T H ^ BATTALION
5
From a Campus Bachelor to his
Father on Armistice Day, Nov. 11,
1921, his Father’s 60th birthday.
A TOAST.
No more around ye flowynge bowle
Can Dad and I drink wine,
And toaste ye dames with lovynge
names.
Their smyles and eyes so fyne.
Ye longhaired lawe hath gummed ye
game
Ye towne is dry as snuffe.
And Merrie souls, beyond a doubt,
Do find it hard to do withoute.
Excepting ye and me, Olde Scoute,
Who never touched ye Stuffe.
* * *
,y
A reply from Dad, written Novem
ber 11th:
Your toaste doth touch me heart, dear
boy.
Your wishes taste full goode;
Avant the mug, no need employ
The brew termed “Liquid Food.
For sixty years I’ve shunned ye booze
For buttermilk and tea,
’Tis heads I win, ‘tis tails they lose
On days and nights of spree.
For now they drink with bated breath,
From God and man recoil;
Their vapid toasts, they reek of Death,
With crime and fusel oil.
Here’s Hoch to Nature’s finest brew,
’Tis aqua pure and sweet;
All hail the lads whose cups brim true,
With health and wealth replete.
Clear eyes, clear heads, clean lives,
clean love,
Wherever they may be!
All hail the lads, may God above
Grant all such, Liberty!
ROBERT W. SERVICE.
The editor pro tempore has asked
me to “do” Robert W. Service, the
popular poet for the Faculty Bat
talion. (If W. T. Strange had writ
ten that sentence, he would have
omitted the quotes). I find that Ser
vice estimated his work better than |
I can when he said that some of his
rhymes were bad and the others were
worse.
There is much confusion today as to
the distinction between rhyme, verse
adn poetry.
“We may live without poetry, music
and art;
We may live without conscience, and
live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may
live without books;
But civilized man cannot live with
out cooks.”
This is good verse—and good sense.
“I sometimes think that never blows
so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar
bled;
That every hyacinth the garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once
lovely head.”
This is genuine poetry.
“Now,” I say, “You Teutonic blight
er!
Have you any children ? ” He answers
“Nein.”
Nine. Well, I cannot kill such a
father.
So I tie his hands and leave him
there. (Service.)
This is atrocious—and it isn’t.
Service, I suspect, is in the class
with Harold ' Bell Wright—read by
everybody except professors of Eng
lish. Let us grant for the occasion
that vox populi is vox dei. What is
there in Service’s rhymes that gain
him many readers ? The clue is bio-
Which will next year’s
captain wear?
Published in
the interest of Elec
trical Development by
an Institution that will
be helped by what
ever helps the
Industry.
TT DOESN’T need much wisdom to predict that
1 next year's nine will be captained by a '‘23
man or maybe a ’24 man.
This is no affront to underclassmen. Years of
steady plugging must go before you can handle the
man-sized responsibility of running a team.
That this is just, seniors will be the first to assert.
They have seen how well it works for team and col
lege. Then let the seniors keep this point of view,
for soon they will find how closely the principle
applies to themselves in the business world.
Captains of industry are not made overnight.
Don’t expect to step into a managership right
away. Before you can lead, you’ve got to serve
in the ranks awhile.
This is best for your organization and best for
you. The time and energy you put in working up
from the bottom, taking the bitter with the sweet,
getting the upperhand over your job, will stand
you in good stead when you have won through
to executive position.
When you have learned how to handle detail
work, you can begin intelligently to direct other
men to do it, and thus free yourself for creative
planning.
You who intend to be captains, have patience.
\ our year will come and so will your chance.
Since 1869 makers and distributors of electrical equipment
Number 18 of a series
graphical. Service was born in a
small town in Scotland and started life
as a bank clerk, but the call of the
wild got him and he took up his abode
in the Canadian Northwest. The pop
ularity of Service, like many other
things today, can be explained on the
principle of frustration. All urban
ites have the instinct for adventure
badly suppressed. Now Service sat
isfies this instinct vicariously. If one
cannot lead an adventuresome life
oneself, the best next thing is to read
after someone that has lead such ?,
life. This is about all there is to Ser^
vice. As a literary artist, he couldn’t
qualify. However, there is one liter
ary device that he is very clever at.
I refer to what the high-brows call
invention. The “Ballad of Soulful
Sammy” is a good thing of this kind.
Professor William Lyon Phelps of
Yale said the other day that he had,
out of a sense of duty, recently read
every word of one of Harold Bell
Wright’s books in order to answef
the charge that he had condemned him
without first having read him. I
thought that I would go Professor
Phelps one better and read two of
Service’s volumes, but one was my
limit.
IS RELIGION NECESSARY.
(We take great pleasure in publish
ing this little article by one who signs
herself, “one who takes care of the
faculty.” A hasty mental glance over
the faculty ranks reveals no group
showing more conclusive evidence of
good care than the more or less un
savoury coterie inhabiting “Ike’s
Place.” This gives rise to a suspic
ion, as to the unknown author, which
we thus communicate to our readers.)
“Religion should be practiced for
the reason that it lays the foundation
for the growing youth to live a
straight, clean, conscientious life,
which is the only road to happiness.
“Any undetermining of the theory
that we call Religion will cause up
heaval and insecurity to human civili
zation. If Christian leaders were re
moved from our midst, civilization
would be on the down grade in a very
short time and humanity would fin
ally sink back into barbarism. A
human creature without Religion,
“which is a higher police,” is the most
dangerous of beings. Therefore sup
port Religion, if for no other reason
than to save mankind from destruc
tion.”