Gareth to Lynette

Image from ARTMAGICK

Poem in College Magazine.

The following poem which appeared in the University of Virginia Magazine, published by the students, was written by L. Travis White, of Frederick, who is studying law at the institution:

Gareth to Lynette.

Then Gareth: “Here be rules. I know but one —
To dash against mine enemy and to win.” — Tennyson.

More soft than silken strands the hair
That tumbles round thy temples fair,
Tossed by the summer air;
Like roses bloom thy cheeks;
The droning bee they near deceive,
When proffered sweetness to receive
Some brim-full flower he seeks.

Thine eyes, like twin stars on the deep,
Soft-mirrored when the billows sleeps
And moaning winds their silence keep,
Shine tenderly; yet seem
They like the dewdrops when the lawn
Gem-strewn, doth greet the Sun of dawn —
And mockingly they gleam.

Near thee the lark on tireless wing
Hovers his sweetest song to sing;
To thee the zephyrs tribute bring,
With violent-laden breath.
The buds whose fragrance is most sweet
Are gladly crushed beneath thy feet —
Thrice blest in such a death.

But thy heart is as hard to lover’s pain
Like the rocks beside the storm-swept main —
Against them dash, in vain, in vain,
The waves of a passionate sea;
Yet slow to ocean yields the land,
The proud rocks crumble into sand —
So will I conquer thee!

— L. Travis White.

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 4, 1912

L. Travis White is number 4 in the picture above.

Frederick High School’s Class of 1911 is once again part of the scene at the local school, at least in the form of the official class photograph presented to the school recently by Robert J. DiDomenico, executive director of Goodwill Industries of Monocacy Valley Inc.

The full story of where the old fashioned studio picture spent the last 60 years will probably never be known, although it can easily be visualized gracing the living room of some proud graduate’s home.

Whatever its history, the picture complete with handsome frame and glass, turned up as part of an anonymous donation to Goodwill and was spotted by Mrs. Barbara Coulter, secretary to DiDomenico, who recognized it as an interesting bit of memorabilia for the school.

DiDomenico agreed that this was a fitting disposition for the photograph and it was presented to George Seaton, principal of Frederick High School.

The picture, taken in the era of the old Boys High School, now Elm Street Elementary School, reveals several points of contrast with more recent high school class photos. Most obvious, of course, is the fact that the class is composed of only 19 members, all boys.

It is also interesting to note that the students are pictured in a West Point type military uniform, an indication of the schools’ past presently reflected only in the nickname “Cadets,” used by Frederick High athletic teams.

The students’ haircuts, on the other hand, are a bit on the full side with moderate sideburns not too different from today’s more conservative styles.

Most familiar, however, are the surnames, most of which are still prominently represented in Frederick County today. No effort has been made to tell how many members of the class survived, but Principal Seaton would be pleased to hear from any who might still live in the area.

Names of those identified in the Smith Studio (of Frederick) photograph include: Clyde E. Burgee, Allen G. Quynn, Earl E. Zeigler, L. Ray Burgee, Louis A. Rice, James R. Keller, J. Ernest Haifleigh, R. Dorsey Sappington, Willis D. Witter, George L. Rothenhoefer, Dean W. Hendrickson, David L. Johnson, William H. Solt, Marvin L. Shirley, Prof. Amon Burgee, Edgar J. Eyler, J. Roger Fisher, L. Travis White, John L. Shaw and J.F. Minor Simpson.

