The President's Addresses
RETAINING THE substance of his remarks to the Boston alumni (the address was printed in the MAGAZINE last month) President Hopkins delighted enthusiastic audiences at subsequent alumni meetings in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta, Washington, and Manchester, N. H., with his analysis of present social and political conditions in relation to the purposes of a college of liberal arts. Editorial comment followed in the wake of his rapid tours to alumni centers in eastern, southern, and central states. The New York Herald Tribune editorialized April 10 under the heading " 'lsms' in the College" as follows:
President Ernest Martin Hopkinsof Dartmouth College made a statement to an interviewer in Washington yesterday which is almost certain to be misconstrued and to bemade the theme of much blusterabout academic Bolshevism. He isquoted as saying that "there is noreason why communism and Facismshould not be studied and analyzedin our higher institutions of learning." Dr. Hopkins does not say, itshould be noted, that these alien"isms" should be preached fromthe lecture platforms in our colleges and universities, though it isby no means unlikely that beforehis remark is quoted and requotedmany times it will be tiuisted intoa suggestion that the universitiespropagate "un-American" politicalthought.
The idea very clearly put forwardis that, as part of its routine instruction in political philosophy, everyinstitution of higher learning shoulddissect and explain the fundamentalprinciples of the politico-social system wider which something like300,000,000 Russians, Italians andGermans are living. This would beto the end that no interested youthcould come out of college with theimpression that communism, for example, was a vaguely beneficent ora vaguely evil scheme of things butwould understand clearly just howit differed in its conception of theindividual's relation to his government from the American definitionof that relationship.
Such instruction, as impartial andobjective as a review of the factionalstruggles in the republican Rome,the points at issue between KingJohn and his barons or the politicalphilosophy of the Puritans, wouldnot only be unobjectionable butwould be the best possible guarantyagainst unguided student triflingwith sugar-coated communism orFascism. It would also be the college's best antidote to any propaganda which a woolly mindedradical instructor might be temptedto work into his lectures. No worthyAmerican's loyalty to his own socialsystem can be shaken by propagandafor the communist or Fascist state ifhe thoroughly understands the pricefor such abstractions as "social security" and "social justice" whichboth exact from the individual interms of personal rights, libertiesand opportunities.
Dr. Hopkins says that "the quickest: way to eliminate Americanismis by curtailing knowledge andspeech," with the very importantimplication that the more theAmerican knows of other politicaland social systems the more enthusiastic will he be about thepreservation of his own. He is entirely right.
