President Opens 172nd Year
Convocation Address Denounces Counterfeit Liberalism And Calls for Constructive Thought and Effort in Crisis
The following is an abstract of the ad-dress, "Spurious Liberalism," which Presi-dent Hopkins delivered at the Convoca-tion exercises opening Dartmouth's 172ndacademic year on September 19. Continu-ing his practice of recent years, PresidentHopkins did not prepare a formal addressbut spoke exte?nporaneously to the under-graduates and faculty members who com-pletely filled Webster Hall for the officialopening of a crucial college year.
FIRST OF ALL, I wish to retract my clos- ing statement on a like occasion a year ago. Then I quoted the Oriental fable of the king who sought advice from his counselors as to his attitude in emergencies which might arise and was given a scroll upon which was inscribed the aphorism, "This too will pass." Viewing time in its long dimensions, the statement un- doubtedly could be justified, but events of the past twelve months have indicated that in any terms of time which will be con- temporary with our lives, the effects of the world catastrophe of the present day will be enduring, and that in seeking an educa- tion we must be mindful of unusual cir- cumstances and of unprecedentedly hazard- ous conditions.
One of the most lovable of men, Graham Wallas, the great English scholar and early member of the Fabian Society, once at my house emptied his wallet in which there was a yellowing cartoon from an issue of Punch early in the World War. Hereon was represented a golfer on a tee with a bored expression upon his face remarking according to the caption, as I recall it: "I was playing golf the day the Germans landed.
All our men had run away; all our ships were stranded.
And the thought of England's shame Almost put me off my game."
Mr. Wallas went on to say that he carried this clipping with him to remind him of a fact which in his earlier years he had not fully realized, that the greatest deterrent to adapting oneself to changing circum- stances in civilized society—the disinclina- tion that existed in social life, in religion, and in education—was the thought that recognition of new circumstances might re- quire new thinking upon these and that thereby we might be "put off our game." In contact with and in consideration of current events in recent months, Mr. Wal- las's statement has come to me again and again, for it has seemed to me that public thinking, whether in our communities, our churches, or our schools, was being largely affected by the fear of the capitalist or the union labor leader or the preacher or the scholar or any one of the rest of us with a specialized interest that he might be put off his game.
Notably among all of these, however, I would classify the professional liberals, otherwise known as the liberal intellec- tuals, who regardless of the fact that man is a physical and emotional creature, argue for complete intellectual objectivity. I want to make very plain at once that in what I say I am talking about counterfeits and not about the qualities counterfeited. In the material world the things most likely to be counterfeited are those to which the most value attaches, and so it is in the spiritual and the intellectual world with respectively their spurious cults and their counterfeit intelligentsia. More definitely even than ever before I would emphasize the indispensable values to society of true liberalism as an incentive to progress, and I would insist more definitely than ever be- fore that development of the intellect is the first responsibility of education, but furthermore I would likewise insist that the existence of these exclusively as ob- jectives either in individual or in institu- tional minds is more likely to be dangerous to society than it is likely to be helpful. Any conception of man as a disembodied intellect lacks reality.
To assert the perilous condition in which civilization stands today is but to state what every man knows. But to go on and cite the reasons why the times are so perilous is to acknowledge to ourselves the same defects that have caused the downfall of peoples before us throughout all time, people who in material prosperity have forgotten that it was through fortitude and hardihooc that privileges had been won for them that they had come to assume to be rights.
The fable of the ancients concerning the son of Neptune and Terra is not without its deep significance today. It was only when the feet of Antaeus touched the ground that he was invincible, and when Hercules was able to destroy his ability to touch ground, he was easily crushed to death. It is so today. Life is earthy and greatly dependent on force. Much as we may argue that it should be otherwise, when a people does not enough value its freedom and its liberties to assume respond sibility for defending these, it loses them And to ignore the fact that to be withoutforce is to invite war is to ignore all of thelessons of history.
But there is a more fatal defect in the development of a civilized society than lack of force with which to defend oneself and that is lack of the will to do so. Thai is the indictment to be made against the older generations, as against my own- against myself—that they have stood aside and allowed their younger fellows to grew up without comprehension of the history of times immediately preceding theirs and therefore to grow up in cynicism and irre sponsibility in which they have lost sense of values the worth of which they have never appreciated because they have never lived without them. Thus it has come about thai great traditions have been despoiled of their glories because not all traditions were glorious, and heroes worthy of great re- nown have been denied rightful respect because not all things which they did were entitled to respect. Hitler in removing from the records all mention of heroism on the part of Jews who died in the World War, professedly in the interest of racial purity, has done little worse than many of our biographers and historians have done in the name of scholarship to public esteem for men and affairs who have contributed greatly to our development as a nation. Thus have been destroyed in the minds of the younger generations the convictions of value of what we have and the determina- tion of a will to defend these as worthy of all sacrifice.