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 15, 1971

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Jun 6, 1912

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Jun 20, 1914

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Apr 11, 1931

Image from Gamblers Book Club

From Bridge Guys – Bridge Books:

White, Littleton Travis – (July 3, 1894 – December 1973) – Littleton Travis White

Odd Tricks, c1934, Edited by Albert H. Morehead and Clifford A. Bender, Publisher: The Bridge World, Inc., New York City, United States; also Odd Tricks, 1978, Edited by Albert H. Morehead and Clifford A. Bender, Publisher: GBC Press, Las Vegas, United States, ISBN-10: 0896508102; also Odd Tricks, 1983, Edited by Albert H. Morehead and Clifford A. Bender, Publisher: Casino Press, ISBN-10: 0870190334 / ISBN-13: 9780870190339, LC: 34041970

Note: Mr. Paul Ryan has contributed this information in addition to a scanned version of the newspaper article in the El Paso Herald Post upon the publication of the bridge book. This information is included in a .pdf file for the interest of the bridge visitor and, in addition, a visually more acceptable version, also in a .pdf file format. Mr. Paul Ryan has also included the scanned version of the World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, of Littleton Travis White and also the scanned information collected during the 1930 United States Federal Census. Also include is the Social Security

*     *     *     *     *

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Work Done By The Just Government League:

[excerpt – L. Travis White’s mother was involved in women’s suffrage movement]

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 15, 1915

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Dec 17, 1901

*     *     *

Evidently, his sister was a bit of an artist:

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Oct 15, 1917

Image from HCAP

L. Travis White’s sister, Roxanna, married the president of St. John’s College. What I found interesting were his comments to the Rotary Club about the educational revolution, and St. John’s “counter-revolution”:

COLLEGE HEAD TALKS TO CLUB

St. John’s System Explained To Rotarians By President

Educational counter-revolution by St. John’s College, Annapolis, shared discussion with the shortage of Maryland oysters as topics of discussion before the Wednesday luncheon meeting of the Frederick Rotary Club.

Dr. John Spangler Kieffer, president of St. John’s College and also of Annapolis’ Rotary, described the 100-book foundation of knowledge system inaugurated by the school in 1937.

W.R. Slemmer, chairman of the local Rotarians’ committee for an oyster-roast to be held later this month, changed the after-dinner talk of members from the day’s topic of  “Education in Revolution”, to “will we be able to get oysters to roast?”, when he refused to continue sale of tickets for the proposed affair, until weather conditions and the bivalve market assures delivery of the food.

Introduced by his uncle, Rev. Henri L.G. Kieffer, the speaker of the meeting explained St. John’s College new system as anomalous, in that it is designed to maintain the “aura of college aristocracy, with democratic ideals.”

The highly honored Harvard graduate was made president of the Annapolis college last year, succeeding Stringfellow Barr in continuing the “nationally observed new-trend for education, started in 1937.” President Kieffer’s wife, the former Miss Roxanna White, is a native of Frederick.

Called Revolutionary

Dr. Kieffer explained that the St. John’s program is actually a revolution against the nineteenth-century revolution in education. That classical education of the past hundred years was not the complete fundamental knowledge necessary to developments of laboratory sciences and that elective courses were a compromise which undergraduates are not capable of choosing.

He deplored over-specialization in teaching undergraduates and summed up the program of his college system, as one intended to complete adolescence of students by training the mind to think generally and adultly; thereby being acquainted with the “principles” of the civilization in which he will live.

“We are living through a revolutionary period, as evidenced by the present loss of standards, faith and belief in things,” Dr. Kieffer said, “There is skepticism, dogmatism, on every hand. There is a general lack of knowledge and faith in fundamentals. We have lost the stability of the nineteenth century minds, because the atomic bomb disproved Maxwell’s system of physics,” the speaker concluded.

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Feb 12, 1948

*     *     *     *     *

Interesting “men vs. women” note in this article excerpt:

PARTY FOLLOWS FINAL SEMINAR

Mr. And Mrs. Kieffer Are Honored By Group At Library

Women may control the wealth of the country as statistics indicate, but it was the men who defended its economic system as opposed to the Communist theory in a lively final session of the Great Books Seminar in the C. Burr Arts Library, May 2 during the discussion of the Communist Manifesto. John S. Kieffer, director of adult education at St. John’s College, Annapolis, who has been conducting the Seminar, presented. The session concluded with a party given by Between-the Book-Ends Club in honor of Mr and Mrs. Kieffer….

