The Aftermath
IN looking forward to President Eisenhower's visit to Dartmouth for the 1953 Commencement, the College had completely left out of its anticipation any idea that the President in his informal remarks to the graduating class would utter so ringing and news worthy a defense of intellectual, freedom as his now-famous statement about "the book-burners." The President's brief but forceful utterance 159 words in all, near the end of a talk about daily fun and courage made banner headlines throughout the country and touched off repercussions that involved Congress; Washington press conferences by Secretary of State Dulles, President Eisenhower and Senator McCarthy, among others; press surveys in this country and abroad; widespread editorial comment; supporting statements by many leading citizens; sermons the following Sunday; and other forms of public reaction that indicated that the "book-burning" address at Dartmouth would remain a memorable event-for Dartmouth, an historic one.
The press had been quick to relate President Eisenhower's Dartmouth remarks to Senator McCarthy's campaign to ban controversial books in the U. S. overseas in formation libraries. At his press conference in Washington the Wednesday after Commencement, the President expanded his Dartmouth remarks by stating that he was not referring to books which are an open appeal to be a Communist or to destroy democracy, but that he did not believe in suppressing ideas and was willing to have in U. S. libraries abroad all the controversial books that are freely available in libraries at home.
At Princeton's commencement two days after Dartmouth's, President Dodds predicted that President Eisenhower's Dartmouth address would come to be viewed as a great state paper. He also hailed it as "a chart by which a distracted America could regain her spiritual unity."
Speaking at the meeting of the General Alumni Association on the Saturday following Commencement, President Dickey declared that the 1953 Commencement would rank as one of Dartmouth's great days, perhaps as historic and meaningful for the College as some of the great events in past Dartmouth history. Whatever the dimensions that June 14, 1953, will take on in the future, Dartmouth is exceedingly proud to have provided the occasion, the platform, and perhaps the contagious atmosphere that produced one of the clearest statements of American freedom ever made by a President of the United States. The historic purposes and character of the College as "a free and honest market place for the exposition, exchange and evaluation of ideas" could not have been given more compelling expression than was given at the 1953 Commencement exercises held against the symbolic backdrop of Dartmouth's great library.
Some of the editorial comment called forth by President Eisenhower's address follows:
"Don't Join the Book-Burners"
It was against the appropriate background of Dartmouth College's old elms and the graceful spire of its library that President Eisenhower called on his audience — and all his countrymen—to have, the courage to look at the truth and to fight evil with knowledge. When Dartmouth was founded, nearly two centuries ago, it stood near the frontiers of settled America, where men fought to push back the vast wild sea of forest and prairie that covered a continent, and its motto was the apt words of the prophet: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." Today the continent has been won, yet Dartmouth, like its myriad kindred institutions of learning from coast to coast, is still waging a battle. It is a subtler one, but no less vital, against those who would pervert teaching to the uses of Communism or place it in shackles for fear of Communism.
It was against this self-defeating fear that the President spoke out. "Don't join the bookburners," he urged. "Don't think you are going to conceal faults if by evidence they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in the library and read about Communism." The warning. unhappily, is badly needed in colleges, in boards of education, in libraries, in Congress and in other branches of the government. The panicky effort to avoid any semblance of aiding Communist propaganda has resulted in the banning of irreproachable books by "controversial" authors and of "controversial" books by irreproachable authors....
Truth, in America, must never become a voice crying out in a wilderness of self-im-posed ignorance and blind fear. Such leadership as President Eisenhower gave yes terday can rally the nation to a defense of the right to know and an assertion of the courage to fight Communism with the weapons of free men.
—New York, Herald Tribune
Mr. Eisenhower at Dartmouth
If it is a suspicious sign for an American citizen to wish to know something about communism, then the 33,938,285 citizens who voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower last November are guilty by association. President Eisenhower, a former soldier who knows what courage is, urged it upon the students in his commencement address at Dartmouth. He urged, among other things, the kind of courage that is required to read the kind of book that some of our would-be censors think is bad for us....
This was an "in formal" address, delivered offhand and without the aid of secretaries, Cabinet members and publicity experts. However, the President's audience could not mistake his meaning nor doubt his sincerity. He was appealing for a vigorous and positive sort of citizenship which would lead young men to fight existing evils in their own country, to love the good in it, to attack ungodly doctrines with the mind and not merely with the emotions. Unless this approach is possible, then Dartmouth and all other institutions of learning, in spite of "those that love them, might as well close their doors. The President had faith that this was not so. He had faith in the inquiring and open mind.
This faith the great mass of those who voted last year for Adlai E. Stevenson undoubtedly share. It is an American faith. The book-burners, the exalters of ignorance, the censors and bullies, are, after all, an un-American minority.
-New York Times
Who's Burning Books?
President Eisenhower's outspoken remarks at Dartmouth ought to have been read by his Secretary of State as a mandate to end the chaotic and demoralizing situation that has developed in American overseas libraries
American foreign policy is being undermined by the heavy-handed attacks on the integrity of the libraries. At a time when Russia is wooing western Germany with an unprecedented show of finesse, the United States is seemingly determined to offend all its most loyal friends, in Germany as well as elsewhere. That the State Department should be a party to the attack is incredible. Yet by its surrender to a potent minority on Capitol Hill that has no understanding of the American heritage, the department has abetted the country's most violent detainers....
A vast number of persons here are appalled by what has taken place. Our European friends should not lose sight of the fundamental sanity of the great strength of our constitutional safeguards. But the President chose a propitious moment to reassert a basic American conviction in the spirit of freedom, and others in the Administration ought to take the cue.
-The Washington Post
Now for Some Action!
... These splendid words are, in our opinion, the finest expression on the spirit and practice of Americanism to come from Dwight D. Eisenhower, not only since he entered the White House, but since he entered public life.
The Post-Dispatch commends him whole- heartedly on these ringing words and trusts that he will be so overwhelmed with approval for having spoken them that he will proceed at once to apply them in the State Department.
We say we hope he will proceed to apply his advice to the Dartmouth students because the State Department has gone further to ward "book burning" under President Eisenhower than it has ever gone before. For there is a vast difference between the President's counsel at the commencement in Hanover, N. H., and the practice of his own State Department overseas.
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch
