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 4
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An Incident of the Great War
{BY ELLIOTT R. THORPE, '15 First Lieutenant 26th U. S. Infantry
A LL evening long in the sickly, dripping light of the broken Pintsch-gaz lumiére the sergeant and I had alternated in repelling the invasion of our third-class compartment at each stop by bundle-laden, sputtering peasant women or men who mistook our prisoner-laden train for the regularly scheduled train, hours overdue, in keeping with the war-time methods of all French railroads.
It was not a case of prejudice against the buxom, though ofttimes aromatic invaders, nor were we in the class of "special privilege", but rather that we had a long train laden with a cargo of prisoners of war, and experience had taught that in this case, where regula- tions said no civilians would ride on the train, it was decidedly expedient to follow the law and the gospel as set forth by the Provost Marshal General.
As the night wore on and our patience wore out, the sergeant conceived an effective way of barring the doors to the compartment with a rifle or two, and at last we stretched out ready for such blissful repose as can be acquired on the hard seats of third-class com- partments only by men who have been herding a large group of prisoners of war, including some eighty officers, extremely conscious of their rights and privileges, for nearly a week on a railroad journey normally completed in a single night. Prisoners of war going to the rear had no status on the priority schedules of the R. T. O.'s.
The guards had been changed at the last stop and were off my mind for another four hours, so with my head on my musette bag and one leg braced against the opposite seat I slept, and right soundly.
Stop and go! Rattle and bang! How long it was or how far we had gone I have no idea, but as I lay sleep- ing I heard a voice singing:
"We're here once again with the team, boys; Five hundred strong, to cheer them on, So hand out old Andover's name boys, Across the field" -
At first I thought I was dreaming, perhaps of the great game on Plimpton Field when Ned Mahan showed his heels so many times to the Exeter linesmen; for a few short weeks before I had literally bumped into Mahan on a trip to Brest. The train must have been halted for some time when I became conscious of the fact that a real voice was singing an old Andover foot- ball song on the platform of a nameless French railroad station.
I roused up and, after struggling with the barrier we had put across the compartment door, finally opened it and saw in the dim light a single dough-boy sitting on a bag. "Hello," I called out, "what's your outfit?" The solitary soldier looked up and replied, "I'm in the motor transport." Calling again across the iron fence that stood between our train and the platform, I said:
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Page Thirty
A Memory of T'ai Yuan-fu
BY SAMUEL MERWIN Author; father of two Andover graduates
TN thinking over what sort of story or paper I might Lwrite in the hope of interesting the readers of the Record, the following anecdote has come to my mind. And as I have never before written an exact account of the experience, it may be worth while to set it down as accurately as I can remember it. Much ofit, fortunately, is still clear in my mind, after twenty-one years.
Early in 1907 I was sent to China to write a series of articles on the opium problem. At that time the old Manchu Dynasty was still in power, with the famous and really able and colorful Empress Dowager on the throne. Throughout the Southern Provinces, below the line of the Yangtse River, the spirit of revolt, which was to break out four years later, in 1911, and tear a vast empire to pieces, was seething, pretty openly. Seven years earlier, in 1900, the Boxer outbreak and the siege of the Legations in Peking had thrilled the world. What with one thing or another, during that first decade of our present century, life in the East was neither quiet nor commonplace.
I spent several weeks in Peking; most of March, in fact; then picked up an interpreter and a cook, and with a great lot of provisions, bottled water and such, caught a south-bound train to Che-ke-fiang (or Chen T'o, or Chien Tang) almost any name appeared to do - you had to know by intuition where to leave the train - whence a narrow-gauge line was under construction through the mountains of Shansi to T'ai-Yuan-fu, the Capital of that province. A sizable walled city, T'ai Yuan, the governmental and commercial center for some twelve million industrious folk. A city of banks, clubs and residences and spreading suburbs.