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) May 12, 1952

*     * Census Records *     *

John Kearnes White, the father, doesn’t every appear to be with the family:

1900 Federal Census – Frederick, MD

1910 Federal Census – Frederick, MD

In 1920, Mrs. White and Roxanna are still living in Frederick, MD, sans father, and Littleton Travis White is a roomer in Virginia, practicing law.

*     *     *

By 1940, Littleton Travis White was finally married, and to quite the YOUNG lady:

Living in El Paso, Texas, with his mother-in-law, young wife, and baby daughter.

*     *     *     *     *

According to his mother’s obituary, she was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) Apr 30, 1954

Travis’s father appears to have authored a book of poetry. The interesting part is the dedication:

To My Mother, not My Wife.

HATHI TRUST Digital Library has the book online: THE WHITE ROSE

*     *     *     *     *

Littleton Travis White died in Annapolis, Maryland, while visiting his sister:

His death was front page news in the El Paso Herald-Post (El Paso, Texas) Dec 8, 1973

The End

All this for a poem!

This is a Man-Sized Job, Mister!

European Recovery Plan

Too Little — Too Late

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jan 15, 1948

Just a Little Around the Edges, Please!

The President’s Budget

Where to Start

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jan 17, 1948

Midsummer Folly

Midsummer Folly

Dressed to kill
Applies to those
Who in midsummer
Wear winter clothes.

— Helen Van Dusen

–O–O–

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jan 16, 1948

Expecting Snow?

Nice for fall, but for now, uh-uh.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jul 20, 1948

Grave Quotes – What Do You Know?

Image from Live Journal

What Do You Know?

By DR. SABINA H. CONNOLLY

Here are QUOTES about GRAVES and the DEAD. Fill each blank. Allow 6 points for each correct answer. 48 is fair, 60 is good, 72 or better is excellent.

1. “The paths of ___ lead but to the grave” — Gray

2. “How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes ___” — Collins

3. “The low green ___
Whose curtain never outward swings” — Whittier

4. “I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the ___ of the Capulets” — Edmund Burke.

5. “Our hearts though stout and brave
Still like muffled drums are beating
___ marches to the grave” — Longfellow.

6. “Not a ___ was heard, not a funeral note
As he corpse to the rampart we hurried” — Wolfe.

7. “And I looked, and behold a pale ___, and his name that sat on him was Death” — Bible.

8. We have come to ___ a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live” — Lincoln.

9. “He’d make a lovely ___” — Dickens.

10. “Love and tears for the Blue
Tears and love for the ___” — Finch.

11. “Let the ___ bury their dead” — Bible.

12. “Gilded tombs do ___ infold” — Shakespeare.

13. “I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar ___” –Omar Khayyam.

14. “When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no ___ songs for me” — C. Rossetti

15. “Golden lads and ___ all must
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust” — Shakespeare.

(Answers on Classified Page)

The Blizzard (Oil City, Pennsylvania) Jun 18, 1948

*     *     *     *     *

*     *     *     *      *

*     *     *     *     *

Images from COGITZ – Daily Oddities

The Blizzard (Oil City, Pennsylvania) Jun 18, 1948

Sign of a Nation, Great and Strong

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1947

Our American Flag

Our flag has valor for stripes of red,
A gruesome symbol of the blood shed
To preserve precious freedom of speech,
Right in public assembly to preach.

Pureness of purposes the white shows,
Gives the choice of religion which grows
As we worship in the church we choose,
Nothing that is right do we refuse.

The blue is for courage, loyalty
Of women left behind, royalty
Brave, to whom the war will never end,
Vets’ broken bodies, spirits, they mend.

Stars for states that love, honor, our flag,
A grand symbol, not only a rag,
In service blue ones in windows hung,
Were gold, when taps for heroes was sung.

