~Wtt&1 - - Hoover Library

I".,"".'""""~ silentlv.unnoticej'~,signs were little ones, seemingly unconnected. Sud.denly the number of books published began to soar.That year Congress established a National ScienceFoundation to promote scientific progress througheducation and basic research. CoUege enrollments,swollen by returned war veterans with G.!. Billbenefits, refused to return to "normal"; instead, theybegan to rise sharply. Industry began to expand itsresearch facilities significantly, raiding the collegesand graduate schools for brainy talent. Facultysalaries, at their lowest since the 1930's in terms ofreal income, began to inch up at the leading colleges.China, the most populous nation in the world,fell to the Communists, only a short time after severalEastern European nations were seized by Communistcoups d'etat; and, aided by support fromseveral philanthropic foundations, there was a rushto study Communism, military problems andweapons, the Orient, and underdeveloped countries.Now, 15 years later, we have begun to comprehendwhat started then. The United States, lockedin a Cold War that may drag on for half a century,has entered a new era of rapid and unrelentingchange. The nation continues to enjoy many of thebenefits of peace, but it is forced to adopt much ofthe urgency and pressure of wartime. To meet thebold challenges from outside, Americans have hadto transform many of their nation's habits and institutions.The biggest change has been in the rate of changeitself.Life has always changed. But never in the historyof the world has it changed with such rapidity as itdoes now. Scientist ]. Robert Oppenheimer recentlyobserved: "One thing that is new is the prevalence ofnewness, the changing scale and scope of change itself,so that the world alters as we walk in it, so thatthe years of a man's life measure not some smallgrowth or rearrangement or modification of what helearned in childhood, but a great upheaval."Psychiatrist Erik Erikson has put it thus: "Today,men over 50 owe their identity as individu.als, as citizens, and as professional workers to aperiod when change had a different quality andToday's colleges and universities:when a dominant view of the world was one. ofa one-way extension into a future of proS':~lt:~progress, and reason. If they rebelled, they 1 1 , foragainst details of this finn trend and often onfi~rnerthe sake of what they thought were e:cl1 chalones.They learned to res~ond to the pe~iOd iC the inlengeof war and revolution by reasserting ang edterrupted trend toward normalcy. \Vhat has ch fin the meantime is, above all, the character 0chan~e itself." .' 'kel toThis new pace of Change, which rs not 11 c~ ofslow ~own .soon, has begun to affect every f~~ eakAmencan !tfe. In OUI'vocabulary, people nOV. ;.Pan dof being "on the move," of "running aroul~d, ingof "go, go, go." In Our politics, we arc Wltr: tora major realignment of the two-party syst~01. ,.~~ostMax Ways of Fortune magazine has said,. outAmerican political and social issues today al'lse "of a concern OVer the pace and quality of cl~~:~~In Our morality, many are becoming more think?r U?committed. If life changes swiftly, man~o anYIt Wise not to get too attached or devotedparticular set of beliefs or hierarchy of values.