LETTERS

Needed: A Word

To THE EDITOR:

The reason for this epistle is the invitation to the Soviet Ambassador to speak to the Great Issues Course on April 20.

In 1900, I was six years old. An older brother, '03, came home for Christmas, and before he returned to Hanover I had learned the Greek alphabet from Alpha to Omega. I can repeat it today. I recall certain names: "Tute" Worthen, Prexy Tucker, of course, and others - Vaughn, Patterson, Knibbs, Witham, Hooper, Gilman, Turner, of the 1902 team.

In the fall of 1916, I stood in a tent on the south end of the campus. It was Dartmouth Night, and I shall never forget, to my dying day, Prexy Hopkins saying that his thesis of a liberal education was that a liberal college should teach young men how to think and not what.

And then, I went off to war with the Yankee Division.

I pray with all my heart, that with all the physical expansion taking place in my college, that this conception may be carried on through the years.

What a wonderful thing it would be, if Dartmouth, through basic research in the realm of words and ideas, could only come up with the word with which to fight Communism. A word or an idea can beat Communism to the ground, and surely so, but bombs and missiles never will.

For example, take the word Trusteeship, and mull it over in your mind. It is deeprooted in our national character and tradition. So many of the good things in our way of life stem from the meaning of this word, - our own college and others, schools, hospitals, libraries, foundations. Where the trusteeship principle is applied, we have justice, libraries, foundations. Where the trusteeship principle is applied, we have justice,

Now, let us ask ourselves a few questions with respect to our destiny as a nation.

Were we good trustees of our destiny when we refused to join the League of Nations?

Were we good trustees of our destiny when we "recognized" the Godless Bolsheviks in 1933?

Were we good trustees of our destiny when we permitted the perfidy of Pearl Harbor?

Were we good trustees of our destiny when we forsook China, and left her to the Bolsheviks?

Now, a trusteeship, of necessity, has to be humble. It can never dictate, because of its obligation as trustee. Are we humble, and deeply so, in our politics, national or international?

If we are, then we cannot fail to see that we, the people of the earth, are all children of the Creator and Preserver of all mankind. We call this Creator, God.

So, if God creates us, and gives us the means of preserving our lives, then we are His trustees, are we not?

A good farmer is a good trustee of his land. He conserves it, to better produce the means of life.

So, may I submit that the word with which to fight Communism, may well be Trusteeship.

Disarmament will never come from war, hot or cold, nor from balance-of-power deals, - nor from a United Nations conceived with no recognition of a power greater than ourselves, and with one nation having the power to upset any united action for peace.

If, through Article 109, we could establish within the United Nations, a World Trusteeship, dedicated, solely and simply, to the task of being good trustees of the land, water, and air given to us by the Great Creator for our preservation, with not one whit of it used for production of instruments of war, except as are needed to enforce the Trusteeship, under law, then we will have hope for peace by reason and law, and not by dictatorship of one kind or another, resulting from greed and war.

And so, I submit, let us do some basic research for the word with which to fight Communism. Perhaps Trusteeship is it.

After 40 years of thinking on the subject, and having in mind the tradition and history of my country, since the first landers came ashore at Cape Henry 352 years ago, I conceive it to be our destiny to further expand and develop the pattern of our Western Civilization by proposing:

I. That the Earth, - its Land, Water, and Air, become the property of the United Nations, through a Peoples' Trusteeship.

II. That this property be Leased as is, to each nation, said lease to contain all the terms required to establish once and for all. under law, that none of this property shall be used for the production of implements of war, except such as shall be required by the Trusteeship to set up an enforcing authority to prevent such usage.

III. That, initially, this shall be the sole obligation, duty, and authority of the Trusteeship, leaving to the future any further delegation of duty or authority to it.

And so, I would ask the Ambassador, "Will your people sit down and discuss such a proposal?"

Coexistence is possible.

Rutland, Vt.