Sees Hard Road Ahead
PRESIDENT HOPKINS, ADDRESSING the New Hampshire Civic Forum at Concord on January 12, told a capacity audience in the State House that the Nation has a long, hard road ahead in the present war and that one of the big questions is to what extent the American people "can take it." He predicted rationing on a broad scale and a much lower standard of living for all, warning that many things above the plain, subsistence level will have to be given up in order to bring about the defeat of Hitler and his satellites.
President Hopkins' talk on "Conditioning for War" was the second in the series recently inaugurated by the New Hampshire Civic Forum. It attracted many prominent State leaders, including Governor Robert O. Blood '13m and other Dartmouth graduates. Edward S. French '06, Dartmouth Trustee and president o£ the Boston and Maine Railroad, was also present and attended a dinner in Mr. Hopkins' honor before the meeting.
"Totalitarianism is going to destroy itself or be destroyed," Dartmouth's leader asserted during his address, "but there is no assurance that it will be destroyed except as we show that we can do it ourselves. There is no assurance until we are willing to consolidate our wealth and resources and to make the sacrifices which Nazism has made."
MUST NOT UNDERESTIMATE FOE
President Hopkins warned against underestimating Nazism and overestimating ourselves. "We have a long way to go," he said, "before we have the raw materials or the manufactured products with which to produce our share of the tools of war, and much longer before we are in a position to wage war ourselves." President Roosevelt's report to Congress, foretelling of great quantities of weapons of every type, merely set a goal for the country and cannot be brought to realization except by the effort and sacrifice of every individual citizen, Mr. Hopkins declared.
"The farther we have advanced along the road of civilization, the more difficult it has become to give up those things which constitute the margin beyond mere subsistence," he pointed out. What is needed is the "intestinal fortitude that characterized those who have gone before us, and I believe that we have that intestinal fortitude," he stated.
"We live in extraordinary times, serious times, but we have the privilege of living in perhaps the most significant single period of history," President Hopkins told his audience. "We have the opportunity of helping to make this a better world. Men are going to die for the preservation of liberty, and in the dying they are going to be dependent upon us .... that their death shall not have been in vain."