A word about my servants. The cook, of course, knew no English. I, also of course, knew no Chinese. John, the interpreter, or dragoman, to borrow a word from the nearer East, was a kindly and rather stout man of fifty; trustworthy, of course, like most natives of the old school. But during the journey southward it be- came apparent that he had little more English than the cook. He could say : "Can do", "No can do", "Have got", "No have got", "Tomorrow have got", "Chow". "Chop-Chop", "Stop now", "Go now", "Pdigin (business) belong your side", "Pdigin belong my side", "Top side", "Too much". Little more. Any more complicated thoughts simply had to remain un- expressed. Furthermore, as soon as we had passed the southern extension of the Great Wall, which follows the divide of the Shansi Mountains, northerly and southerly, he appeared to meet with difficulty in understanding the local speech, which differed considerably from that of his native province of Chih-li. Evidently John and I were each to have a rather lonely time of it.
A word, too, about my pass-port. From the Chinese point of view I hadn't any. By treaty I should have
carried a document in the Mandarin, or official language, authorizing me to travel outside the Treaty Ports. As I had never so much as heard of this requirement, I went cheerfully ahead without it.
We rode all afternoon up into the angular, tumbling mountains of red loess, and spent the night at a clean and attractive village inn. It was the only clean inn I was to meet with. We travelled all the following day in a sort of gondola car to the railhead at Shau-Yang, where we slept at another inn. Then for three days I rode in a springless cart with an arch of matting for a roof. John and cook rode pack animals - two mule- teers having been added to my suite - sitting high, and now and then taking a tumble. Cook, a romantic youth, apparently, sang all day long in a yodeling falsetto. A rambling narrative of life and love, I gathered.
Finally, toward evening of the third day, my little cavalcade wound down from the hills into a flat valley. Signs of more crowded habitation became evident. Walled-in temples, with their bits of greenery, ap- peared here and there on the high ground. A pair of thirteen-story pagodas towered over the countryside. Finally a great walled city came into view. Walls thirty or forty feet high, with battlements, and with immense gate-towers of superimposed roofs painted red and blue and green. And at the eastern gate, after a little stir of excitement among the soldiers on guard there, and much confused and stumbling argument from John, I was taken into custody. John's pidgin English was unequal to the task of explaining why.
The cart was guided through the narrow, twisting, walled-in streets. The better part of a mile of this, I should say. Crowds followed, jeering. The cart was open at the rear, and sitting within, in what little dig- nity I could muster, I experienced much the sensation of a man with a silk hat on walking past a crowd of boys with snowballs in their hands.
The soldiers escorted me to an inn, a large courtyard surrounded with buildings and half-open stables, with immense spike-studded gates giving on the street. Two of the soldiers remained to guard me; one at the outer gate, the other squatting on my doorstep. They had carbines, bayonets, revolvers and knives. For two nights and a day then my principal diversion was to peep out through holes in the paper-covered lattice that served for a window, at the formal guard-mount, which took place, day and night, at intervals of a few hours. A series of letters were handed in to me; Chinese calligraphy on red rice paper. I couldn't read them, of course, and John couldn't translate them, beyond the rather unenlightening offer that "Number One Policeman wantchee know pdigin belong your side." So I merely collected the letters.
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On the second evening a trembling John knocked at my door. His face was as near pale-green in color as any Chinaman's face can be. He said: "Go now". So we went. In front a soldier with a gay paper umbrella and a boy with a paper lantern. Then myself, with a black umbrella and a heavy overcoat, for it was rainy and cold. Next, John, with another lantern. And by way of rear guard, another soldier.
We walked, I estimated, a mile and a half through the dark and crooked streets. I know we passed through a gate in the city wall and on into the suburbs. A difficulty was that my rubbers were a little large for the shoes I happened to be wearing, and it was not easy, in that clinging mud, to keep them on.
The leading soldier knocked at a door in a wall. We were shown within. I caught a glimpse of a long, dim courtyard with paved walks and flowers, and beyond it the lights of a two-story house. A European house. It was the compound of the English Baptist Mission.
I felt, during the introductions to the group of family and teachers, a sense of constraint. Shortly the mis- sionary, The Rev. Mr. Sowerby, led me to his study and closed the door. He asked gravely: "What news have your boys picked up on the highway?" I explained that as I knew no Chinese, I hadn't a notion. He drew me to a window, and pointed out a white slab of stone in the court. "On that spot," he said, "seven years ago, a girl was burned at the stake. An English girl. One of my teachers."
