of many emin- ent alumni come to mind, the names of great teachers like Dr. Taylor, Professor Coy and Professor Forbes, great athletes whose names are famous in school and college, but most of all, one thinks of the scores of boys who, each fall, for one hundred and fifty years, come to Andover Hill for the first time, differing as to
social background, financial advantages and intellectual training, who have found at Andover the measure of their real powers, and the true values in human beings.
Andover has always stood for high scholarship, for true democracy, but most of all for the development of character. In this epoch of great good fortune which has come to Andover, Exeter, unenvious, offers her sincere congratulations. There are new buildings, new professorships, new endowments, but it is the same old school which we know so well - our sternest, truest, dearest rival.
Even on the great Anniversary Day when the achievements of the past will be recounted, the real Andover will be looking forward. May the next fifty years be the greatest she has known!
.
THE ANDOVER OF TODAY FROM THE AIR " There are new buildings, - but it is the same old school."
Page Seventeen
THE MEMORIAL TOWER AND ANDOVER ELMS
Page Eighteen
Andover Elms
BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER, '04 Poet and Author
Strange now, that still unchanging in my mind, Which has known loss of friendship, hopeless wars, Encroaching age and pain, should lurk behind Something not utterly spoilt by time's defacing scars. Rows of green elms bowed underneath warm rain, An old grey stone fence and a whitewalled house or two; And when the rain has passed, will rise again Hills like deep purple tents on the skies' rain-washed bluc.
The sound of the wind within them is the noise Of a river flowing on from youth to life, Poised 'twixt expectancy and hard-earned joys, And hopes quick-spent, grey solitudes, and strifc. Yet the trees hold taut against the wind and bear Above the earth their plumes, the drooping swell Of their bold leaves, resisting still the air,
Telling in leafy consciousness all that a tree can tell.
God taught man by a tree, they say. I only know Beyond the spindrift and the sullen shout Of oceans yet unfathomed, in a row
Ranked stand the upright elms, as guarding a redoubt Of faith made clean and fair; youth going under their boughs, To dream, to laugh, to think, to gaily spend their ease; To catch perhaps some spar of thought, fit for man's loftiest housc, From these slow-drooping yet undaunted trees.
War Memorials
BY MONTAGUE J. RENDALL Late Headmaster of Winchester College, the sister school of Andover in England
TN wandering round the World I studied many War Memorials, especially those of the great Schools, and should like to set down three cardinal principles, which have come home to me, and to state one conclusion.
First, the scale and style of the Memorial should in some way represent the society to which it belongs.
What can be more fitting than a plain wooden Cross by the wayside, such as I passed in a mountain village in Corsica? It may stand, perhaps, for a few centuries and then can be renewed, if the peasants desire it. But important societies, like a great School, build a monu- ment to withstand "the wreckful siege of battering days" and be not less "enduring than brass". Such a Memorial makes some demand upon the resources of the community and carries a certain note of sacrifice.
Secondly, the best Memorial is a memorial and nothing else.
This is no occasion for sapping our material needs, however urgent, but for enshrining a sacred memory in some fair casket. Hence, such self-regarding memorials as swimming-baths and playing-fields, which I saw, do
not fulfill their purpose. Are we not in danger of exploiting a measureless sacrifice for our own ends?
Thirdly, a good Memorial must suggest an Ideal.
A soldier in khaki on a pedestal, which we see the world over, even in our railway-stations, awakes poignant memories and makes an appeal to our emo- tions; but unless the sculptor can put not only stead- fastness into his carriage but also the light of love and duty into his eyes, the tale is only half told and the better part is omitted. Perhaps we are asking too much of a sculptor, if we lean on him alone: certainly for all great memorials we must summon the queen of the arts, Architecture.
School Memorials then should be ample in scale, useless (the word is a challenge), and architectural.
Many schools have erected a Memorial Hall, usually a dining-hall, where boys gather twice or thrice daily and dream, perhaps, of heroic names. Others, like Roudebosch at the Cape or Charterhouse in England, have built themselves new Chapels: the latter is a
(Continued on page 71)
Page Nineteen
EDITORIAL
COLHER
BY ALFRED E. STEARNS, '90
T THE full significance of this anniversary season cannot be measured or understood by those out- ward manifestations of an historic event on which judg- ments are regularly formed. Beautiful buildings com- pleted and planned, the presence of hundreds of old boys and scores of distinguished guests, congratulatory speeches, bands and decorations - all these have their place and an important one. But we must look beneath the surface if we would sense the real meaning in the life of Phillips Academy on this her one hundred and fiftieth birthday.
For several years the trustees have been thoughtfully planning not only for this special event in the life of the school but even more for the long future ahead of which the Sesquicentennial will in a very real sense mark but the beginning. As efficient tools for the achievement of the larger purpose new and modern buildings and extensive grounds are necessary and welcome. But what of the larger purpose?
Secondary education today in the United States has not approached that position of prominence and in- fluence which has been accorded it in foreign lands, especially in England, for many years. The center of the stage has here too long been occupied by the col- leges, scientific schools, and universities. To them interest and money have flowed in ever enlarging streams. The finished product makes its natural appeal to all but the most thoughtful while the plain truth is commonly ignored that the finished product can never be better than the raw material of which it is composed. In the manufacturing world this indis- putable fact forms the starting point and is never lost from sight. We as a people are only just beginning to awaken to the truth that what is true in the material world is even more generally true in the world of men. Some one has humorously said that secondary educa- tion is called "secondary" because it comes first. That it does come first in time no one will deny. To bring home to the public consciousness the more im- portant truth that it comes first in point of importance as well is a crying need of the time; and it is to the accomplishment of this great task that the Trustees of Phillips Academy have set themselves in the belief that the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the founding of the Academy supplies the best kind of a setting and will in turn engender the needed momentum to assure the success of their high and worthy venture.
Far more important than the new and inspiring buildings that greet and satisfy the eye are the new foundations for teachers' salaries which ring the death knell of niggardly material returns for a service than which there is no higher, and the influence of which is bound to be far reaching and stimulating throughout the field of secondary education. Released from the apprehensions that must necessarily distress him as he faces the increasing financial burdens in his home, the extra demands of illness and unforeseen emergency, and the needs of advancing age, the earnest teacher can and gladly will under this new dispensation throw himself with fresh ardor and enthusiasm into the work which his high and unselfish calling entails. A new and challeng- ing appeal will be made to the strong and idealistic men emerging from college halls and scanning the oppor- tunities which life offers them to make their lives count. A new and refreshing dignity will have been given to the teaching profession in the secondary field. The builder of foundations in human character will take his rightful place among his fellow laborers. In its deepest sense this is what this anniversary season truly signifies in the life of our historic school.
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