LIBERTIES ENDANGERED
Usage of these terms has been so commonplace that they have been taken for granted. And thus, unthought of may they suddenly disappear from the American scene.
The facts speak for themselves. Beginning with the "hundred days' legislation" President Roosevelt has time and again violated these fundamental concepts with his conglomeration of hit-or-miss measures and methods. Among other things politicians are in control of many of our industries, the constitution has been flaunted by the NIRA, and vast wealth has been arbitrarily transferred from one class to another by the Agricultural Adjustment Act and by our various adventures in currency manipulation. But that is not allor least. President Roosevelt has indirectly inspired even greater evils.
With recovery but little advanced and with billions of dollars being thrown around the country for politico-relief purposes the masses have been led to dream of even greater riches for the asking or the taking. Nor have they lacked for leaders. Father Coughlin, a demagogue who wears the vestments of the church and speaks with his mouth, pot-likker Huey Long and Pundit Francis Townsend all have slobbered for the pious believers, the po' folk, and the Old Folk at Home. And with this menace has risen another, just as deadly but little publicised Fascism, never a gradual movement, always an overnight coup that strikes without warning when threatened by Communism. It finds an ardent sympathiser in the Sage of San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst, who dictates to the Vice-President, who forced the President's hand in the Jennings case, and controls at least three million votes.
We have only to look at Italy, Germany, and Russia to see how much liberty, equality and freedom we would have should the break come either way. In each case a very small group has a literal power of life and death over the vast majority. And even if Utopian Socialism or Marxian Communism should ever be realized the individual would be a complete nonentity. Even John Strachey says "Planning, if it is to mean anything at all, means that some personsor person, arbitrarily and in advance, shall determine what is to be produced, how much shall be produced, and who shall produce it."
Our only salvation for this and future times of stress lies in a strong conservative wedge which will safeguard society from the cylla and Charybdis.
The College, I believe, produces such a wedge. And it does so with complete naturalness. In the classroom, information, and opinions both pro and con are presented for what they are worth. In regard to outside lectures, I have heard present conditions analyzed and interpreted on the Dartmouth campus by such varied speakers as John Strachey, Rexford Tugwell, and Victor Cutter '03, with the last, incidentally, shining by comparison. And the administration too has realized that coercion toward a controversial point of view more often than not proves a boomerang. In the main, I believe, the other colleges of America in every aspect are in accord with this policy. There are, of course, isolated exceptions—a Dean at Pittsburgh, a puppet in New Orleans, and a Communist-baiter on the West Coast.
Almost to a man the men of the College give promise of voluntarily, if unconsciously, adding themselves to that conservative wedge. I know of only one man on the Dartmouth campus who sincerely believes in Communism and knows what he is talking about. I have all the respect for him that one man has for another with intelligently thought out and sincerely arrived at convictions. Less deserving of respect are an additional handful who play at parlor pink as an amusing game, or who have a passionate zeal for a Cause of whose implications they are only vaguely aware.
