THE STANFORD AXE ORIGIN AND LOSS OF THE AXE Part I by Dink Templeton, Stanford '18

There is something about the thirty-odd-year-old rivalry between Stanford and the University of California which escapes analysis.

Easy it is to say --- and with perfect truth --- that there is none between any other two universities throughout the length and breadth of this whole land, which even comes close to comparing with it.

To live through just one season in close contact with it convinces even the most blasé of our Easterners that such indeed is a fact, and in comparison with it the historic Yale-Harvard arguments pale into insignificance.

"Miniature warfare," was the way one famous critic from the other side of the Mississippi, who had made his first journey out to the sticks, put it to me. "Miniature warfare with all of the passions duplicated. Blinded loyalty and blazing hatred --- the only thing missing is the limitation on the weapons."

You get back to the Farm in the fall. Football starts, and it means little except to the actual warriors. As the season progresses the whole community moves along with it in a rising crescendo of tension which is aimed at the Golden Bears of California.

Only down on the Farm they are not Golden Bears. Just what they are must be left to your imagination, for the paper on which this is written is inflammable. They are impersonal beings, known only through the medium of the sport pages, and every word written about them arouses the warrior spirit, especially since all but the members of the team itself are perfectly helpless to do anything about it.

By the time that the Big Game comes along --- and that means the one big game of the whole country --- you find two undivided communities arrayed against each other as solidly as were ever nations at war, and the war-time feelings of participants are tame compared to those of Stanford and California.

No wonder the Big Game stands out as America's finest spectacle, and no wonder the sections from each side relieve their pent-up emotions by thundering "Give 'em the Axe!" as though to split their lungs. It exactly expresses the way they feel about those "big bums" on the other side. Just as expressive it might be if they screamed "Kill those so and soes," as many of the uninitiated so often do. But even in these days when the word "sportsmanship" has become so badly abused through overuse, its narrowest meaning rules out such barroom bellowers as the veriest bushers.

"Give 'em the Axe!" fills the needed vacancy to perfection. Understood to be figurative, the thousands of throats which hurl it across the field give ample assurance that a good bloody axe is just what they would choose as a weapon with which to wipe up the field and satisfy their feelings.

In my own college days I knew a lad with a flair for the dramatic who considered that he had been insulted by a fellow who was too big for him even to think of socking on the nose. So he went to him, stated that he had been insulted, and challenged him to a duel, just as they do in the storybooks. Big Boy was taken aback for an instant, for he know nought of duels, nor had he ever played around with pistols or foils. It was a situation which was both gravely serious and ludicrously funny to him.

After a slight pause he said, "I don't know much about this dual business. But as I understand it, as the challenged party, I have the right to choose the weapons. Is that not so?"

"That is your privilege, sir," return our hero.

"Well then, I choose axes," was the instant reply.

Challenger, overcome by abject horror, recoiled. The instant thought of this big bully beating down his guard by superior strength until he started raining blows upon his unprotected skull and battering it to a bloody pulp was too much for him. Covering his face with his hands, he turned and faded from the delighted circle of students who were the witnesses.

To him, as to all the rest of us, the axe was the most terrible of weapons. Even as an implement of domestic utility, we think of the axe, not as the great boon to the pioneers of old who forced back our frontiers with it, nor even as the instrument for labor torture with which we accomplished to tedious chore of chopping wood and kindling, but rather as the means for stopping the squawks of excited chickens by one clean blow which severed the head and covered the ground with spurting blood.

And the stark naked truth of the matter is simply this: the axe is the symbol which most accurately describes the subconscious feelings of those loyal to Stanford and to California.

It was one of the keenest minds ever produced at Stanford that reached out and put its finger unerringly on this feeling, and came through with the famous yell, "Give 'em the Axe!" Will Irwin, ex-'98, famous as an author and revered at Stanford as a cherished tradition, gave birth to that renowned yell in 1896, just five years after Stanford first opened her doors. He includes Chris Bradley as co-author. It sprang from the two naturally and spontaneously, fitting to the occasion, and expressing the feelings of limited warfare so exactly that it was destined to become the most lasting of all their works.

	"Give 'em the axe, the axe, the axe!
	Give 'em the axe, the axe, the axe!
	Give 'em the axe, give 'em the axe, give 'em the axe,
		Where?

