The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-05-12


 1923-Kathleen Dougherty. 1924-Mary Sawyer. 1925-William Finkelstein. 1926-Thomas Dougherty. 1927-John Byrnes. 192S-Hyman Weiselberg. 1929-Madeline Faeth. 1930-Milton Jennes. MICHAEL C. DONOVAN PRIZE Dorothea Walker. Abraham Berezitsky. Pasquale Jamele. Helen Weinberg. Elizabeth Chase. Joseph Dominique. | Barbara Wooster. Harold Smith.
 Margaret McGrath. Joseph Renzoni.. SPECIAL AWARD Margaret Reardon. Knowlton Wood. Marion Beith.
 Anna Ratushney. Dr. Donovan made the following
 statement:
 The Crosby High School Latin Prizes. Twenty centuries have elapsed since the Golden Age of Latin Let ters. We celebrated last year the two thousandth birthday of Vereil,
 It is almost two thousand years since Caesar was assassinated. It is a lit- tie over two thousand years since Lucretius died. Within another de-
 cade we shall reach the two thou sandth birthday of Cicero. It will
 soon be two thousand years since
 Horace, having finished the second
 book of his odes, took a month to
 rusticate on his sabine farm. But l have on my desk two of the finest specimens of textbook making the world ever saw. One is a sort of
 Deluxe Vergil for college work, and the other is high school Cicero. was looking over with a clergyman l friend month ago new reprint Of the Latin Bihle-the book which
 was completed nearly 1900 years ago by St Jerome and his fellow work CTS, the book that for nearly thir- teen centuries was the textbook of
 the Christian world. A publisher has
 just sent to me reprint of the Cam
 bridge Milton. Churtin Collins
 thought Milton was by no means
 great Latinist. Yet one of the poems which he wrote the Epistle to Manso seems to conclude with one of the
 most perfect passages in human let ters and this passage was written | in what seems to me to be perfect
 Latin Only few short weeks ago.
 Pope Plus XI, Startled the world by talking in the language of Cicero and St Jerome in the most far-reaching radio hook-up the world has ever listened to. There are half dozen tremendously big new things in edu- cation, and the agitation and unrest uyiII rnntinua 1,nfiI tho nouy onrrfc,,Io shall embody them all. But those who are clamoring for an entire new set-up on the Speng-
 lerian supposition that we have an entirely new civilization mainly sci- !entific are prone to forget that the basis of occidental, historical culture lis languages. The Rome that had absorbed Greece, and was in itself civilization and culture is still the most tremendous force in history. The Rome of Augustus and Tiberius was bigger actually and compara- lively than the America of to-day. It is on account of these facts and la million others like them that the granting of Latin prizes is 8 most significant event in an American high school to-day. I am proud of the fact that one of the Crosby
 Latin prizes bears my name. And
 while calling attention to the fact things in this city, I think it is we'll lat least once a year to celebrate the ltriumphs of the old Latin culture. would not take from any high school boy or girl the chance to get In one of our high schools the newest sub- Iject that neither business or manual training has invented. But con- graduate Mir Thibodeau, MT Graf ton and the Latin department of Crosby on the interest they are stim- ulating in teaching the language
 which is the light of history and the light of learning. Latin and its kin
 dred tongues are broad highway backward through the twenty most momentous centuries in human his tory. We are solicitous about many lnew things: we must do the work of
 our time so that our young people
 may not miss the significance of Fin stein and Sir James Jeans. But if --as some leaders are prone to do just now-we show contempt or too scant respect for the ideas that flow
 down through time on the wide river of Latin culture. that would seem to me to be the destruction rather than the continuation of culture. M. c. DONOVAN, Superintendent of Schools. After the awards were made MT Grafton stated:
 With all the changing ideas of education it is interesting to know that in the Crosby high school there lis as mt0h interest to-day in the