EXTRA MATERIAL

Chapter Six - 1917-1920
A Dynamo in Action:
Teaching, Theater, and the Great War

Proctoring High School Boys at Mass

Lord’s first task outside the classroom in high school was as prefect for morning mass in the chapel.

For that I owe God and my friends an apology. As yet I had not even heard of the liturgical movement. It was my job to keep order, and that I did. But to do something to fill those half hours at Mass, to lead my boys to a better understanding of what transpired before them, to introduce them to the Missal and its use, to make the thirty minutes precious and memorable and a training for life that never occurred to my unimaginative head. I patrolled the aisles like a sentry. I tapped any student who showed signs of restlessness. But I gave them nothing to fill thirty minutes of suspended animation (except for the workings of the grace of God, rich and powerful, I’m sure). To use the time to train them to love and help offer up the Mass, there I totally failed. Let me confess that, if I have often labored hard to see that other schools made Mass in the chapel an absorbingly alive and interesting period, it is an act of reparation for lost opportunity and a complete failure in duty.¹

Lord on Teaching

I loved the classroom from the moment I faced that unexpected Latin class. Discipline was not the slightest problem to me. I was much too interested in the boys and the subject to permit them time for nonsense or to allow myself occasion to enforce discipline.²

Not, please understand, that I liked a disciplined and orderly class. I had a sneaking conviction that a quiet classroom was either asleep or paying their devoirs to St. Apathia. I liked a live class. I never had any objections to students moving about. Questions were welcomed. Objections were something that I relished. The nicest compliment was paid me by a singularly uninterested student who caught me after class and bowled me over with, Gee, teach, you sure have fun teaching us, don’t you? I admitted to myself that I did, and I was not disturbed by his discovery of my pleasure at a blackboard or front desk.³

A Teacher’s Story

One student came from a wealthy family and had his own car which was unusual for those days. But this student never had all of his supplies. One day, to Lord’s surprise, the student had everything: book, pencil, and paper. Yes, but I can’t use ‘em. I broke my arm yesterday cranking my car.⁴

Ford Model T’s at the time required cranking to get them started. Car owners were supposed to grip the crank without wrapping their fingers around it so that if the engine kicked back and the crank reversed direction it would pop out of the hand instead of breaking a wrist or arm. This student had ignored that advice.

More on the S.A.T.C.

It is, of course, extremely unwise in religious communities to admit a fondness for anything, for sooner or later you find that the object of your interest and enthusiasm has become your responsibility. So my interest in the extracurricular made me the logical man on whom to dump almost everything connected with this new, totally untried, and highly experimental form of education. It started with the announcement that I was to teach military English. . . . Some professor with an eye to a quick financial turnover got out a text, with which teacher and students and I think the military services were equally unfamiliar. I took it into class and then stumbled on a book of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches, dropped the text, and taught them the old Princetonian’s dream of a democratic and united world, in some of the purest prose written in modern times. Does anyone read Woodrow Wilson these days?⁵

The two officers for the unit were a physician who had been a contract surgeon in the Spanish-American War (twenty years earlier) and a regular army sergeant who had been promoted to major.

Their control over these play soldiers who didn’t want to drill and who resented the interference of the military training with their education was that of a small boy in a cage of Clyde Beatty’s less docile animals. I soon discovered that the classes began at full complement and ended with a corporal’s guard, while the rest of the young men had climbed out of windows and slipped along ledges and water pipes. (Clyde Beatty was a famous circus lion tamer.)

As secretary of the unit I taught classes in military English and did informal sentry duty, keeping order where the military personnel failed. Jesuits don’t like disorderly schools. If there is class, they like the students in class. If there is assembly, they don’t want the assembly broken up in a sort of general retreat. So, without much instruction from anyone, I would post myself at the foot of the rain pipes and return to the classes the escaping soldiery. Chiefly, however, the barracks were my beat, and a fairly exciting one.⁶

Student Social Life

Meanwhile, the ever-busy Lord decided to improve the social life of the male students. There had never been a dance at the university. He knew Sister Louise Wise at Webster College. She had come to some of his classes and they discussed how to encourage Catholic marriages: then a much-debated topic. So they thought about how to connect the young Catholic men and women.

First, she [Sister Louise] sent down two large automobiles filled with young ladies, pennant-waving and megaphone-wielding, to take part in our football parade through the city. The university students goggled. It was the first time a woman had taken part in any of our hitherto male demonstrations. Then Sister Louise invited out to her college my entire student body. Most of the lads went, and it was a joyous occasion.⁷

The university had a ban on social life. So Lord set up the Bachelor’s Club to hold dances at a Knights of Columbus hall off campus with the wives of the Knights as sponsors and chaperones. The first dance was a success but the approach never took off. Apparently Lord and Sister Louise made the mistake of assigning dance partners. When Lord completed his teaching assignment the Bachelor’s Club group folded without him.⁸

Lord would later look back on his days teaching with his fellow Jesuits:

I envy young scholastics who begin their years of teaching.

I hope and pray that they may know the happiness which was mine far up on the fourth floor of the faculty building. I used to climb those long flights a dozen times a day and always hurry back with eagerness and alacrity. For the work was wonderful and people were delightful and the service of God was full of joy.⁹

They were great days and we all loved them, no one more so than I.¹⁰

On Forming the Student Conclave

Initially Lord did not find much interest among the students and Lord found resistance from the professional schools. Old King Selfishness and Queen Apathy clung to their ancient reign.¹¹ But the departments finally approved the Student Conclave just as Lord reached the end of his teaching term. He only attended the first organizational meeting.