The American Flag, red, white, blue,
As it waves up high for me or you,
Represents the best of life’s treasure,
Privileges so great none can measure!

(Melitta Foeste King)

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Jun 13, 1959

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1945

Observing Flag Day

Ample opportunity will be afforded Sunday for the public to participate in observance of Flag Day.

The people will be paying homage Sunday for the last time — officially — to the 48-star flag. It is the standard the people have known longest — since Arizona was admitted to the Union in 1912. The 48-star flag will be superseded on July 4 by a new flag recognizing Alaska as the 49th state. The life of the new standard will be brief. On July 4, 1960, it will be replaced by a flag with a 50th star for Hawaii.

Display of the new flag would be improper before Independence Day, but after that day the 48-star emblems will not be discarded. The White House announced early this year that “with limited exceptions, agencies of the federal government will continue to display the 48-star flag so long as it is still in good condition.”

Observance of Flag Day dates back to June 14, 1885, when Dr. Bernard Cigrand, then a 19-year-old teacher at the Stony Hill school near Wauheka and Fredonia in Ozaukee County, had his students write themes on the subject of the American Flag. The next year he proposed that the day be observed nationally. However, it was not until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson issued an official Flag Day proclamation.

In observing Flag Day, it would be well to note that a number of countries have adopted the Red, White and Blue in tribute to the encouragement given them by the United States in their efforts to gain independence. This is particularly true in regard to the Republics of Liberia, Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines. Each of these independent nations directly owes its existence to the fact hat such a course was fostered by your country. As a result, their flags derive from the Stars and Stripes of the United States.

The refusal of Spain to withdraw troops from Cuba led to occupation of the island by American forces. After the defeat of the Spanish in 1898, American military rule continued only long enough for the Cubans to adopt a constitution and elect their first congress. This congress met for the first time in 1902.

Granting full freedom for the Philippines was more recent. It took two wars to wrest the Filipinos from Spanish and later Japanese rulers. They obtained full freedom in 1946, shortly after World War II, and at a time when the Russian Communists were destroying freedom in such countries as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and large parts of the Balkan area.

The red, white and blue flags of these countries provide the answer to the claims of Russian Communists that our country is imperialistic. Further answer is found in this country’s favorable attitude toward efforts of other areas to gain independence.

Thus, in paying tribute to the U.S. Flag tomorrow, we will be recognizing not only the freedoms enjoyed in our country but in other republics as well.
As in previous years, Flag Day ceremonies will be held at the Cigrand memorial in Waubeka early Sunday afternoon and at the restored Stony Hill schoolhouse at 4:30 p.m. Locally, a special Flag Day program has been arranged by the Sheboygan Lodge of the Elks, beginning at 1 p.m. with a motorcade from intersection of 8th Street and Ontario Avenue to the Elks Club at 1943 Erie Ave.

We are also reminded that display of the flag throughout the community will be an important contribution to the observance of Flag Day.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) 13 Jun 1959

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1922

Let’s Read About — Old Glory

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
As often as we can —
It’s fascinating history,
A thrill packed story,
For every American.

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
The story of her birth —
Man’s boundless faith
In Men of fate —
Born to glorify the earth.

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
And meet those noble souls
Who night and day
Fought all the way . . .
Immortalizing their roles.

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
And learn on what blest morn
George told Betsy what to do
With stars and stripes, and know
How our GRAND FLAG was born.

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
And the Freedoms she unfurls —
Freeing King and Slave
From a coward’s grave . . .
In both worlds.

Let’s read about OLD GLORY,
As often as we can —
A blood and thunder history
For Liberty and Democracy,
The glory of every American.

ELIO ORFEO CENCI
April 6, 1948
High Falls, N.Y.

Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York) Apr 16, 1948

About Bernard J. Cigrand:

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1945

*     *     *     *     *

Read more: The National Flag Day Foundation

*     *     *     *     *

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1947

We are fortunate, indeed!

