The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-12

Professor Johnfi L. Bonn of Water bury is a contributor to the cur rent publication of the nationally known Catholic periodical Amer ica'.
 The article with introductory re- mark by the editor of America is as follows:-
 THOUGH Father Bonn's arti-
 cle is not a specific answer to the
 question: What effect will the war
 have on literature? 1t transcends
 that narrower query and drama
 tizes the whole problem of art and
 the young and the war.-Literary
 EditOr1
 On the ninth of December, 1941, the boys and sat together in what was once the loft of 8 barn and, under their hands, had been rapidly emerging into a Dramatic Work shop. Someone had turned off the radio as If to keep other voices away from us, voices that had for bidden civilians to move from where they were, that had stopped the flow of students toward their homes and had brought them into groups such as ours. But no one could shut out the noise of planes grooming overhead more loudly than we had ever heard them before.
 Fear of Present
 There was inlminence of danger all about and great lurking fear | 1,y,GaSv,aofh %1n Nrocoynt Wn knnuy that the Rector and the Deans were down there somewhere under the towers preparing words for tomor- row that would probably change with the week. We knew that all over the country the educators of the land were talking, planning transitional little plans, not daring to wait before they gave their hun dreds of thousands of lads anything at all by which they might live for at least little. But above all we knew in the silences that were among us and from the symbol about us-a thing that yesterday had seemed progress and now looked more like ruin, as building half- built may look-that our own plan ned world was never to be com- pleted.
 One does not readily forget such silences as come when the questions stop because you, who are supposed | to be leader, have said once too often that you do not know. In those silences you can look about, at Ed whom you had called The Oak" because he was still surprised at how large his feet had grown, seeing now the whiteness of his clenched knuckles making incon- gruous red hairs above them stand bristling with life of their own. You will always remember how the in- tensity had gone out of Charlie as if & purpose had visibly departed; and you will remember, too, the three Freshmen, sitting together on the still uncovered heat-pipe and the shamed one of them who had asked if there wouldn't be any Freshman Prom. Above all you would remember Dick, for he had the look of eagles in him and, in that glance, you knew.
 Some perversity in you wanted to speak, to say, You who are about to die" and over the grim accom- paniment of the planes that were sweeping too close for comfort, stir and shock into sensibility, although you knew that this was absurd and that adjustment must come slowly and of itself. What could you say? Only what was being decided in every presidential office under every campus tower in the land: We shall go on.'
 You said those words. we shall go on. We'll clear this part of the loft and get ready to lay the floor. There may be months ahead of us to use this place or there may not. But there will be years after we are gone. At least we can leave some thing behind that they may remem- Der us, our signature in wood and iron"
 Action Imperative
 It was better, then, to be doing something, and the sounds of saws and hammers could compete with the planes. Anything was better than sitting there waiting for an- swers which could not come. The action released a spring in Connie and Paul and Sid, in all of them, until there was kind of gaiety that trips upon itself, that has caught breath in 1t made of wonder of why you are doing this at all, that has flashes through 1t, sudden doubts of things that had seemed import ant yesterday, a staggering of certi- tudes and cracks in the rock you had thought eternal.
 Yesterday, last week, we had been a vital part in the recapturing of the tradition. We had aimed toward the creation of an education that would not be for position but for life, a scheme of things whereby a man might be a man in the alive toSality of his freedom. That was yesterday, when we had been pioneers.
 The boys are busy now. but they are finishing something, not begin ming 1t. They are working, you note. with a kind of fierce speed as If there were little future left for completion. Yesterday we had | looked upon the present as spade work toward the edifice of tomor- row, as preparation for things which would not fully tower in our time. Now suddenly we were at the end of our time. The sundial was mocking monument.
 There is only the now. Yesterday the younger professors had protested the lack of ir mediate accomplish ment, complaining that most of our students were not emerging with | full cultural growth. We had felt uneasy as if faced with disloyalty, for we wanted progress, not rsvolu- tion; we had the pat answer that culture is not 8 thing to be impart- ed in one generation-and were not our students mainly of the first generation of collegehred9 - and that if ten out of hundreds grasped l the f,ill sinnificance of the training