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 9
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Andover has always assumed the honorable manliness of her sons. That is why so large a proportion of those sons are honorable and honored men of today, standing straight and steadfast in the world's great work.
Page Sixty-two
Contrast
BY A MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF 1915
T HE last squealing, protesting, and badly frightened horse had been swung over the rusty side of the transport Lotus. We lay alongside the wharf at Mar- seilles, due at any moment to turn our nose eastward through the outer harbor and start our "run" for Salonika, to join the troops already on the Balkan front.
With "sub"-infested waters ahead of us, a cargo of stinking mules and horses, and almost as stinking black colonial troops, no one was looking forward to the trip.
The hilly city rising from the harbor in irregular steps of pink and yellow walls and red tile roofs looked very peaceful and inviting in the afternoon sun. I hated to leave it.
Here and there narrow twisting streets opened into the highway that ran along the harbor edge; acting as tributaries to the endless noisy stream of traffic that rattled and jogged over the cobblestones.
Watching this lively procession, I noted one side street cleared itself of the last few carts and motor trucks and lay there in empty shadow, a dead artery in all this rush and bustle. A straggling crowd began to collect at this corner, peering up into the street's twisted windings. Traffic slowed at the corner and finally halted altogether.
Some spell seemed to be spreading from the mouth of that side street, for the procession along the waterfront stormed up and stopped also, seemingly spellbound.
As the rumble of carts and trucks died away, a mur- muring undertone of music carried to me faintly from that now quiet side street. Gradually it grew louder, swelling and sinking with well defined cadence. It was no ordinary music, but a chorus of human voices, hundreds of them, so blended and keyed that the sound came floating to my ears in great rich chords, organlike in their quality. I never heard anything like it. The growing volume set the still air vibrating with its crescendos and sent the chills down my spine. Then again the main chorus seemed to simply hum the air while a smaller group sang the verses, now loud now soft, sometimes with a mournful strain running through it, but through all its vibrations carrying a beat and an irresistible rhythm that started my feet tapping to its time.
Suddenly out of that narrow side street swung the singers, a river of human beings that filled it from wall to wall with one great well-drilled stream: - Russians!
Tall men, they were, in olive drab tunics with a heavy blanket roll over one shoulder, heavy boots on their perfectly swinging feet, and their high sheepskin hats that set off their swarthy animated faces.
Leading them three men gave the key and led the music with accordions. Save for the expanding bellows of their instruments and flying fingers they might as
well have been silent, for their efforts were completely drowned in that flood of harmonious human voices.
I had seen men march to stirring music before, but never have I seen the beat and swing of a marching song so take possession of the men. They moved with feet and arms swinging in absolute precision, as if moved by one set of muscles. It was a marvelous, stirring, never-to-be-forgotten sight.
Here before me was that Russian "steam roller" the newspapers were always talking about. Strength, discipline, rhythm, power; a mighty people!
Several months passed. Russia had collapsed. Kerensky was struggling with a hopeless task. I was returning to Salonika in an English staff car that had given me a "lift". We had missed our way and were endeavoring to get on to the Vardar plain and the main road that runs into Salonika.
Dusty and hot, my companion and I had lapsed into a tired silence, trying to make what speed we could along the side road that wound through low hills toward the plain.
Shooting around an abrupt bend and out from between the hills, we suddenly found ourselves on the main highway.
What a sight greeted us! We had plunged into the very midst of a great straggling mob marching, not to the front but away from it!
Tall men in soiled olive drab tunics, many without this or equipment of any kind. Here and there a sheepskin hat was tilted at a drunken angle above a savage, almost delirious face! Russians!
The road was choked with them and they overflowed on either side as groups and stragglers swarmed locust- like through houses clustered here and there in the fields.
Over the car they pressed as wild a mob as ever swept across the steppes. They were through with war, and had calmly deserted the front and were marching on Salonika.
Here and there a petty officer walked among them, his insignia stripped from his tunic, while newly "elected" officers rode on stolen horses. Over this maudlin horde a huge square of red cloth nailed to a stick flapped wildly in the hands of a drunken giant.
Stupefied, we sat awed and silent at the sight con- fronting us, while this wild stream poured and eddied around us. It scarcely seemed possible that this dis- organized, delirious, hooting mob could be in any way a part of that great machine which had thrilled me in Marseilles just a few short months ago. A machine that had hypnotized the traffic on the water front with its discipline, its strength, its rhythm, and its power.
Yet before me marched these same men, weak, dis- organized, helpless, a deluded and liberty-ruined people!
Page Sixty -three
The Flag
BY MAJOR GENERAL HENRY G. SHARPE, '76, U. S. A.
O UR Flag and Our Alma Mater have always been intimately associated. The former was estab- lished by Resolution of Congress dated June 14, 1777, and the latter was incorporated in 1778. Many of the founders of our Country were patrons and visitors to the Academy in those early days.
"Our Starry Flag" (as Edward Everett once said) speaks for itself. Conscious of the noble ideals it typifies and of the high principles it represents, we reverently salute it: and, though no device or written words are allowed to be placed thereon, it bears to us the message, "In God be our trust".
The National flag represents the living country and is considered as a living thing to which we render our devotion, reverence, and respect. It is always kept under guard, given the place of honor; no other flag or color may be flown from its staff; a detail of the guard raises or lowers the flag; and when lowered, which must be done from the top of the staff, no portion of the flag is allowed to touch the ground. The National flag, when flown at a military post or when carried by troops, is not dipped by way of salute or compliment. Men, women too, have died to uphold it because of the ideals and principles it typifies and represents, and for the same reason it should always be borne proudly on high. When the National flag is worn out through service it hould not be used for any other purpose. If not pre-
served it should be destroyed as a whole, privately, preferably by burning.
Many of the alumni and students of our Alma Mater have aided the Government and supported the flag in the several wars in which the Country has engaged.
In the World War a service flag was instituted for families, corporations, churches and institutions, to bear a white star for each member in service, and a gold star for each one who made the great sacrifice, in order to insure for us the liberty we now enjoy.
The Service Flag of our Alma Mater bears 2,278 stars, of which number 87 are of gold.
Franklin once remarked: "The heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it." Our debt to those men can never be satisfied, and, for that reason, we must make constant effort to carry on the work for which they made the great sacrifice.
"In the dream of the Northern poets The brave who in battle die, l'ight on in shadowy phalanx In the field of the upper sky; * * "No fear for them! In our lower field I.et us toil with arms unstained, That at last we be worthy to stand with then On the shining heights they've gained. We shall meet and greet in closing ranks, In Time's declining sun, When the bugle of God shall sound 'recall', And the Battle of Life be won."
Andover in the Diplomatic Service
BY HON. EDWIN VERNON MORGAN, '85 Ambassador to Brazil
TT has fallen to Phillips Academy, Andover, to con- tain upon the rolls of its alumni the two men in the American Diplomatic service who at their respective posts have served longer as chiefs of mission than any other ministers or ambassadors.
Mr. George P. Marsh, of Vermont, an Andover alumnus, who was commissioned Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on March 20, 1861, and whose portrait was or is in the Academy collections, acted as our principal representative in Italy for some twenty years, and Edwin V. Morgan, who was appointed Ambassador to Brazil in January, 1912, continues to represent his country at that post. The enactment of the Rogers' Act will probably in future give other American diplomatic officials an equal or longer term of service, but at present these two "records" to which Andover may lay claim have not been equalled.
Since the enactment of the Rogers Bill, as a useful and interesting career, our Diplomatic service affords
an opening to intelligent, industrious young men of high character who are willing to make the sacrifice of passing a number of years outside their own country, which in compensation brings them into relation with public and private persons who exercise in- fluence upon the destinies of the leading countries of the world.
Brazil during the last sixteen years has vastly de- veloped her natural resources, the further exploitation of which awaits an increase in population, the expan- sion of education facilities and the construction and maintenance of internal lines of communication. The cooperation of the Brazilian Delegation to the Pan- American Conference at Habana with the Delegates of the United States illustrates the close political relations which bind the two countries, which are the only two on the American continent which are not of Spanish origin and between which there has never been a break in friendly intercourse.