	"Right in the neck, the neck, the neck!
	Right in the neck, the neck, the neck!
	Right in the neck, right in the neck, right in the neck!
		There!"

And even though nothing else had actively occurred as a consequence, it would still have come down through these thirty-five years as the greatest of all Stanford battle cries.

But plenty else did happen, and as a direct consequence. What a chain of historic Stanford-California events, establishing tradition, building up and maintaining the keen rivalry between these two great universities, may be traced to that one short yell.

Of course, as Professor Cathcart has been trying to drum into the heads of first-year law students almost ever since that time, these two authors could not be held legally responsible for the following events, because theirs was not a direct legal causation. If someone had been killed in the raids on rival campuses, neither could have been indicted for murder. But it if had not been for that yell, there would have been no Axe, no capture, no raids, and it is very possible that the Stanford-California rivalry would by this time have settled down to one of those conventional arguments which mean extra occasions to show off new clothes and stage parties.

These two young harum-scarums, who can laugh at the pranks of their college days because now that they are old birds they rank high in the circles of literature and law, come under the "but for" rule. As such they are exempted from the penalties of the law. That is no reason, however, why they should not receive credit for the benefit which has been done. That benefit is impossible to measure, but it is a sure thing that a large part of the spirit which sets Stanford-California meetings above those of any other traditional college foes is due to the rivalry built up by the events which comprise the history of the Axe.

Let us take a look back at the conditions in 1896 which made "Give 'em the Axe" so exactly suitable to the occasion.

For many years the University of California at Berkeley had been an established institution of recognized merit, the sole monarch of all she surveyed. Of course she could not survey very far in those days of limited transportation. In fact there was nothing else on the horizon that could be considered, by even the greatest possible stretch of the imagination, as a rival.

It is not good for a university to be alone too much. It is inevitable that a false sense of superiority and an almost unbearable smugness should be instilled in her student body.

When Leland Stanford Junior University first opened her doors in 1891, California was suffering from an exaggerated combination of these two diseases.

For years over at Berkeley it had been necessary to stay within the walls to find competition for their champions. Even in those early days they had the real intramural program of sport, not because they wanted it, but because they were so much better than any other competition they could meet that it was a necessity.

It would have been impossible for them to have taken seriously the challenges thrown at them by the little jerk-water dump down at Palo Alto, which at one minute had not yet come into existence and at the next was demanding equal rights.

Just as impossible would it have been for the Berkeleyites to have refrained from showing their superiority, their contempt for these upstart hay-pounders, and from guffawing heartily at their claims.

Even in this day and age, four decades later, one occasionally runs across this same old feeling, perfectly preserved through the ages.

Along about 1886, one of the greatest of all California athletes graduated. In all branches of sport, he was a real champion. He made his rep right at Berkeley because that was the only place he could find real competition. When, five years after he was all through, Stanford forced herself upon California as a rival, it was so ridiculous to him that such a thing could be possible that he has carried the feeling undiminished down through the forty years of athletic battling.

John Sutton, financier now, but great athlete and great sportsman both now and then, his muscles and feelings still unsoftened by the passage of time, reflects a perfect illustration of that old-time conflict of established arrogance versus upstart cockiness which got the greatest collegiate rivalry of all time off to a running start.

Stanford was bound to be cocky. Her cockiness was bound to magnify California's show of superiority. And Stanford then was bound to resent that superiority with such feeling that every resource in her power should be mobilized to the undoing of it.

From every walk of life, from city and hamlet and farm, came the youth of California in answer to the glowing promise of the best education, the best opportunities in life, given away free.

Those first students had to formulate their own kind of life, for there were no established customs when they arrived. That life corresponded to life on the frontier, and the students were pioneers in their field of endeavor just as much as were the Daniel Boones of an earlier day.

When they once got on the Farm they had to stay put until school was out. There were no outside diversions. In such a situation there could be no stifling of original ideas. The boys kept so busy at work and play that, one and all, they look back to those days as the greatest and happiest they have ever spent.

They had to scratch around for sleeping quarters because the ones available were far from sufficient. Eating places were even more insufficient, as was also the money on which to do the eating.

