I count it a high honor and privilege to be present today for the inauguration of Dr. Harrington as President of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College. Under his leadership, I am confident; this great institution of learning, service, and high achievement in so many fields will grow in stature and multiply its contributions to the advancement of learning to citizenship and freedom. For Texas A&M, and for its sister institutions throughout the land, the opportunities and the challenges of the future are as inspiring as the response from the schools is momentous for all Western civilization.
These are years of high and perilous stakes.
The future of democracy is clouded as never before since the July day in Philadelphia when the Founding Fathers pledged - under Providence - their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor in support of the newly signed declaration of inalienable human rights and human freedom.
No combination of armed enemies has ever menaced the free world so acutely as do the myriad threats that jeopardize it today. By its nature, physical aggression provokes resistance and, in proportion to its intensity, stimulates unity among its intended victims. But the dangers today are cloaked under many guises, are befogged by propaganda and are often written off as the problems of the next generation. We tend to drift apart into our separate recesses of suspicion and prejudice when victory in the struggle depends upon understanding and unity.
In the case of the external threat against America's freedoms, the source is clear and the destructive potential unmistakable. But the totalitarian technique is to prepare the attack by subversion. Cells within our own social body generate falsehood, misunderstanding, fear and defeatist propaganda. Before we can even locate and identify the threats to our freedom and existence as a nation, we must first fight our way through confusion, camouflage and ignorance.
The weight and extremity of the challenge confronting us is great; but America's moral, intellectual and material resources are more than equal to it. Free men, when aware of their straits and possessing the knowledge of how crises may be resolved into triumph, do not falter because of cost to themselves. But an added danger of the present is that the cares of daily life can blind them to a creeping peril. And knowledge of what must be done to defeat it is difficult to obtain by men busy earning their livelihood.
Our educational system, therefore, has a heavier and more immediate responsibility to the country than ever before. It can prod us all into vigilant awareness, and can arm us with the knowledge we desperately need. No other agency of the American people can so effectively do both. That capacity of the schools is a challenge to those concerned with their conduct that should excite any man to supreme effort. More than that it is an ultimatum. Either the schools fit our people for the crises of our times, or the freedom and opportunities of the schools will disappear in the ruin of all free institutions and their own reduction to propaganda mills. The ultimatum is sharpest to the colleges and universities of America.
Far more than mere storehouses of scholarly knowledge, they must be in these days; far more, for that matter, than bases of exploration beyond the present frontiers of knowledge in the sciences and disciplines. All that they can offer us in annotated and itemized information, all that they can accomplish for us in the material betterment of our being, whether it is the addition of another week to the average span of life; a new hybrid plant or fowl; a commanding mastery over the elements of nature - all will be bitter fruit, if the colleges and universities fail to keep before us our obligations as Americans and ready us for their discharge.
The central struggle of our times, the contest that encompasses all lesser disputes and conflicts among men, is that of freedom against regimentation. More intense and critical today than ever before, it is no new thing in human experience. This struggle has been at the core of social and political strife since mankind first acknowledged the need for association and organization for the solution of group problems.
Voluntary association among men involves voluntary abdication of some individual freedom, the acceptance of some subordination to the will of the majority or the decisions of the leader. Each individual may give up only a minute bit of personal liberty but the total adds up to partial mastery over the group for anyone who wants to grab it. Consequently, every group effort, however necessary to the good of its members or praiseworthy in its purposes, has always been open to abuse by those whose lust for power has driven them to seek domination over their fellows. And each successful abuse brings the perpetrator closer to a complete dictatorship.
To guard against that evil our forefathers designed a Republic of limited and dispersed authorities - limited functionally in the various branches of government, dispersed geographically throughout the land. Centralization of power, they feared, because it facilitated usurpation of total power either by violence or the will of a hoodwinked majority.
Even as they established rule by majority decision, they built safeguards against its perversion. Dictatorship, then and now, is still tyranny no matter how large a majority votes it. Servitude is no less degrading to human dignity, even if originally voluntarily assumed.
The control of government for the subjection of the masses has ever been the chief target of power-mad men while their defeat or overthrow has been the continuing purpose of those who stood for freedom. The struggle between tyranny and self-rule for men can be identified and the ups and downs of its progress clearly charted through all the cultures of which we have a political and social record.
In modern times, the American Revolution set in motion political waves that penetrated the far corners of the earth. The industrial revolution fortified their impact on social structures that were founded on and embedded in despotisms. While our Declaration of Independence awakened to political life tribes and races that had for countless decades accepted servitude as the penalty of existence, the machines of Europe and America multiplied the productivity of men's hands everywhere and strengthened their arms against their masters.
Only a few short years ago, it seemed that nothing could stop the triumphant sweep of self-rule among men, the disappearance of despotism. Except in the most barbaric and backward fastnesses of the earth, men eagerly seized the ideas and the tools that would make them free. Mastery of the many by the few seemed impossible in a world made safe for democracy. Then, suddenly and terrifyingly, the trend turned.
The seekers of power no longer depended exclusively upon force as the weapon to control the multitude. Instead they sought the approval and wholehearted support of the people themselves. By bribe and propaganda and glittering promise, they took over whole nations - nations that had won freedom and self-rule through generations of struggle.