This was not reassuring. Dimly I began to recall a book I had read a few years earlier, Dr. Arthur Ed- wards' "Fire and Sword in Shansi". During the Boxer troubles somewhere near a hundred and fifty white persons had been killed, butchered, in this one province. Mr. Sowerby told me that he and his family had escaped through the mere chance of his being away on leave at the time. Then he outlined the new situation. A European mining company, the Peking Syndicate, had negotiated a treaty with the Imperial Government at Peking, by which they acquired monopolistic rights in working the rich beds of iron and anthracite coal within the province. The privileges granted included some- thing not unlike the right of "Eminent Domain." The native companies were forbidden to import modern machinery or to compete in any effective way. As a result of this bit of shrewd negotiation, local feeling ran high. There had been mass meetings of the "gentry and people ", with fulminations amounting to threats of rebellion. The whole province was seething. There was even talk of joining with the southern provinces in the brewing revolt against the Manchus. It was a dangerous time for foreigners to be wandering about the province. Indeed, a Committee of the Directorate of the Peking Syndicate, which had been sent to Peking from Europe to inquire into the trouble, had been for- mally requested by His Excellency Ting P'ao Ch'uan, the Provincial Judge, who was at the time acting Governor, not to enter the province. He announced that he could not hold himself responsible for their safety. And I, it appeared, was supposed to be a spy.
It was not difficult to make my real status and my activities clear to Mr. Sowerby. At once he sent a messenger to His Excellency to request an audience on the following day. And then I set out to return to my dismal inn.
China is a land of gossip. John appeared to have learned from the porters at the mission gate that I was to be received by His Excellency. He communicated his bit of news to the soldiers. And before I caught the force of what was happening, the four of them, - John, the two soldiers and the boy, - were hurrying on ahead, eagerly, excitedly, talking it over. I was left behind to plod through the rain and the mud, and to struggle with those slipping rubbers. The thing to do, of course, was to call them back. But before attempt- ing this I must conquer my own unhappy spirit. For I was, frankly, in a state of perturbation. In dealing with the Orientals the white man who exhibits the slightest confusion or fear loses face instantly. He must maintain his position as the traditionally superior being. And at that moment, as I knew only too well, I was anything but a superior being. I was just about frightened to death. So I scraped along, steadily losing ground. They appeared to have forgotten me.
My thoughts, as I recall them now, centered in a quaintly grotesque manner on my rubbers. It seemed the most important thing in the world to keep them on. I might, of course, have hurried after those careless yellow men. But it wouldn't be dignified. And I should certainly have left the rubbers behind. They took on the force of a symbol.
We reached the city wall. Those gay lanterns bobbed on, thirty or forty yards ahead, tiny spots of light in a dark and mysterious yellow land. The nearest bit of white civilization was in Peking, two hundred and fifty miles to the northeast. Only seven years earlier these strange folk had slaughtered a hundred and fifty of my race. They were now preparing for a new slaughter.
The passage through the wall was a dark tunnel. It was black night in there. I guided myself by feeling along the surface of the masonry. Ahead those spots of light disappeared. My escort had got through and turned in some direction or other, Heaven knew where. I could hear unseen forms slithering past through the mud. Unhappily I felt my way along. And then the rubber slipped off my left foot.