Don’t Be April Fooled

Image from New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Mar 26, 1948

Woman Teacher Is Declared Fire Hazard In Goofy News

Man Was Bitten By His Own False Teeth And Somebody Stole Kansas City Lamp Post

NEW YORK, March 31. — (AP) — Somebody stole a lamp post . . . a cop tagged his wife’s car . . . and a man was bitten by his own false teeth — and that’s no April Fool!

It all happened in last week’s International Cavalcade of Cockeyed Occurrences, chronicled and catalogued herewith in your weekly Goofy Gazette.

The affair of the false teeth occurred this way: A Chicago man slipped off a bench, his store molars flew out of his mouth, ricocheted off his forehead, and — just plain bit him.

The cop who had the nerve to tag his wife was Officer Guy Barnes of Rochester, Minn. Take a bow, Mr. Barnes!

The theft of the lamp post occurred in Kansas City, and there just isn’t any explanation. You never can tell — some Atlantic City, N.J., thieves stole enough sleeping powders to put away 30,000 insomniacs!

A French soldier was discovered marching to the front pushing his equipment in a baby carriage . . . the 20 members of the Boston city council inadvertently cast 22 votes . . . and an Eastport, Md., hen on Easter laid an egg containing a yolk, a white, and — another egg!

Exasperation dept: A St. Louis man got so sore talking to a girl on the telephone that he ripped out the receiver . . . a Newport News, Va., man got so mad waiting while somebody monopolized a pay telephone that he smashed the door in . . . and after snowplows repeatedly buried his mail box, an Ashland, Me., farmer nailed it onto a barn gable and put a ladder there — for the mailman to climb!

The New York City education board pronounced a teacher a fire hazard on the ground she weighed 275 pounds and was liable to block doorways . . . while a Washington policeman was reading an advertisement about a lost cat the cat walked into the police station . . . and when a Muncie, Ind., man had a tree cut down so it wouldn’t fall on his house, it — fell on his house!

In Cleveland, Miss., a prisoner in the jail there fashioned a revolver out of soap — and it DIDN’T fool the jailer.

Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania) Apr 1, 1940

Eat Your Peas

Eat Your Peas

Abilene Morning News (Abilene, Texas) Jun 11, 1935

HELPFUL HINTS

Eat your peas with honey,
I have done it all my life;
They do taste kind of funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.

Daily News (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania) Aug 19, 1948

Eat Your Peas

Daily Review (Hayward, California) Aug 30, 1955

Eat Your Peas

Oneota Star (Oneota, New York) Sep 20, 1963

Eat Your Peas

Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Jul 18, 1967

*****

Eat Your Peas

Danville Register (Danville, Virginia) Feb 20, 1969

*****

Eat Your Peas

Anderson Herald (Anderson, Indiana) Dec 20, 1969

*****

 

The Hayakawa column
Law, economics and sin
By S.I. Hayakawa

Aldous Huxley once wrote: “The consistency of human behavior … is due to the fact that men have formulated their desires, and subsequently rationalized them, in terms of words … If it were not for the descriptive and justificatory words with which we bind our days together, we should live like the animals in a series of discreet and separate spurts of impulse.”

Thus, indeed, do we bind our days together. Whether you describe yourself as “machinist,” “policeman,” or “teacher,” you don’t always feel like being a machinist or policeman or teacher. There are days when you would far rather be doing something else. But we continue with our jobs, held there by the words which define our role in life.

Law is the mighty collective effort made by human beings to organize that degree of orderly and uniform behavior that makes society possible.

Law and science are very different from each other. What science predicts (“ice will melt at temperatures above 32 degrees Fahrenheit”) comes true independent of our wishes. What law predicts (“Persons convicted of murder will be hanged.”) comes true only if we are determined to do what we said we would do. At the basis of law is our determination to observe conjunction.

