Secret Message!

Found an old high-school notebook, and it’s more interesting than one would have thought.  Here’s a page I wanted to show you – in careful script, part of a speech, florid language that sounds genuinely teen-age “…the cries of your fellowmen which strike chords in your soul…”  Aw, c’mon  -- and today I know the "which" should be "that."

Then there’s a tiny sketch of an angle of elevation; I suppose in those days we all knew what “sin x” meant.   And we were evidently getting a well-rounded education – there’s a reading list on foreign policy.  One of the authors was John Gunther (remember his books?) and another was Foster Rhea Dulles – hmm, interesting.  Do you suppose that was Their mother?  father?

But what got me excited was the cryptogram in the bottom left.  A secret message from the past!  And two of its sentences ending in exclamation points!  Was I exchanging these with a friend?  Leaving important clues for the 21st Century?  I couldn’t wait to decipher it.

On the off chance that someone out there would like to solve a simple substitution crypt, I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you what it said.  You’ve got a head start, because it looks as if, back in 1942, I’d already found the easy giveaways – this is, the and a.