This is the first installment of an ongoing series that will investigate the Houghton Star archives.
If you would like to check out some old issues of the Star, they can be found in the periodicals stacks on the basement level of the Houghton Library. The full college archives, also located on the basement level, are open to the public from 1-4 p.m. every Friday afternoon.
Both articles included on this page were originally published one hundred years ago, in the February 15, 1918 issue of the Houghton Star.
That age which was characterized by chivalry is no more. Those black years of Inquisitional suffering are a thing of the past. The days in which chauvinism and militarism held sway are fast disintegrating in the fiery cataclysm of war, but the attainment of Freedom and Democracy may be measured in terms of moments. History is being made and completed so rapidly that the human mind is staggered by the inferences deduced. So rapidly do events transpire in these strenuous days that wars, revolutions, and treaties may result in only a few hours, which if in any former period, would require years and years to accomplish so much. Like the phantasmagoria of the magic lantern are introduced abruptly, tarry a while, and are cut off soon to give place to other scenes, so now are events precipitated upon us, endure for a time, then vanish into interminable forgetfulness. These hours are more pregnant with meaning than any since “God’s eternal heart-ache on Calvary.” If one has accepted the opportunities to which the world is giving birth today, he may awake, after a pleasant dream, to find himself in the hinterlands of success. If he has, on the other hand, failed to see the meaning of things, he will soon be aroused by the inexorable sting of unaccepted opportunities. Not all, therefore, who sleep beneath an unmarked grave in the war will be clothed in the immortal robes of Freedom and Liberty, but the dazzling garments will be given also to those who did not by one supreme effort “pay life’s glad arrears” on the battlefield, but who gave their little all, day by day, year by year, in bringing the world up to the note which vibrates with the Infinite, struck to the rhythm of eternity. Get into the habit of thinking in world term, crowding each moment so full of God-directed, constructive effort that there will be no reconstruction period after the war because constant ameliorative industry has not been found wanting during the progress of the war.
—G.B.S.
A problem is facing us. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. War time is leaving its unhesitating footprints on the schools and colleges of our land; and war has not spared Houghton. The personnel of our students is different, many who have fought the hardest for Houghton and for scholarship record are now fighting for the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those faces, familiar but no longer with us, cannot be forgotten. Yet they are gone and we who are left must fill the vacant ranks. Yet we still must play the great part of a great school whether we want to do so or not. We are being watched, we are being imitated; as we go, so go others who will fashion destinies woven into existence by the governing force of our counsel.
Let us wake up! A conflict is awaiting the best that is in us. It is a fight for Houghton Seminary. You are a slacker if you wouldn’t give your life for Houghton! And your school needs your spirit now, faculty and students, she needs all the life, loyalty, and the pep, pluck, perseverance and red-blooded patriotism you possess. And are you ready to get busy with a smile and help the Star make this semester the best that Houghton has ever known?
—L.K.H.