Page Sixty-four
"Could it have been those Sunday sermons in the old Seminary Chapel?"
Retrospect
BY REV. NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, '75
THERE is a time for everything under the sun, and retrospect can answer in vigorous rejoinder to the poet's query :
"What is this life, if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?"
Retrospect makes the time, the standing, and the stare while repeatedly it is as refreshing and as grate- fully stimulating as "cool water to a thirsty soul".
Who can estimate the delight, or strength, or inspira- tion which leap to life when reminiscences of treasured days begin to speak again!
Henry Newbold goes back to his old school to see his boy just giving himself to his country in the dark war days. He stands before the old chapel and goes to con- fession before the altar of his memory.
"This is the chapel; here my son, Your father thought the thoughts of Youth, And learned the words, that one by one, The touch of Life has tuned to truth."
Who can interpret the soul of one's retrospect or with accuracy place his finger upon particular incident or experience which was responsible for that something which inspired him to make his life a straightaway march breastforward?
Was it the memory of his own kin who had been Phillips boys before him? Was it "Philo", or the "Society of Inquiry"? Could it have been the unsus- pected pedagogy of some teacher who saw the real boy while yet he was a great way off, somehow got a half- hitch on him and piloted him out into the channel?
Could it have been an unexpected meeting with his old Principal at a sweet cider conclave, to which the Principal was neither invited nor expected ?
Could it have been those Sunday sermons in the old Seminary Chapel half a century ago, at the close of the morning edition of which, the preacher not infrequently would solemnly remark: "In the good pleasure of the Lord, we will continue this meditation in the afterpart of the day"?
Could it have been that indescribable feeling we experienced when loaning our double runners to the theologues, we sat on the fence in front of the Academy watching these incipient men of God do the honors to the Abbot girls, while under the law, we Phillips boys could only view the prospect from afar?
Was it our work which precipitated the forming pur- poses of our lives?
Who shall reveal the incident which introduced the essential?
But any way, somehow, something gripped us in the old school which may have surprised others as much as ourselves. We caught a glimpse of the meaning of real, rugged life and felt the stirrings of kindling desire to capture life, to live upon the heights, with their wide horizons and their stimulating prospects! For every indirect and anonymous influence which jostled us just a bit toward the real inspiration, we owe the direction, the discipline and the development of our lives. What a friend old Phillips has been to us as we have jousted in the lists of life! God bless the old school!
Page Sixty -five
Some Recent Books of Importance
BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS Writer and Lampson Professor of English at Yale University
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS From a painting by Jere Wickwire, '02
O NE wonders how some authors find time to read their own works, much less write them. It must take H. G. Wells, Eden Phillpotts, J. S. Fletcher many days and nights to read the proofs of their own com- positions; the original work can be dictated but the proof must be read.
The Rise of American Civilization by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard is a historical work conceived on original lines and written with dignity and distinction. The frontispiece to the first volume shows a man and an ox engaged in plowing; the first volume is called The Agricultural Era. As a matter of fact this picture might stand as a symbol of eternity; for as Waller said that the only two occupations in heaven we are sure of are sing- ing and loving, so the only thing that is certain to last as long as earth is the tilling of the soil. Sound scholar- ship and an absolutely independent outlook are the characteristics of Charles and Mary Beard.
Two highly important and interesting works are the volumes Greece and Rome by Professor Rostovtzeff, and they are copiously illustrated. The author gives a presentation of the actual conditions of economic, social, artistic, political, literary, and domestic life. And what a difference between these works, built on
profound and patient scholarship, and the slapdash 'Outlines" of the world in general and of anything in particular!
In purely literary scholarship, the most important book of the year is The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination, by Professor John Livingston Lowes, of Harvard.
The completion of the Yale Shakespeare in forty volumes is worthy of special mention. A large number of scholars have cooperated in the production of this attractive and valuable edition. The last volume, completing the set, contains the Poems, and is edited by the famous Elizabethan specialist, Professor Albert Feuillerat of the University of Rennes. Finis coronat opus.