Language of the law is of necessity, therefore, in part a kind of sermonizing. In addition to prescribing certain forms of behavior, it must create in us the will and the desire to follow the prescription. This fact makes the judge, to a large degree, a preacher. The trial is a kind of morality play.

The art of preaching has its own pitfalls. Sermons are almost always faded at a higher level of generalization and with a greater dogmatism than the immediate situation calls for. The reasons for this are largely rhetorical: to get attention and to impress the sermon firmly in the hearer’s mind.

To reduce this matter to a simple example, let us suppose that the purpose of a given directive is to get Junior to eat his peas. If the simple demand, “Junior, eat your peas,” does not work, one proceeds immediately to a sermon on the subject: “Vegetables are good for you,” and “All growing boys should eat plenty of vegetables.”

In other words, the demand that Junior eat his peas is asserted to be not merely a passing whim, but the particularization of a general nutritive principle.

If Junior still leaves his peas untouched, one appeals to history: “You grandfather was a vegetarian and he lived to the age of 99,” and, “Sailors in the old sailing ships used to die of scurvy because they didn’t get enough fresh vegetables.” From here on it is but a short jump to say that God intended that peas be eaten and father be obeyed.

But the great principles we enunciate on one day prove to be extremely inconvenient on another day, as inevitably they must, since they state it so much more than was necessary to begin with.

So, as Father himself leaves untouched his carrots — and raisin salad a few days later, he can say, if challenged: “what I was arguing for all along is not vegetables as such, but a balanced diet — as it is possible to achieve balance without this particular salad. A man can’t keep going on rabbit food. Do you know that millions in Asia are suffering from protein deficiency because they get nothing but vegetables to eat?”

Thus do fathers keep all bases covered and maintain fiction with infallible wisdom. And if the layman regards the law with a mixture of exaggerated respect and exaggerated distrust, is it not because lawyers and judges perform on a large scale as the rest of us do daily?

I write these words as President Ford’s economic summit conference draws to a close. One gets the impression, hearing the summaries of the proceedings, that economics, like law, is not so much a science as it is a branch of homiletic, or the art of preaching.

One speech after another tells us how to save ourselves from inflation, which has come upon us as punishment for our economic sins.

Salvation lies, we are told, in rigid controls over prices and wages — or no controls at all; in relaxing the federal regulation of business; in giving the consumer greater protection; in lower taxes for the poor; in high taxes for everybody; in a balanced budget; in a more abundant flow of money; in eliminating (or increasing) depletion allowances and subsidies.

There are as many economic doctrines as there are Protestant sects, which goes to show that  while economics as a science is not doing well, economics as a religion is doing just fine.

Idaho Free Press (Nampa, Idaho) Oct 5, 1974

Having kids means having to say all the things you swore you’d never say
[excerpt]

I also know why parents don’t make great conversationalists. They only know a few familiar words and phrases: Don’t slam the door. Turn off the lights. Don’t interrupt. Quit running around the house. Close the refrigerator door. Pick up your room. Did you flush the toilet? Eat your peas. Think of the starving people in …

The Mountain Democrat (Placerville, California) Apr 20, 1987

Eat Your Peas

The Gettysburg Times (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) May 31, 1989

Offer Choices.
[excerpt]

Children need lots of experience in making their own decisions, and living with the consequences. “Would you like to eat your peas now?” does not encourage a “yes.” A much better technique is, “Would you rather have peas first or carrots first?” Early on, before babies can talk, find ways to offer good choices. As children grow, increase the number and complexity of their options. when toddlers (or grown-ups) feel they have some control over what happens to them, they are much more likely to be kind and friendly.

The Gettysburg Times (Gettsyburg, Pennsylvania) Sep 5, 1996

Image from ARRA News Service

Let’s Move!

Now,  Eat Your Peas!

Gandhi Assassinated

GANDHI ASSASSINATED!

