Conant's Speech Urges Us to Find "Golden Mean" Twixt Authority and Criticism to Save "Our Way"

The following is the text of President Conant's address delivered before the Southern College Conference at the Peabody Hotel, Memphis, Tennessee yesterday:

"It can be argued that we are now living in these days of terrific peril for the very reason that we were too short-sighted when we fought a war a generation ago. We thought then that by a relatively minor effort we could once and for all reform the world and then forever live disarmed in peace. To my mind, if this country makes that error once again, we shall not only forego the hope of peace, but the hope of maintaining the democratic and liberal way of life we all hold dear.

"Must we not accept the responsibility that, fully armed and prepared to fight if need be, we must become a responsible power in the world, that we must in collaboration with the others who hold roughly our same ideals, organize a large portion of the civilized world in such a way that we may continue to prosper as a national unity and develop the potentialities of our nation.

Must Meet Challenge

"In speaking before this audience in this place, I hardly need to press this point of view. The very history of the Mississippi Valley has proved that the people who dwell here in the South and West have been true exponents of American greatness. They recognized that the destiny of this country lay in an expanding vision. To that view we owe the way of life we now applaud.

"I believe the same spirit which made this country go forward in the adventure on this continent will once again be awakened to meet the challenge of these times.

"What are we arming to defend? We are arming, I take it, to prevent such a change in the political and economic situation in this country as would make us a subservient people to a master state. We are arming to prevent such a revolution in our way of life as would make this land for everyone who values liberty a prison house in which to live.

"But we are not arming to defend an invariant type of political system. I should be unwilling personally to declare even that we are arming to defend 'democracy,' for the word democracy has suffered grievously in this last decade.

"Democracy can mean anything from a dictatorship of the proletariat to a preservation of the status quo. It can mean a belief in the divine right of fifty-one per cent of the voters to alter in any way at any moment all laws and customs. Or it can mean the continuation in power in some locality of a privileged class.

Defending Principles

"We are not arming to defend a particular form of representative government. We may at some later time wish to modify and simplify our highly complex governmental pattern. But most of us would believe we were arming to defend certain principles embodied in our constitutional form of government.

"First of all are the civil liberties of the individual summed up in the Bill of Rights. Second would be the political machinery which enables the mass of the people to decide through elected representatives on major issues. Third, the written laws and constitutions which, together with tradition, protect the rights of the minority on the one hand, and prevent sudden guests of popular opinion from altering the structure of society on the other.

False Shield for Revolution

"Democracy as interpreted by some of those who love to mouth this word has been a false shield to cover the aims of revolutionists. The Constitution has also been a false shield for others. It has been proclaimed as all but divine all too often by those who seek under its protection only to hold their own personal privileged positions. Between the disgruntled who would be revolutionists and the complacent privileged who would be Bourbons, democracy must hold a middle course.

"The true spirit of democracy, it seems to me, is founded on the golden mean between destructive criticism on the one hand and complacent dogma on the other.

"If one indoctrinates the youth of the country only with a desire to see the defects of our existing social order, is there not a danger that dissatisfaction will become so great that a spirit of hopeless futility will prevail? There comes a point when a man can become so convinced of the weakness of a structure that he is no longer interested in a sacrifice to preserve the foundation on which it rests.

Criticism Will Sap Strength

"Sufficient Indoctrination of 'awareness of the defects of the existing social order' will certainly sap the courage of many people, sap it to a point where willingness to fight becomes conspicuous by its absence. This is the danger on the one side which confronts any free democratic land.

"But the dangers on the other are equally menacing and real. To equate the status quo with perfection has been the insidious disease of every civilization. To stifle criticism is the method of all who have privilege and enjoy it. It is the method by which a ruling class endeavors to sustain through the generations its rights and power. Complacency will sap the courage of a nation as readily as will destructive self-criticism.

"But the golden mean is the hardest thing in the world to be maintained. This, it seems to me, is the first and foremost doctrine which we in our colleges and universities should seek to inculcate in our students.

Golden Mean Difficult

"The golden mean is, in a sense, illogical. But more important, it is hard or realization. It is a way of life. The golden mean is difficult of realization. The free way is a hard way of life. But that part is in itself a challenge, and it is a challenge which we should every day place before our youth.

"The history of this republic has been unique, not so much because of the growth of constitutional democracy but because of the social system. This system is a living embodiment of the golden mean of which I speak.

"I believe that it is this unique form of society which we are really arming to defend, a society which has grown up in the last two hundred years on this continent under unique conditions, and as a result has enabled us to formulate a new ideal."