I stood on the right foot, balancing against the wall. Every strained nerve in my body urged me to leave the rubber and run. Somehow to find those lights. I'll admit that all my thoughts by this time were distorted far from sense. I was unpleasantly near the brink of a disorder not altogether unlike the madness known among the French Legionnaires as "le cafard". More than ever the rubbers were a symbol. That left one in particular. Frantically I told myself that the only manly thing to do would be to stand right there and feel around behind me with a shaking left foot until I found it and could draw it on again. I am glad to
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Better Late Than Never
BY W. MORTON FULLERTON, '82 Correspondent and Author
T HE United States is to be a balancing Power, but France also is a balancing Power. France is an isthmus. For 3,000 years, and probably more, her Rhone Valley has been the highroad of the nations between the great Latin Middle Seas and the Atlantic Islands of Ultima Thule. Marseilles, which is an older settlement than Rome, is the portal of the Far East, while the French Jutland called Cotentin arrested for centuries the Norman and the Danish Viking making westward towards the vinelands of Norumbega on the coast destined to become New English. It is only within a relatively recent time that England has de- veloped the policy which had its glorious climax at Waterloo, and which, still pursued, has welded her, in spite of Waterloo, in an indissoluble union with France. France, on the other hand, has been a balancing Power for thousands of years. Her very existence as a nation has been the result of her persistent reaction against invasion from North, South, East and Southwest. The responsibility that America, that the United States is consciously about to assume, that of uniting the two worlds of the East and West, France had thrust upon her by the mere accident of her geographical position, centuries and centuries ago. It is by no mere chance that France opened the Suez Canal and swung the first pick in Panama. By deciding to complete the work of the French in uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Americans have become the coadjutors, the partners, the continuators of the French in their curious in- veterate tendency to be always undertaking a world task. The two countries, indeed, are often foredoomed to labour in other interests besides in their own. It is part of their special destiny to have to live not only for themselves but for Humanity.
Such are the moral aspects of geography. There is obviously such a thing as Isthmic Ethics, just as there is such a thing as Insular Morality. A people upon whom, owing to their conditions of habitation, no special responsibility has fallen to cultivate sociability,
urbanity, international comity, will be sceptical as to the disinterested activity of the nation established in the seat of customs. The natural origins of one whole set of impulses in the French temperament, of the French generosity, the revolutionary, all but anarchistic notion of fraternity, will remain hidden to men of another race, living off the highways of History and artificially removed from the centres and crossroads of civilization. Perhaps the only people now living in the world who are capable of feeling something of the exact shade of the word Humanité as used by the French are the North Americans. For an Englishman the word "humanity" has quite another meaning. It is either being kind to beasts and inferiors or a vague semi- metaphysical notion synonymous with the expression "human race". For a Frenchman the word signifies something richer, older, something Christian and Latin. What it means, indeed, is not wholly communicable to any who are not the heirs of a certain civilized past, the inhabitants of a certain kind of territory, where the ideas of family, society and social obligation have assumed specific forms. The grandiloquent humani- tarianism of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Michelet, sounds like puerile bombast to many British or German ears. It is a useful rule never to establish comparisons between national traits; the only intelligible attitude is to try to understand; furthermore, if one does not un- derstand, one should take it for granted that even the most apparently incomprehensible and absurd inter- national differences that are general have a raison d'etre, not merely a rational and interesting origin, but a positive utility and significance. When, therefore, the Frenchman protests that it is the glory of his country to labour disinterestedly for Humanity, the claim is not necessarily absurd; nor is the American when he insists that he went to Cuba for the sake of the Cubans, or that he holds Panama "as a trustee for Humanity", a hypocrite seeking to throw dust in the eyes of nations.
Andover in Indian Times
BY DR. WARREN K. MOOREHEAD Curator of the Department of Archaeology, Phillips Academy
TT is difficult to present a satisfactory picture of Andover in Indian times in the brief space alloted. Readers are referred to the excellent publication, Historical Sketches of Andover, by Sarah L. Bailey, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1880.
The Indian bands and sub-tribes residing in this region were all of the Algonquin stock. The principal sachem was Cutshamache, who resided near what is
now Dorchester. Passaconway was second in com- mand, and lived somewhere on the Merrimack River, possibly at the falls, now completely covered by the large dam at Lawrence. In 1646 this Indian, Cut- shamache, received £6 and a coat from the settlers, and deeded to them a strip of country extending from "Cochichawicke Pond" six miles south, then through eastward to Rowley and northward up the
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Merrimack, probably to Shawsheen. There is this provision : --
"pvided yt ye Indian called Roger and his com- pany may have liberty to take alewives in Cochi- chawicke River, for their owne eating; but if they either spoyle or steale any corne or other fruite to any considerable value of ye inhabitants there, this liberty of taking fish shall forever cease, and ye said Roger is still to enjoy four acres of ground where he now plants."