Incident Sets India Ablaze

NEW DELHI, Jan. 30 — (UP) — Mahandas K. Gandhi, saint of India, was shot and killed today in an assassination which may set the whole subcontinent of India ablaze with warfare between Hindus and Moslems.

The 78-year-old wisp of a man, his body even more frail than usual after a fast which ended a scant fortnight ago, was shot down by three bullets as he walked to the prayer grounds of Birla House for his evening devotions.

He was carried into the great mansion home of one of India’s greatest industrial magnates, in the arms of his weeping disciples. There he died at 5:45 p.m. (7:15 a.m. EST), a martyr to the cause for which de dedicated his life — India’s freedom.

Gandhi was shot by a man giving the name of Ram Naturam — a Hindu mane. He fired two shots from a revolver at Gandhi and then turned his gun on himself, firing a third shot which grazed his head.

The assassin, a man of about 32 years of age, was seized by Gandhi’s hysterical followers who pummelled him seriously before he was reached by police who drove the crowd back with rifles and fixed bayonets.

It appeared that the assassin was a Hindu extremist — one of a group which has bitterly attacked Gandhi’s policies of moderation and has called for a blood war of extermination against the Moslems. Only two weeks ago a bomb was exploded outside Birla House by a member of this group and Gandhi’s followers long had feared for his life because of the threats of these extremists.

The assassination seemed certain to mark a turning point in the turbulent history of the 350 million people who inhabit India.

Traverse City Record Eagle (Traverse City, Michigan) Jan 30, 1948

‘Great Soul’ Dies Disillusioned ‘Saint’

NEW DELHI, Jan 30. (INS) Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Hindu political and spiritual leader assassinated today, was unique in history — regarded as a living saint and a combined George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

There is nobody to step into the place of the “father of is country.”

But there are millions of Hindus who will try to carry out his preachments:

Nonviolence; live for your fellow man; simple living without pomp or luxury.

Gandhi, who was cut down at 78, had hoped to live until he was 125. He thought he could do this by being a strict vegetarian for one thing. He lived mainly on oiled vegetables and goat’s milk.

He devoted an hour or two every morning to sun bathing, tub bath, massage, and sometimes hsi beloved mudpacks.

Gandhi introduced the innocent seeming but powerful weapon of civil dosobedience — a policy of nonviolence that made British leaders helpless in their decades of political clashes over Gandhi’s goal of complete independence.
Gandhi was called the mahatma, or “great soul,” by his followers, a term which he disparaged.

He died a disillusioned man because his great goal of independence was marred by the splitting of India into two states, one of them Moslem Pakistan.

Long Beach Independent (Long Beach, California) Jan 31, 1948

Armistice Day

On November 11th, 1918 when the Armistice was declared ending the first World War, America was once again the Victor. She proved to the world that the right way of life triumphs against evil. She proved that her sons were ready and able to stand up against those who believed in world domination and oppression.

Let us, then, on this Armistice Day pray that their deeds may always be remembered. Let us pray and give thanks for their God given courage that helped to make our great America the guardian of the world.

Bessemer Herald (Bessemer, Michigan) Nov 11, 1948

Image from LIFE magazine – Caption:

Shirtless American sailor relax on and around several torpedos on the deck of an unidentified ship during the Pacific Conflict, 1943. On one torpedo is written ‘Armistice Day – Hell!’

*****

ARMISTICE DAY

To save from the ash can a burning Old World
And keep flying sparks from the roof of the New,
Our brave Uncle Sam with his colors unfurled
Just smothered it out with live red, white and blue.

Warm RED flowed the blood of his sturdy young sons,
Whose WHITE bled-out faces were lost in the grime,
While tested BLUE steel in projectiles and guns
Completed the job in new world-record time!

In rev’rence we bow on this ARMISTICE DAY,
Before the same altar their sacrifice blessed,
With a priceless return of Hope’s peaceful array
In which the whole earth joins their own hallowed rest.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Nov 11, 1927

Bayard News (Bayard, Iowa) Nov 12, 1942