Tocsin from Hopkins

No BETTER STATEMENT of the fallacy of isolation has come to our attention than the address at the opening of the 173rd year of Dartmouth College by President Hopkins. It is an impressive example of "giving the devil his due." We abhor, he said, the German system. We abominate the Nazi intention to dominate the world. Yet "the thoughtful observer cannot forego a grudging admiration for the scope of the planning that was devised, for the unity of purpose that was secured, for the details of organization that were mastered and for the efficiency of operation, when at last" Hitler made his bid for the mastery of mankind. That bid is the outcome of "originality of thought, of mental concentration and of self-discipline to an extent unprecedented in world history before."

These things are true. It is high time that all Americans should see the fact and act upon it. The ostrich policy inevitably presages self-destruction. One is reminded of the striking phrase with which Ralph Barton Perry began one of his stirring appeals for action in behalf of the salvation of the American way of life.

"The world is in danger," he said, "because it underestimated a paperhanger."

There is nothing in the address about a shooting war as such, or, except by implication, about our belligerency. But President Hopkins does hold that nothing is clearer than that "we never shall be free from threats of war or from war itself until intellectualism has accepted the fact that no people can live to itself alone in a world as small and as closely knit together as our world has become."

September 21, 1941.