Mussolini recalled to Italy the glories of ancient Rome and convinced the Italian people that these could be recaptured - if they surrendered themselves in blind obedience to his will. Hitler corrupted the German nation into idolatrous self-worship of a master race and thereby secured a hold on an entire people that did not relax until the moment of his own destruction. But neither Mussolini nor Hitler dared, at the outset, to avow their final purpose of totalitarian rule. Italy and Germany both were lured into dictatorship.
In this country, we need not fear a Mussolini or a Hitler. No imitator of either would long be tolerated in a nation, so varied in its ancestral roots, so diversified in its economy, so content with its natural boundaries and at peace with its neighbors. Nor need we fear a Lenin. Only among a people shackled in age-old abuse of privilege and position could his like gain unlimited power.
But one thing we must fear is decay of our freedoms through our own neglect. A Mussolini, Hitler or Lenin would not tolerate freedom of the ballot, yet half our people do not choose to exercise it. No dictator would permit free assembly of citizens to discuss public questions; yet how many of us exercise our right - and obligation - to scrutinize and debate proposed legislation? Despotism, whatever its guise, develops when men, losing faith in themselves, surrender bit by bit their own responsibilities to a central authority.
By every flight from our citizenship responsibilities, by that much we endanger the sum of our privileges as citizens. By every act of allegiance to a group whose purpose is its own vicious self-interest and profit, by that much we despoil America of the allegiance which is its life-blood. By every step we take toward making the state the caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the state our master.
In the complexity of our industrial civilization, however, how can the average man know sharply and clearly his responsibilities? How can he draw a clearer dividing line between necessary group cooperation and selfish banding together? By what signs can he distinguish between functions that must be reserved to the community and those that through compelling circumstances must be assigned to the central government? In a simpler day, the answers could be found in the platforms of our political parties, amplified and developed in our political campaigns. Such answers no longer suffice.
Obviously, we possess in the great American educational system a source of guidance. Every grade school, every high school, every college and university is, in its sphere and area of influence, a community forum, a laboratory, a center of skills and learning where problems can be thrashed out, social ills diagnosed, the walls that separate the citizen from his own self-rule identified and broken down.
The schools can provide an atmosphere free from the acrimony of partisan debate and the bewildered confusion of the average lay group attempting to discuss perplexing problems without competent professional advice. In them, our citizens of every party and pursuit and profession can meet and study and talk out with expert counsel the problems that most immediately concern them. Ways and means to the discharge of each citizen's particular obligation can be made clear.
Of particular interest to this youthful body of students is the question of laws requiring from them military service. What answers will be developed of politicians and statesmen, I do not know. But I do know this. Until every young American comes to look upon prospective military service as a personal obligation to be cheerfully, efficiently and proudly performed; until ever older citizen looks back with pride upon the service he rendered in uniform, regardless of unfortunate contacts with red tape and martinets, until then this nation will not be served well by her citizens who owe everything to her! Until then, she will not be as safe as we can make her. The traditional and justifiable pride of Texas A & M in the devoted, efficient service rendered by its graduates in the military services is a shining example of the pride that is needed everywhere - in every state, city and town of the Union.
In countless ways, the helpful capacity of schools should be exploited. Suppose that in every community schoolhouse this winter, our people were to assemble half a dozen times to discuss jointly with teachers, engineers, police authorities and legislators the question of road safety. I believe that in short space we could end the senseless slaughter of innocents on our highways - that tragic blot on the automotive age. If the American people know clearly and concretely what must be done to end an evil, they will not hesitate at the measures that will wipe it out.
The more abstract and complex problems, those concerned with matters that affect all of us directly yet demanding for their solution specialized knowledge and experience, could be the province of the colleges and universities. These problems are often difficult to state, complicated by hypotheses and predictions, twisted by the acts and attitudes of our enemies, intensified by our own ignorance and negligence. They range from theories and practices in taxation to the determination of the amount of force free enterprise can support in this troubled world to preserve a peaceful security.
No one man, however brilliant his mind or diversified his background, can hope of himself to penetrate the mazes and obscurities of such questions. Yet, if we pool; first, the faculty of a great university, rich in our culture's wisdom and amassed knowledge; second, the leaders of industry, agriculture, labor and the churches; third, members of the professions - law, medicine, military, the social and physical sciences - concerned with the advancement of the nation's well-being; fourth, representatives of government at all its levels, schooled in the political administration of America - we will have an assembly of men who can - given good will and earnestness of purpose - cut through the entanglements of confusion and bring light into the darkest corners.
They need not always arrive at definite pronouncements nor should they attempt to implement decisions - that is the province of government, from the village board of trustees to the Congress and President of the United States. But they could clarify for every citizen the facts that affect the policy of his country and his daily relationships to his fellows and his government. And the product will be legislative action. For, no matter what the peddlers of despair and doubt may say, there is in the world no government more responsive to the informed, expressed opinion of its people than our own!
Those who decry citizenship inertia, neglect of the franchise, indifference to political problems and trends, too often forget that duty cannot be fully and heartily discharged unless it is clearly known and understood.
These are, indeed, years of high and perilous stakes. But with the traditional devotion of American citizens in emergency, we shall emerge, all our freedoms intact, into an age of peace among the nations! The enlightenment, the informed capacity for wise action will be provided, and one of the vital agencies in doing so will be out schools. Everywhere there is evidence of their aroused awareness to the new responsibilities. And under the guidance of Dr. Harrington, I know Texas A & M will be in their van.
The rest can be left to the will and spirit and patriotism of the American people. They have never failed yet. Under God, they never will fail.
