ADDRESS, 14TH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE

MARYLAND ASSN. OF STUDENT COUNCILS

BETHESDA

October 18, 1962

I am deeply grateful to your president, Frampton Ellis, for inviting
me here today to attend this opening session of the Fourteenth Annual
Convention of the Maryland Association of Student Councils.

I am well aware that I have the privilege of addressing the leadership
in Maryland of students of your age group. The fact that you have been
selected for membership in the governing organization of your student
body is a demonstration of your fitness to be leaders. The experience you
have had and are having will prepare you to continue in positions of
influence into maturity.

Today, I should like to talk to you just briefly about some of the prob-
lems we face in the modern world and about some of the obligations and
responsibilities we have as free men and women in a democratic society.
These are trying times in which we are living, and it seems to me they
are especially difficult for young people like you. The conditions under
which we live change so radically from day to day that it is hard for the
father to know his son and the son to understand his father.

You who are younger may have become accustomed to the modern
pace in scientific and technological advancement. But I will tell you
frankly things move so fast that they make me giddy. Your grandfathers,
in their youth, read a tale by a French author entitled: "Around the
World in 80 Days, " and they read it as story-book fancy, delightful, but
a little hard to believe. When you saw the movie adapted from the
same tale, the only element of improbability about it was why it took so
long. A trip to the moon only a few years ago was a dream of poets,
romancers and song-writers. Now, mankind has shown that he is capa-
ble of propelling an object from the earth to the moon. In all likelihood,
this flight of man through space to the moon will be made in your
lifetime.

Sober books and magazines written for serious-minded persons deal
nowadays with topics that only a few years ago would have been appro-
priate only for the science-fiction paperbacks. Under such conditions,
wars and threats of war become terrifying almost beyond endurance.
Armageddon, that battle described in the scriptures as one to be fought
on "The Great Day of God" between the forces of good and evil, once

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