The above incident is typical of the treatment of the Indians by the colonists.
When the first settlement was made at Plymouth the Indians received the Englishmen gladly, and furnished them with corn and food during the first two or three winters. Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation is an entertaining account of our first contact with the aborigines.
As more and more settlers came to the shores of New England, their attitude toward the Indian changed. We have no record that the Indians began hostilities.
Andover and North Andover were originally one settlement. The Merrimack River was navigable for small vessels of that period, and probably the first white people settled near the river. All Indian settle- ments were on the Merrimack and tributary streams.
As the white population increased they extended their boundaries and encroached upon the rights of the Indians. The question of slavery was a potent factor in encouraging hostilities. One Hunt, an Englishman, enticed twenty-four Indians aboard his vessel, sailed to the West Indies and sold them into slavery. Two or three ship captains did likewise. One Indian, Epanou, was taken to England, learned English, and was brought back to act as interpreter. When the vessel was a mile or two from shore and anchored for the night, he jumped overboard, swam to land, and regained his own people. He told them of the fate of his companions.
The first fighting between the Puritans-Pilgrims and the Indians occurred in the Cape Cod and Narragansett regions, and not near Andover. There were alarms of hostile Indians at Andover in 1675. During the King Philip (Narragansett) war the Andover settlement sent a number of young men to join the troops. April 8, 1676, there was a direct attack on the town of Andover, and Joseph Abbott and others were killed by the Indians. After the Narragansett war there were not many attacks until the 22nd of February, 1697, when a number of persons were shot and several houses burned. In this last attack perished Captain Pasco Chubb and his family. Chubb was in command of Fort Pemaquid, and while there held a conference with the Penobscot Indians. While the council was in session, Chubb, having previously formed a plot, attacked these Indians (virtually under a flag of truce) and killed two chiefs and several others. A short time later a large force of French and Penobscot Indians descended upon Pem- aquid, and Chubb surrendered on condition that his life be spared. An Indian chief was found in the dungeon of the fort, chained to a rock and half dead from exposure. This exasperated the Indians to a high degree, but the French observed their terms and per- mitted Chubb to return to his home in Andover. The attack on the house of Chubb and other citizens was led by Asacumbit, a famous fighting man who frequently raided from Maine or Canada into Massachusetts terri- tory. Asacumbit was never captured by the Colonists. It is claimed that he and his warriors marched more than 200 miles in order to kill Chubb, because of his treachery at Pemaquid.
The Indian history of the Andover region may be said to end about 1720 or 1730. The few surviving Indians seem to have fled into Maine, whence they exacted heavy vengeance upon the settlements of eastern Massachusetts.
Floreat Academia
BY C. H. FORBES Professor of Latin at Phillips Academy
The years rest lightly on our Love And lend her fairer grace, A goddess throned, the hill above, Our hearts in her embrace.
Come, bend the knee before our Queen, In homage earned by worth; Through all the widening path we've seen The promise of her birth.
Spread wide her robes of splendor wrought, Nor fear the rot of pride; Her sceptre sways a realm of thought Where youth shall find its stride.
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PHILLIPS ACADEMY IN 1778 A recent rendering of an old woodcut by Schell Lewis
I Wish I Had Had
BY JAMES HARDY ROPES, '85 Dexter Lecturer on Biblical Literature at Harvard University; Trustee of Phillips Academy
T HE most famous of the long line of professors in Andover Theological Seminary used to say that, as he looked back, there was no one of his teachers whom he should not be glad to kick. He had not been a boy in Phillips Academy. It would be sad if most men with a considerable period of years behind them had any such impression, but it is nevertheless interesting to consider what one does regret in his education.
I was a student in Phillips Academy from 1881 to 1885. Much of what I was put through in those years - though a good deal of it was very different from the corresponding experiences of a boy of today - was ad- mirably adapted to its end, and what I gained from it has stood by me all my life. The Latin and Greek of Mr. Comstock and Mr. Coy left little to be desired as a sound foundation well laid. After what they did for me, what was needed was to practice what I had learned to do, and to grow by extensive reading. Their founda- tion has supported my studies all my life, and I rest on
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