As "every government is arming to the teeth" and the "world is headed toward war," Juilliard's students are urged to take a stand against the looming conflict: "No artist can disassociate himself from the social system in which he lives and still deserve the name," argues one impassioned music student, "for what would he have to say to his contemporaries?" The year? It was not 2003, as President Bush prepared to invade Iraq … but 1935, as the likelihood of World War II loomed, just 18 years after America had been drawn into the global conflict known as "the War to End War."

This month's Past Times reprint is an article from the April 5, 1935, edition of Dynamics (pages 2-3), published by members of the Juilliard Student Club from March 1934 to February 1936. The publication had a strong focus on events outside the school, including union organizing among musicians and the activities of the Student Anti-War League. Its managing editor was George Lisitzky (DIP '33, flute), now known as George List, and the Dynamics staff also included Irwin Freundlich, Norman Dello Joio, Mordecai Bauman, Henry Brant, and Edgar Schenkman.

Some 50 Juilliard students had joined a group of Columbia University students the year before this article appeared, as they cut classes for an hour to stage an anti-war protest on the campus. The efforts promised to intensify for 1935, with 26 student organizations in Morningside Heights backing the strike planned for April 12—the 18th anniversary of America's entrance into the earlier World War I. The introduction to the Dynamics article calling for Juilliard's participation describes the eerie similarities between the international situation in 1916 and in 1935, evident from comparing newspaper accounts—and today's students, some 70 years later, may find things no different!