But money did not count in that democracy. Neither did clothes nor other showy possessions. Customs and traditions were cemented in one of the strangest living groups ever known to educational history. That group lived at what was known only as the Camp. It consisted of a few low shacks which had been hastily thrown up to house the workmen in the construction of the University. It stood where the Union is now. An eyesore that the authorities were anxious to pull down, it holds the most sentimental memories for hundreds of men who could not afford the luxury of Encina, and who had to cook their own grub to get anything to eat.

From such a democracy as Stanford as then, it was inevitable that a fine spirit should grow --- a spirit which allowed for organization and concentration on any objective which should strike the members as worthy.

And right in front of them, readymade, they found it. The very thought of California made them mad, so mad that nothing else could possibly interest them as much as knocking her off her high horse.

From the very start the infant University showed California that her best was barely good enough in football, and played the popular game of baseball with such effect that during the period 1892 - 1899 she dropped only one series to the Blue and Gold.

That period proved to California, reluctant as she was to accept such ridiculous beliefs, that henceforth she would have to battle for all she was worth for any athletic prestige she would gain. It was really the birth of what has since been known as the California spirit.

Things were going along right merrily as early as 1896, when the Axe yell was born.

By 1899 the rivalry had progressed to the place where it already had a healthy start toward its future achievements.

Stanford had even become a bit fat-headed with success. Any Stanford man believed that one of his breed was worth two Californians in any kind of battle. And that overconfidence was storing up disaster for the baseball team of that Spring.

The first real blow came at the very start of the year when George Beckett, star pitcher and captain, considered invincible, became ill and died. The hopes for replacing him were high until the first game of the big series, and when California won that by a 4-1 score, the whole University felt that real disaster had fallen upon them. Desperate means were necessary to fire the team with unbeatable inspiration, and the whole Stanford Campus concentrated on that worthy object.

Under such dire straits, an immense broadaxe, weighing ten pounds and boasting a fifteen-inch blade, was procured to give a definite and material meaning to the famous Will Irwin yell.

On Thursday, April 13, the biggest bonfire rally ever held on the Farm was attended by an entire community inspired by the necessity for imbuing the team with superhuman fight.

Beside the bonfire stood Frank English, an orator who made his greatest speech at this, his maiden opportunity. That great tomahawk which he displayed, painted with a red Block S, had been dulled through the years of carelessness until it was not an effective weapon, defeat being the natural result. They had discovered just in time and were taking this opportunity to make its blade so keen and sure that victory would be certain. Billy Erb, yell-leader in his off-season from football, took the Axe and sharpened it while English turned the wheel of the grindstone. When he was satisfied, Billy tested it on the neck of a Blue and Gold effigy. With one fell stroke he severed the head completely from the body, the keen blade going through as though it had found no resistance, so that it buried itself in the chopping black, quivering as if anxious to get at its real work.

There was a weapon to satisfy even this wild crowd, which yelled and hollered its approval. It could scarcely wait a moment for Captain Lougheed to accept the Axe for the team before they piled their heroes into an old wagon and hauled them around and around the bonfire, yelling as though for their lives, stopping their serpentine only because of the necessity for their team's finally getting to bed.

That night the Stanford Axe was a precious symbol.

Two days later it wasn't worth a dime, and the job of packing it back down to the Farm, something which every Stanford man dreamed about for thirty-one years afterward as being the most glorious achievement possible for a human being, was a thankless task left to three lone guardians who felt that they were being made the goats.

For though a big blue block, upon which rode Billy Erb waving the Stanford Axe as if cutting off heads of Golden Bears by the hundreds, was paraded continuously in front of the Stanford rooting section, California won the game and the series by a 9-7 score.

Stanford rooters slunk from the old Sixteenth and Harrison Street ball grounds. They were not celebrating that night. They wanted to get away from the taunts of their rivals. Embittered by the disaster, they would gladly have made a ceremony out of taking the old Axe out to the Bay and dumping it in, had they thought about it.

Carl Hayden was the goat. Billy Erb turned the Axe over to him and told him to take it home. He is a United States Senator, but he was only a debater then and he had to do as he was told. He had two companions, and the three started off alone with the symbol which had suddenly turned to one of defeat.

Had they been unmolested, they might have lost it on the way. They might have gotten it back to the Campus and dumped it in a corner to be forever forgotten. Nothing would ever have been heard of it again.

Right there Fate intervened.

Continue to Part II of "The Origin and Loss of the Axe"