The foremost biographical works of the year were made in Germany. Two years ago the name of Emil Ludwig was unknown in America; in 1927 everyone was talking about him. Four of his substantial books have appeared in English translations - Napoleon, The Last of the Kaisers, Bismark, Genius and Character; the last-named being a collection of stimulating bi- ographical essays. Of these four books the most inter- esting is the one on Napoleon, partly because of the inescapable glamor of the subject; the least interesting is the one on Wilhelm, for the same reason; the most permanently valuable is the one on Bismarck.
Autobiographies, which, to many readers, are the most interesting of all books, increase and multiply. Of the great dead, Emerson and Thoreau appear in convenient and accessible form, both skilfully con- densed. The Heart of Emerson's Journals and The Heart of Thoreau's Journals are two books to be ship- wrecked with. The accomplished British journalist, J. A. Spender, has published in two volumes Life, Journalism, and Politics. He has known intimately the leading figures in English politics during the past fifty years, he is a man of the world, a scholar, a practical journalist, and withal spiritually minded; he knows how to write and how to give point to an anecdote.
An extraordinarily clever and altogether delightful book, half autobiography and half fiction, "truth and poetry," is Some People, by the English diplomat, Harold Nicolson. Here is a gallery of portraits worthy of Max Beerbohm or of anybody else.
In original American poetry, the year is chiefly notable for the appearance of Tristram, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. This has made a deeper impres- sion on the public and on the critics than any other volume of poetry written by an American in the twentieth century. Mr. Robinson's previous work had given him a deservedly high reputation; it was marked chiefly by intellectual qualities, the power of analysis,
(Continued on page 73)
Page Sixty-six
BURN ENGRAVER BOSTON
THE OLD MAIN BUILDING "Condemned by the Officials"
Scholarship and Life
BY DAVID KINLEY, '78 President of the University of Illinois
BY scholarship I mean the accumulation of varied knowledge in many lines of culture, set in such relationship with one another, under the logical control of a well-balanced judgment, as will produce a person- ality independent, individual, yet in harmony with its social environment; a personality emancipated from control by herd opinion, self-mastered, self-critical, with balanced judgment and urbanity.
Someone has called education a "spiritual revalua- tion of human life". The finest spiritual revaluation of human life can be made by those of richest and ripest scholarship, in the sense in which I have attempted to describe or define it. For it is such a volume of knowl- edge of human values and relations, such experience of their operation, as produces in the individual a ripened and just judgment which enables its possessor to decide what is best worth knowing, what is best worth doing.
Scholarship is entirely compatible with the pursuit of a vocation or profession by which one makes his living. For the pursuit of a vocation or a profession implies only such detailed knowledge of it as is necessary to success in its pursuit. But aside from this knowledge one may have the wider knowledge that is the founda- tion, as well as the rich background, of personality and happiness in life. Indeed, that wider scholarship may well be the basis on which the vocational or professional specialization is built. For one cannot know everything. The part of scholarship is to select what is of most worth. To quote the old song referred to by Herbert Spencer in his discussion of this same subject:
Could a man be secure That his days would endure
As of old, for a thousand long years, What things might he know! What deeds might he do! And all without hurry or care.
The relation of scholarship to life is the relation between what Aristotle calls the "good life" and the causes which produce the good life. Scholarship, as I have remarked, produces or develops personality - rich, diverse, profound, well-balanced, harmonious internally and externally. In the scholar the intellectual, the moral, and the physical capabilities are in harmony. He, as an individual person, is in harmony with human- ity, justice, and love. Scholarship brings to the scholar's life peace, serenity, helpfulness, idealism, in proportion to the richness and ripeness of his scholar- ship. It contributes, therefore, to his happiness in life and to his success in his calling, because success in one's calling is likely to be greater, the finer the equipoise of the individual character. Scholarship promotes all these results, therefore, in the life of the individual scholar and in his relations to his fellow men. He is able to look on the world and its doings with serenity, and yet with the kindly interest and desire to serve, which are strongest in the minds and hearts that know most about men and their doings, and therefore most fully understand the touch "of nature which makes the whole world kin." The scholar builds for himself a house upon a rock, in which he can find himself undisturbed by the waves of ignorance that beat against its foot.
