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Challenge to Education: Arm and Fortify the Spirit
By PRESIDENT-ELECT CORNELIS W. DE KIEWIET
ANY writing at this hour is done in the shadow of
national emergency. A year ago there seemed to be
more people with us than against us. Today if there
were a major outbreak of tlOstilities those against us
might be greater in number than those upon whom
we can surely count.
We are about ready to deploy our forces. The decision
to increase our armed strength has been made.
A great debate has been joined on the proper foreign
policy for our country to follow. Mr. Hoover ha� performed
the proper role of a senior statesman in offering
a drastically revised foreign policy for our consideration.
Many people, including myself, do not agree with
Mr. Hoover. Yet he has stated the main issues. He
believes that we have misjudged our power, our enemies,
and maybe our friends. If we add his words to
those of other senior statesmen we recognize that we
face the worst crisis of American history.
As an historian I agree with this somber judgment.
It is our obligation as citizens to continue the debate
which Mr. Hoover has begun. His personal conclusions
are less impressive than the process of review
and reconsideration which he has begun. To a host
of questions we must find adequate answers. Have
we been living too much on the margin of the present?
Should we cling to all of our strategic positions?
Withdraw from some? Which? Why? Who are our
friends? How can we support them? Should we fight a
war, seeking it where our chances of success are greatest?
Or should we avoid war, feeling that democracies
can win more easily in the field than hold the peace?
Will we be so exhausted after a war that, even as
victors, we shall have to embrace the ways of the
vanq uished?
Of all the questions which we should ask ourselves,
the most meaningful in my judgment is this: What
can be done to enkindle and keep nobly aflame the
spirit of hope and courage in the young men and
women of our country? The awful burdens which
confront America bear with especial weight on their
minds and bodies.
An hour spent with any student group reveals the
anxiety in their minds and the reluctance in their
souls. Why, they ask, should this great affliction descend
upon their generation? Can they, by making
great sacrifices, transcend it, and finally achieve a
better world with guarantees that two world wars
have failed to produce? In our universities there are
generals who should not try to be college presidents,
and college presidents who should not try to be generals.
So far they have developed plans for mobilizing
students, but few convincing thoughts on why it
is necessary to be mobilized.
Since hope and confidence and resoluteness are a
greater armament than guns and bombs, we must
work to produce them in our young men and women.
We need guns and bombs, and the power of defense
beyond anything we could have conceived 10 years
ago. But the great task of education is still to arm and
fortify the spirit. We must evolve a national and foreign
policy in which we can have faith. We must
give our students an aspiration towards the future
that will shine through the present gloom. Above all
we must relieve their minds of feelings of exposure
and loneliness.
In all the present plans for mobilization, military
training, and war effort, there is too much emphasis
on what the young people are going to have to do.
This is morally wrong and psychologically dangerous.
The senior generation - alumni, teachers, parents,
workers, industrialists, politicians - can render no
greater service than to express in tangible shape their
utter solidarity with the young people. I am sure that
the senior generation means this, but it must express
it unambiguously. Otherwise there is a real danger of
a split in our society, at the worst even a revolt of
new generations against the old.
Total involvement is the only doctrine worthy of
the adult citizen. Mr. Conant's much publicized plan
for military training may be technically expedient.
Yet he lost a great opportunity when he did not speak
from that great platform which he enjoys, in words
that men might remember and quote for their com-
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