THE DEFENSE OF FREEDOM

Edmund E. Day's Addresses Suggest the Question of How We Can Best Preserve Our Way of Life

... by EdmundEzra Day '05, Cornell University Press, 1941,63 pp. $1.25.

HERE, IN CLEAR and simple language, are four addresses given by President Day of Cornell concerning his faith in, and the problems connected with, American democracy. Democracy, Dr. Day writes, is not simply a form of government; it is "a form of human relationship in which men and women of every class and creed live together in peace."

Dr. Day believes, or did believe, that the dictatorships do not threaten us by direct attack, but that they do threaten us with a terrifying riddle: "To fight or not to fight, with the probable loss of democracy either way." If we go to war we wou'.d go authoritarian for the duration. Afterwards could we go back to the democratic way of life? With or without war, our real danger lies from within. One of the chief dangers is the disappearance among us of the feeling of economic security; further- more the enforced idleness of millions of people is fatal to democracy, and the social discords all too apparent in the last few years in our political scene is surely weakening our democratic structure.

I£ we want to be free men disciplining our- selves rationally we must be men o£ courage, honesty, industry, good will, and we must possess "a continuing sense of inner power" which, being faith, gives us morale. This is the way of life which must be widely achieved if democratic peoples are to stay free and independent. We must moderate our materialism and our love for money; we must really believe in democracy and not in what Mrs. Lindbergh has chosen to call "the wave of the future." Dr. Day has re-stated for us a fundamental American creed.