Thus it has come about that in Russia, in Italy, in Germany the tramping feet of youth support the philosophies of destruc- tion and negation of the dictatorships and at home our own youth have hesitated be- tween their natural and worthy instincts on the one hand and a spurious liberalism on the other hand. It is this professional- ized and counterfeit liberalism that I wish to examine for a few moments.
COLLEGES LOSE PRESTIGE
The liberal college does not live to itself alone. In consideration of its survival value it must needs recognize the effect upon it- self of its loss of prestige and authority in recent months among the public which it purports to serve. Whether rightly or wrongly, the liberal intellectualism of the present day is widely assumed to be the product of our system of higher education. And among the peoples professing belief in democratic principles, it has been those classifying themselves as liberal intellec- tuals who have disregarded the fact that intellectualism is not a synonym for intelli- gence any more than literacy is necessarily indicative of knowledge. It is the liberal intellectuals who in disregard of reality have assumed that the rationalizing of ab- stractions can more than offset all the les- sons of experience; that culture and dignity and gentility are their own defenses and require no protection of force against bar- barism and savagery; that the gamble of a temporary immunity, as at Munich, even though secured at the cost of self-respect, is to be preferred to a permanent security for the acquiring of which toil and struggle and sacrifice would be necessary. It has been among those who classified themselves as liberal intellectuals that the doctrine has arisen and been given utterance that be- cause a people constituting a nation have not always conformed in their policies to the standards of highest idealism, even though for long time they have been the refuge of liberalism and the well-spring of democracy, such a people are not entitled t0 sympathy, to say nothing of support, in their conflict with those who not only hate democratic ideals but those who have openly asserted their intentions of ex- tirpating from the earth everything for which true liberalism stands. It has been the liberal intellectuals who have argued that we should do nothing for saving the world from sadism and slavery because we have not yet made our own land a Utopia according to their specifications. They have argued in complete obliviousness to the fact that a society not yet perfect might still under intelligent scrutiny seem prefer- able to a society in which all values of church, home, and school have been de- stroyed. It has been the liberal intellectuals who in the face of impending doom of all for which true liberalism stands have ar- gued for "the long look" in disregard of present-day conditions. They have ignored the seemingly obvious truth that a society in process of liquidation before a firing squad will have opportunity for but one look and that of ephemeral consequence.
And finally and most serious, it is the liberal intellectuals today who argue that even for the sake of future generations to whom we are responsible for preservation of liberty and freedom, we today need not recognize any necessity for laying aside the luxury and privilege of liberties, even though in insistence upon these we make them susceptible to appropriation for de- struction.
It is particularly true among the intelli- gentsia of the world that men kill the things they love. The zealots, the reformers, and the extremists of the world who take their stands and push their causes so far beyond the common thinking that few can or wish to follow, are the men who breed reactions and cause retreats in the struggle of social groups for steady progress. It is to patient men of clear vision and flexible minds that true liberalism has to look for its protection and development.
It is with consideration of such thoughts that the liberal college must concern itself in a time of hazard like this. In order that the liberal college shall protect its survival value for usefulness through a long future, as it has in Anglo-Saxon countries for cen- turies past, it must re-examine its status and redefine its function. It must, if neces- sary, be willing to forego the privileges of liberalism for a brief time that liberalism shall not be destroyed for long time. It must strive for unity in recognition that the forces arrayed against it are unified. Macaulay said that many an army had prospered under a bad commander but that no army had ever prospered under a debating society. It must subordinate its instinct for cynical skepticism and destruc- tive criticism to an effort to develop con- structive thought and creative effort. And above all, it must strive to make its liberal- ism a liberalism in fact rather than an in- tellectual pose. Only so can we avoid classi- fication with those whom Archibald Mac- Leish has called "The Irresponsible." Only so can we justify ourselves as beneficiaries of the heritage from our forefathers into possession of which we come today.
ANOTHER YEAR GETS UNDER WAY Undergraduates, led by Palaeopitus, shown filing out of Webster Hall at the close of th'Convocation exercises on September 19. Peter Keir '41, president of Palaeopitus and so®of Prof. Malcolm Keir of the Economics department, is in the center front.