Upon the top of this wooded hill
The temple we have builded stands serene, Stately and fair, with sunlit colonnades That open out for us on all the workl.
Page Sixty seven
From the Gay Nineties
(Continued from page 7)
and best of all we got a love of literature and a realization that study could be interesting. None of which, I may add, did I ever get out of the study of English, as prescribed by the College Entrance boards.
Many years later the boy went back, and attended again a Greek class. The first pupil to translate began with line 39, page 56. The old boy easily found line 39, page 56. But thereafter he never knew where any- body was unless the word Zeus was spoken. That was absolutely the only word on the page which he could recognize! Considerably amused, he told Mr. Benner after class. But, like Queen Victoria, Mr. Benner was not amused. In fact, he was flattering enough to ex- press surprise, and he was also obviously grieved. I am afraid he felt that he had failed in teaching this boy. Alas, how little any teacher knows on what soil his seed is falling, or even, sometimes, the nature of the seed!
POST NO
It is only a 'gz man sporting his new cane .
Vachel Rutisgrwt (Continued from page 8)
gone to bed, even peering under their beds for clarinets to repair; the Exeter girls had gone back to their dorm- ouses, as we called them in those days; the sub-prim- aries had been put into their sleeping bags; Andover was all a-still; then only Vachel Rutisgrwt came out of his hiding place under an aspirin leaf.
"Who wants me?" he whispered.
CHAPTER 3
It was the morning after the Junior Prom. Cynthia Beggmi, captain of Exeter's swimming four, called me out of an unsound sleep.
"Where is Vachel?" she asked.
"I ain't even been looking for Vachel."
"What have you been looking for?"
"The mine where your teeth was dug from," I replied.
(The next installment of this serial will appear in the Tricentennial Record of 2078).
A Horrible Example (Continued from page 13)
no. In the matter of writing books I was as ill-prepared as I had been to play a guitar in the Mandolin Club. In early youth, before I had studied English grammar, I was taken out of public school and placed in a private school, the headmaster of which believed in the active application of the theory of evolution, so he started at bottom, with Greek and Latin leading up to English and I left his school before I had progressed as far as English, and left with out knowing much about Greek or Latin, either. I attended other private schools and had tutors before I came to Andover, but they all ignored English grammar. When I came to Andover it was presumed that I had already studied English grammar, so they started me in on Greek and Latin again.
So, in casting about for my life's work and being unable to say no, I chose that particular line of endeavor for which I was signally ill-equipped. I am a horrible example and as such I present myself to the careful scrutiny of the young men of Andover in the hope that they may discover in these, my confessions, a moral for their own guidance.
Andover's Value to the Sons of the Rich and Great
(Continued from page 24)
Andover gives us something which is far more im- portant than the actual education we receive out of the books. It gives us a transition between the restrictions of the home, and the complete freedom, which too often we turn into license, of the outside world. In Andover, more than in any school I know, an endeavor is made to guide and not to restrict the actions of the students. That this effort is successful is borne out by the state- ment of a Yale graduate who told me that as to be- havior, the Yale authorities had less trouble from the Phillips Andover graduates - and I am in honor bound to say that he coupled Exeter with Andover -- than from the graduates of any of the other secondary schools. This is due to the fact that Andover endeavors to educate boys to make their own decisions and not to live by unexplained rules and regulations. Conse- quently in point of view of character the boys turned out from Andover are apt to be better equipped to handle problems of daily life than sophomores educated in the more strictly run schools.
The splendid scholastic records of our school are a matter of pride to her graduates. The splendid equip- ment installed on the hill in the last decade has re- ceived and deserves to receive the whole-hearted support of the faculty and graduates. But I would sacrifice the buildings and equipment without a thought in order to save the system of character education (largely through watchful, non-interfering guidance), that has been built up by the traditions of many generations of Andover Headmasters and teachers and brought to such an out- standing high mark by the present administration.
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