Lord’s effort to educate Catholic sisters was farsighted. In the years to come, the growing number of Catholic schools would demand a huge supply of teaching sisters many of whom had limited educations. The sisters became an overworked, under-appreciated work force.¹² Some even entered the convent right out of high school and began teaching. In the next decades, sisters would start working on their college degrees in the summer because they were teaching the rest of the year. It would take into the 1960s before having a college degree was standard.¹³ Many sisters found themselves in the quandary of needing formal education but lacking the time, support, autonomy, and funding to maintain parity with the secular professionalization in the fields.¹⁴

Seeing it Through

In fall 1917 Lord wrote and produced Seeing it Through to be performed by the high school students.¹⁵

Chiefly I remember it for the fact that, quite ignorant of guns, I borrowed shotguns instead of rifles to be used during the siege of the Central American ranch by a band of God-hating and Church-hating bandits. The roaring blasts of those shotguns loaded, thank heaven, with blanks, which, however, left more space for powder must have been a reflection of the then-recent Battle of the Marne. If the audience applauded the final curtain, my actors were too deafened to hear it.¹⁶

The show was also performed in 1918 by the Senior Dramatic Club at St. Mary’s Kansas and by other Jesuits throughout the Missouri province. Lord wrote the play in response to political changes in Mexico and other Central and South American countries where governments had became hostile to the Catholic religion.

Synopsis

The entire action is laid in the Republic of Gualitina, South America, country which does not exist in name, but which has a very real existence in methods and religious bigotry.¹⁷

Act I

At the American Cane company, Clifton Barkley, the president, complains that all the taxes go to the corrupt President Loto who has closed seminaries, shut down Catholic papers, banished the religious, forbidden new priests to enter the county, and closed religious schools. The black servant of Clifton is Edgeworthy Allen.

Loto appears and says he wants 10,000 in American gold for the next election or he will give the sugar concession to another country. Clifton has already given him lots of money and he has the receipts to prove it. Loto is also cheating General Ruiz, head of the army.

In the next scene soldiers bring in Father Robert Irwin, a missionary. They arrested him for entering the country. Loto says he must leave. Irwin refuses and threatens I’ll see to it that a U.S. gun boat blows your ugly little country off the map.¹⁸

IRWIN: We Catholics of America aren’t like your Catholics here. We’ve not been crushed by years of injustice and persecution and petty insult and worse. We know what it means to breathe an air untainted by bigotry, and it’s made us too healthy ever to be frightened by bullies like you.¹⁹

Back at the company office, Clifton decides to reject Loto’s demand for money. Instead he will stop Loto from being reelected and support the opposition candidate: Carlos Colona. The office boy Billy unfurls an American flag.

Act II

Sandwich boards for the Colona campaign proclaim: Babies Cry For Him, Ladies Sigh For Him, Heroes Die For Him. Sugar workers from the plantation arrive at the office saying they oppose the Americans and Colona. Clifton stands up to them and fires them all. He was been paying them more than the going wage.

Meanwhile, a man named Pedro steals the receipts that prove the corruption of Loto. Without the proof the crowds turns against Colona and for Loto.

Billy arrives with news that the workers have revolted at the plantation and burned buildings. They are going after the priests. Clifton and others get guns and head for the plantation.

Act III

Clifton and his allies are holed up in a shoot out at the plantation. President Loto arrives with General Ruiz to state his terms: Clilfton Barkley must leave, give up his sugar concession, pay him money, and turn over Ximenez: a priest who is with them. Clifton refuses and tells Ruiz that Loto has been cheated him.

The servant Edgewater shows up with Pedro. Edgewater caught him and now threatens him with a razor to provide the receipts. Ruiz switches sides and offers the army’s votes for Colona. He leaves to get the army.

Meanwhile the rebels outside demand surrender. Inside the heroes count out their meager bullets and divide them. After the priest gives them a Latin blessing, Clifton orders: To your posts and don’t waste a bullet.²⁰

The rebels attack again. Several are picked off. When army drums are heard, they run off. The priest comments And it has brought freedom and light back to the suffering church of Gualitina.²¹ Colona leaves to become President.

Daniel Lord never understood racism and in later years he would write against it. However in this play Lord included the black servant, Edgeworthy Allen, who speaks with a dialect and uses language and racial epithets that would be quite offensive to modern ears. Were the lines based on the kind of speech Lord had heard from some African-Americans of the time or did Lord make them up? Also it is likely that the character was played by someone in blackface. Regardless, the lines of Edgeworthy should not be used to make judgements of Lord’s overall views. Also. keep in mind his play was written some hundred years ago.

Lord and Quinn wrote two more musical comedies by mail. (Quinn was in Chicago at St. Ignatius.) Rouge and Rapid Fire, set at the beginning of World War I, was produced at the Odeon Theater, likely in the fall of 1918.

Incidentally, our expenses reached the then-fabulous sum of almost twelve hundred dollars. As the highest amount ever spent on a college production in our recorded history was less than half that sum, I was called on the carpet for a lesson in economics.
My defense was simple: Before I took over dramatics, the university spent five hundred dollars on a show and netted five hundred. We spent around twelve hundred and netted two thousand. I’ll never forget the aghast expression on the face of our university treasurer. What’s that got to do with it? I am protesting the absurd idea of spending twelve hundred dollars on a mere school entertainment.²²

Rouge and Rapid Fire